When was the last time you went to a restaurant on a date? When was the last time you had to spend hours to figure out a hotel with the best ambience to impress your beloved, and yet you worried if your loved one will appreciate your arrangements? Or ask yourself if you ever felt you knew the person better before dating so that you had not got trapped in boring length of hours? With the virtual reality becoming pervasive in all spheres of life, dating in the future is perhaps going to be very different than what it looks like today.
Tomorrow’s generation will be equipped with unthinkable use cases of technology before they hit a hotel to date someone in person. The virtual world will be the new dating ground for the young, old and everyone. Virtual reality, joined by behavioral analytics and cybersecurity, will be the next buddy for people who want to date. And don’t worry, dating won’t lose its essence. It will just evolve to make the dating experience much more fulfilling, enjoyable and safe.
Virtual reality dating platforms
In the near future, people will simply put on a virtual reality headset and get to meet their date in a virtual realm. In case you happen to date someone during those times, you will be in for wonderful experiences which totally fits your mood. In case you and your date want to just sit down and talk, then both of you can customize the environment around you. You may like to have a Continental touch to the restaurant’s ambience, while your date may opt for an Indian setup. But you need to realize that both of you will be sitting in the environments best suited for your mood.
And if you guys plan to not just sit, but go on a walk or maybe try adventure in a jungle, you can do that too. Both of you will have to select an environment, for example say ‘space’ and then just get catapulted to outer space. You can share some best moments with your date while doing a spacewalk or just watching the Earth in all its serenity. Or maybe you can enter a jungle and gaze at the elephants, tigers and zebras while the virtual safari goes on. Virtual dating platforms will take you to places which are inaccessible to you and your date because of geographical or monetary constraints. Some environments may even come at a fee – for example, the environment of a famous five-star hotel, which they will provide on the platform on chargeable basis. It will be just like Virtual Workplaces that corporations will be using for team meetings.
Yes, the platforms will also be great places for companies to advertise and sell their products. Creative companies may sell you filters, or candle light simulations or even live music performances for a fee. Even real musicians will try to perform on such platforms live during a certain period, and all couples on that dating platform during that time will get an option to subscribe to the live music, listen to it for first 20 seconds for free and then decide whether to pay for it for further use or not.
Global audience for dating
If you live in India and want to date someone in say, Brazil, you won’t be able to meet them in person in physical world, unless either of you travels to the other. And online dating on a screen may just get boring. This is where VR dating platforms will be instrumental in connecting people across the planet. Both you and your date will simply log into the virtual dating platform and have a perfectly sweet date without feeling any disconnect because of geographical distances. Even if you and your loved one stay far from each other within the same country, a virtual dating platform will solve a lot of your concerns. You will not feel the desperation of meeting someone in person, because it will be possible to have an immersive experience with them anytime, from anywhere.
Dating Safety 2.0
Sometimes some people feel a sense of doubt before going on a blind date. Sometimes, people also feel unsafe while on a date. And not to forget, sometimes boredom also lays a siege on the much anticipated event. These are the times when one party just gets desperate to leave the scene and retreat to safety and peace. However, a date in the physical world may not allow for this because of our mannerism, courtesy, lack of courage to say ‘No’ to something, or maybe even risking spoiling a date. Safety of women, and men alike, is important during a date.
However, the virtual realm will offer you this flexibility. You will certainly be logging in with your credentials which will mask your contact details and will keep you out of reach of spammers and stalkers. In case you ever feel your date is behaving rudely or suspiciously, you will always have the freedom to walk out without facing any coercion to stay. The virtual realm will also keep people safe from any risks of intoxication or sedation, which results in criminal activities in a number of cases. Safety will be the new axis around which the virtual dating platforms will gain prominence.
Cybersecurity of such dating platforms will be a growing focus area for the enterprises running such platforms. No one would like hackers to snoop into the conversations and misuse the photographs or illegally recorded video sessions of these virtual dates.
Being you best will be possible
Many people fret over the lack of choice of clothes to wear on a date. The wardrobes of people disappoints them and makes them worry about how to look their best. This is where avatars will come into picture. When someone will enter a virtual dating space, obviously a digital avatar of the person will appear. You will get to choose from a virtual wardrobe the best of clothes and designs to don over yourself. The virtual wardrobe will allow you to see how you look like before you enter the dating space, just like Facebook Messenger allows you to use filters.
However, it may lead to issues on transparency too. Virtual dating platforms must not provide for features that alter the appearance of people. Otherwise, people will simply choose virtual makeups and appearances that will make them look good, but will hide their true identity. Therefore, virtual dating platforms must offer a face scan feature or a torso scan feature, wherein people can scan their true appearance and at least the face and torso appears as it is in reality. Yes, some people may still be able to conceal some disability, which may get revealed later on to the other person. No offense towards specially-abled people; however, maintaining transparency about oneself will have to be the responsibility of the dating individuals.
Behavioral analytics to find you the best match
During a date, analytics engines will keep running and keep deciphering the behavior of the other party. Facial expression analytics can easily figure out when a person is feeling bored and still faking interest, when a person has got invisibly offended and when a person is actually staring at wrong places. You will keep getting alerts on such behavioral aspects during the date, which will help you improve the engagement by altering your behavior a bit or by giving the person the handle to drive the conversation. Sentiment analytics will run on the words spoken by both the people on a date.
On top of that, once the date is over, the analytics engine will figure out how the conversation went and how it could have been better. It will do so by benchmarking your experience against the best-rated date experiences on the platform. It will come up with suggestions o how you can improve your communication skills, or non-verbal communication and what kind of people will actually suit your better. It will also give a glimpse of the actual personality traits of the other person who joined you on the date. Moreover, the machine learning capabilities will keep understanding your preferences and your forte, and then match you with people that show a positive behavioral alignment with you.
No judgments please!
Virtual dating platform will be a “No Judgment Zone” altogether. Some people feel shy of dating because of their age, or upbringing, or just the impression they have created in people’s minds. They fear getting spotted at restaurants or beaches while being with someone on a date.
The VR-based dating platforms will save these people from all kinds of judgments and embarrassments. They will be able to freely go on a date and enjoy it with zero fears of anyone watching them. Yes, it may also lead to cases of infidelity, which is certainly a huge concern and needs to be checked through some means. I am yet to think of a foolproof solution to it and maybe you can let me know your thoughts in the comments.
But virtual platforms will certainly see a surge in subscription from these people who had been holding themselves back for long.
Conclusion
Dating will certainly go much immersive on the virtual platforms in the future. People will connect with each other with zero concerns of geographical distance and societal traditions. There are certainly some banal effects of VR-based dating as well. However, just like any other technology, VR-based dating will join ranks of those technologies which depend on the users for their positive or negative value. Tomorrow, your sons and daughters won’t be traveling to restaurants to enjoy a date, but maybe have a wonderful experience right from their own bedrooms right inside your home, perhaps with or without your notice.
