| | | Meet Market
Inside the Speed-dating Fad
| | | By Bahar Takhtehchian
Apparently I am a magnet for desperate, middle-aged men.
“Bahar, you have made me the happiest man,” one recently divorced 34-year-old man wrote. Another said in his fourth email to me, “I am afraid you didn’t get my previous emails so I am sending you an email from another account. I am waiting for your response.”
Though I’d like to attribute the recent influx of emails to my charm and good looks, I can’t-- at least not entirely. Last month I participated in a Chicago speed-dating event. I met 11 guys that evening and ten of them wanted to see me again.
I walked into the event knowing that I didn’t have anything to lose. I was already in a relationship and I was simply pretending to be single. I was sweet, cordial, inquisitive and receptive. I was a first impressions whore.
I listened intently as the men described their hobbies and “rebellious” antics.
“Well, one of the craziest things my friends and I did last weekend was getting tacos at 4 a.m.!” one man told me. Wild.
But after a night of feigning interest in Mr. Taco and his banal compadres, I couldn’t help but feel like the biggest loser of them all.
The Rules of the Game
I signed up for the event through a company called Pre-Dating. They claim to serve busy single professionals in over 65 cities, and most of their events are so booked they have waiting lists.
Participants get a badge with their name and a number on it and take a seat at a designated table. The ladies stay seated in one place the whole night while the men rotate around in a musical chairs of desperation. Each person is given a sheet of paper and pen. They then have six minutes to get to know the person sitting across from them. Any question is fair game, except the solicitation of personal information.
“Ice breaker” cards are available at each table on the “just in case” the conversation goes dead. The questions range from, “When you look in the mirror, what do you see?” to “If you saw someone cheating on a test, what would you do?”
Conversations can’t drag on because you are required to move on to the next person when the bell rings at the six minute mark. If you like the person you just met, you circle “yes” and hope that they did the same. If both parties circle “Yes” then a match is made and contact information is released by midnight the next day. If you don’t like the person, the bell signals the end of your misery.
To ensure a successful dating experiment, I made sure I was the easiest girl in the room. I circled “Yes” to all of the men I met.
The Ugly Truth
By the end of the night, I had met three men with MBA’s, two engineers, two businessmen, one graphic designer, one chiropractor, one dentist, and one nurse who was already prepared to “treat me like a queen and love me.” Nearly seventy five percent of the men were Caucasian and the rest were of either Asian or Indian descent.
Though I didn’t find any of them even slightly physically attractive or entertaining, I did have the luck of meeting “the coolest motherfucker in this entire place,” as he put it.
When I asked this balding engineer why he was still single if he was so motherfucking cool, he told me I talk too much, got up from his seat and said, “It took you less than six minutes to give me a headache.”
I was infuriated. The last thing I expected was to be shut down by a Rogaine-toting speed-dater. But on the drive home I found a sudden respect for the hairless stranger. If anything, he was honest about his feelings towards me, while the others just threw me empty sugarcoated compliments.
Speed-dating is a game of first impressions, but there’s no reason to give off a false impression. The six minute formula would have potential if both parties were honest, but remember that the truth, and oftentimes your partners, can be ugly. If I find myself a desperate lonely thirty-something I might consider giving speed-dating another shot, but for now, I want my money back.
She may not have time for balding old men, but Bahar will certainly have time for you.b-takhtehchian@northwestern.edu
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