After reading this chapter, I immediately thought of the show 90 day fiance. My family randomly got interested in the show during quarantine, and the article reminds me of it. The show focuses on a couple of couples that live in separate countries, one lives in America the other lives in another country such as Russia, Australia, United Kingdom, South Korea, etc. In the show, they have already dated for a while online. Overall, most couples have dated a long time before the show starts, and in some cases it is as long as 7 years. During this time, the two people have never met and have only dated online, through the show one of the people in the relationship fly over to the other person’s country and stay a few weeks there. During this time, they get to actually know each other face to face and by the end, they end up engaged or totally hating each other. In this particular show, the show focuses on rather unusual people or people that are obviously getting scammed, but it does make me wonder, how does technology affect romantic relationships like these? The two participants would have never met without the technology, but that probably would have been a good thing. Most of the time the two people end up hating each other by the end of the season and only very rarely do they end up getting engaged. However, this does not necessarily resemble real life. Again, these are typically people with unique personalities or qualities, so how does technology affect most people in this area of their life?
Overall, according to Superconnected, most dating apps and online texts, emails, etc. are successful and result in most people having success. About 11% of users have tried to find a date online, and the article displays that typically there’s potential to get into a long term relationship. Both people going into the relationship already know that they at least somewhat like each other, and they don’t have the typical relationship distractions that conventional relationships have. Most people that have dated online state that they have had positive experiences, and it makes me wonder how this compares to 90 Day Fiance. In the show, most people are unhappy by the end of the season, but this might not be reality. In reality, most people are happy dating online and at least find some success. Ultimately, digital technology has forever changed how humanity romantically interacts with each other, and since so many people have positive experiences with online dating, maybe it should be considered more of a common and realistic way to date.
DigitalCitizen 