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2 hours ago
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It’s fun to go to a speed dating event, meet a cute girl (or boy), get dinner with them right after, and end up cuddling in a ball pit the same night. Sometimes romance goes fast — and sometimes it doesn’t go anywhere at all.
Romcom-style meetcutes do happen in real life, but hoping for one — let alone expecting one — is a mistake. Romance is best experienced with no expectations, and speed dating is doubly so.
In my life, I’ve been to a dozen speed dating events. I also organised one, sponsored by
. They paid $100 for every couple who went on 3+ dates and I made $300 (thank you, Manifold). My thesis: it’s best to treat speed dating as a gym for your romantic skills, a way to farm romantic XP (experience points) in a structured environment.
Speed dating is a format where you talk 1:1 with several different people for 5-10 minutes each in quick succession.
Sometimes people are matched via an app on their phone (this was the case for my event). Sometimes there are numbered tables, and people of one gender rotate between tables (like in the pic). Sometimes it’s a free-for-all where people stand up and approach people they like (unhinged but fun).
Typically after the event you give organisers a list of people you are interested in. If your interest is mutual, you both get each other’s contact details. It’s similar to “swipe right” on dating apps.
The events vary a lot in quality and fun. You’re usually better off finding speed dating events within communities you’re already part of, or events based on a shared interest. In London, I encountered two good series of events: one for Russian speakers, another one for psychedelic enthusiasts.
People sometimes say that speed dating is bad for finding partners: 5-10 minutes is too little for a meaningful conversation, there is no shared activity or context, plausible deniability is missing. You are also removed from your social web, where you might otherwise use your status to woo them more effectively.
This critique is basically correct. Speed dating is bad if you treat success as all-or-nothing — either you find a partner for a lifelong marriage in a beautiful “happily ever after” story, or you don’t.
A better mindset is to treat dating as a series of small steps, each coming with a success or a failure. The more you practice incremental attraction in different people, the better your romance skills get and the higher is the chance you’ll find someone you really like. So it’s good to celebrate small successes even if they don’t ultimately lead to a big one.
Think of speed dating as leveling up your romantic skills and farming romantic XP. Both men and women can gain XP, but the rules of the gender game are somewhat different from them. I’m a man, so I’ll stick to the side I understand — I’d rather do one job well than two badly.
You gain romantic XP (experience points) by having successful romantic interactions, and you lose them by making invalid moves. An invalid move is not necessarily a rejection, you can get rejected and still gain XP.
Let me illustrate:
1. You are talking to a girl, you are both having a lot of fun, you invite her to dinner, she agrees. You’ve just gained +3 XP.
2. The same situation, but she declines saying she’s busy. You’ve just gained +1 XP.
3. A girl is sitting at a bus stop wearing headphones, not even looking at you. Out of the blue, you wave your hand in front of her face, she takes off her headphones, and you invite her to dinner. -15 XP: there was no space for you to make this move, that’s like taking a knight from the starting position in chess and capturing her queen — an illegal move. Catch her gaze first, king, strike up a conversation, then get her number (or invite to dinner if the conversation allows).
There is absolutely a way to learn from big fuckups and regain lost XP, but it takes time to overcome a temporary setback. Your self-model is weaved out of the world’s reaction to your actions, so it can get “damaged” — but you can update it by analysing your mistakes and taking wiser actions next time. Hence the XP metaphor.
You can farm romantic XP in most social interactions (as you should), but speed dating is a particularly good way to do so. A good speed dating event means that love is in the air, people are hopeful and are there to have fun. So you can:
Meet several new people you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. This is doubly valuable if the social events you go to skew against your preferred gender.
Vary your conversational and romantic strategies. Every person is a stranger, so every conversation is a blank canvas for experimental collaboration with your conversation partner.
Calibrate perceiving attraction better: at the end you typically get a “ground truth” of attraction for people you like (they tell you their contacts if it’s mutual). This helps you distinguish between people who are generally charming (to everyone) and people who specifically like you.
Chat with people after the event and invite them somewhere right away. Yes, you might get rejected, but inviting them to continue an engaged friendly conversation is a valid move by default (aka free XP).
Learning pretty much every skill requires you to do some drills. In boxing you practice individual punches, in dancing — individual moves, in chess — short tactical puzzles. Many writers treat Twitter as their writing practice. Stand up comedians refine their sets with five-minute slots at open mics.
Speed dating lets you drill the skill of building attraction — especially initial attraction.
Imagine coming to a party and seeing a cute girl you’ve never met before. Wouldn’t it be nice to have already practiced the skill of starting a conversation and creating a fun, engaging, low-stakes first interaction?
If only there were an event that lets you do exactly that.
