Straight out of a rom-com, they fell in love while working at the same hotel, sneaking around for secret late-night motorcycle rides and ice cream dates for months before breaking the news of their forbidden relationship to their parents. In my shoes, they would be getting married a year from now and having their first child in a few more. The degree to which our lives differ is laughable, especially in a world where romance seems to have taken a completely new shape.
Modern love thrives through Instagram DMs and Tinder matches, rendering meet-cutes increasingly rare as the digital realm finds itself at the centre of our lives. How many people do you know who fell in love at the bus stop or in line at the grocery store? In the past 10 years, dating app usage has skyrocketed.
As of , Dating is as scary as it is exciting. It requires a level of confidence and an ability to accept rejection that is often overlooked. It makes sense, then, that people gravitate toward a digital helper when navigating their complicated love lives. The act of swiping left and right, shuffling through hundreds if not thousands of profiles to find one you like is not just convenient, but undeniably fun. Our brains receive little hits of dopamine as we confirm or deny our attraction to the glimpse of a person in front of us, adding an addictive edge to the dating app experience.
Many people consider this a fault of modern dating, and to be honest, I agree with them. After all, the rapid back and forth of your thumb on the screen means you could be writing off the potential love of your life for something as trivial as an unflattering selfie or a corny pick-up line in their bio.
In the same way, while dating apps allow us a measly glimpse into who a person truly is, the core characteristics you can glean from a profile can be enough to understand if the potential for love is there. While people in the West may write off Indian arranged marriages as archaic, their new dating obsession is a digital revitalisation of something that has proven successful for many generations. Unfortunately, this digitised new model of matchmaking often continues to perpetuate the discrimination present in the Indian matchmaking system.
