the times | Monday February 21 2022 7
times2
Senior
men are
looking at
a future
where
they’re
primarily
expected
to work
from home
M
odern dating is
a haunting
experience and
ghosting one of
the biggest perils.
A “ghost” disappears mid-
conversation without a word,
or doesn’t turn up to a date,
unmatches you and never
answers a text again.
Yet Snack, a new app
catering to Gen Z, promises
a solution: ghost-busting.
Report your ghost and they
will be shown to fewer new
people. The more reports they
receive, the less airtime they
get until they are virtually
invisible and their dating pool
is reduced to a puddle. Might
this be the solution to the
modern dating problem?
I’ve been ghosted and
have ghosted men myself.
I try to justify it by saying
that I’ve never not turned up to a date
or disappeared from an actual
relationship, I’ve just avoided the
awkwardness of saying I wouldn’t like
to see someone again, and that’s how
I’ve been ghosted too. Cowardly, yes,
but also a reaction to the anger and
insults that a polite “no” is often met
with online. Still, it’s not something
I’ve done since my twenties — it’s
kinder to be honest, and I’m more
hardened to the insults that so often
come with rejecting a man.
Other apps have tried to tackle
ghosting. Badoo offered two
autocomplete options to would-be
ghosters, one a polite rejection and
the other an invitation to meet that
week. But is being let down gently
by a bot really better than being
ghosted by a person?
Snack is video-based, designed for
a generation that already shares
videos over TikTok and can now use
them to line up dates. In fact it was
a dating subculture within TikTok that
inspired the app. And as well as the
ghost-busting feature, its use of “fresh”
videos instead of “stale” pictures (as
Snack describes them) might make
dating more transparent; it’s harder to
catfish using a fake identity or
maintain a heavily filtered version of
yourself when you have to share
videos instead of pictures.
Decades-old pictures are common
on apps (a screenshot of one did the
rounds on social media, with a man
claiming to be in his twenties using
a profile picture taken in front of the
New York skyline with the twin towers
behind him). Surely the quality of a
20-year-old video, glitches and all,
would give any such antics away.
Then there are the other antisocial
behaviours that come with app
dating. I loathe the pen-pal culture
that never leads to meeting in real
life, and breadcrumbing (sending the
odd flirtatious signal with no
follow-through) is the modern
equivalent to keeping someone on the
back burner. And could someone
invent an algorithm that wipes out
people who reply to questions withMillennial dating has become
toxic. Can Gen Z change things?
A new app wants to get rid of ghosting. If only they
let people my age join, says Charlie Gowans-Eglinton
one-word answers and never ask a
question in return?
Last year Bumble tried to eradicate
body-shaming on its app by using a
different algorithm that looked for
banned language, including anything
racist, colourist, homophobic,
transphobic, ableist or fatphobic.
Here’s hoping the AI is better than the
kind that needs us to select all of the
pictures containing traffic lights.
Recently Fay Jones MP urged
Westminster to classify cyberflashing
— digitally sending unsolicited nudes
or sexual images — as a crime.
Compared with those, ghosting isn’t
the worst dating scenario — yet it
wears you down because it’s so
commonplace, so insidious, and you’re
supposed to just brush it off. No one
ghost breaks your heart, but to face
enough of them is to face death by a
thousand cuts. RIP, self-esteem.
So perhaps the dating ethics of
Gen Z (see also the Sauce, which
plants a tree for every match) might
exorcise the ghosts of modern dating
for all of us. It’s enough to give a
hardened old dating cynic like me
fresh hope — but, alas, it’s only for the
under-35s, which eliminates half of
millennials (like me) and anyone who
remembers the Eighties. As Snack’s
website sells it, this is “not your
parents dating app”. I might be
offended if I weren’t so incensed
at the lack of an apostrophe, so
perhaps they are right about that age
limit after all.
Techy features favour the young
— Sharon Stone’s profile was once
blocked from Bumble when other
users assumed she must be a fake
because she hadn’t “verified” her
account. So rather than Snack and its
ghost-busting algorithm, I’d
recommend an app for us oldies
(Early Dinner?) with a guestbook like
the ones you find in holiday cottages.
“Took a long time to warm up”;
“pictures were misleading”; “in great
condition, recommended.” Or, for a
really five-star date, “had a lovely
weekend — can’t wait to come again.”Alas, it
eliminates
anyone
who can
remember
the
Eighties
which is really important. Out of that
little chat with someone something
will emerge that might prove to be
the most valuable thing that anyone
said all day.”
Another friend, who works as a
director of communications, worries
that his standards have slipped.
“I feel the cats have started to judge
me. They sit behind the monitor
looking on in disdain while I address
the chief executive wearing a smart
shirt on my top half and Gumbies
Outback slippers and pyjama bottoms.
Then the doorbell rings and I realise
it’s three o’clock and I wonder if I
should face the disapproval of the
hard-working DHL man and all my
neighbours bringing the kids home
from school. I end up lying down to
evade their glances, much like
someone avoiding carol singers.”
Since everyone else in his household
went back to work and school, my
friend Harry has developed an
extraordinary bond with Rufus, the
excitable cairn terrier who joined the
family in lockdown. “We’re very close.
He sticks to me like a limpet,” Harry
says. While he works in his study,
Rufus dozes in his basket, but is
scrupulous in ensuring that Harry
takes regular screen breaks for games
of fetch with his toy pheasant.
For months, Harry’s wife, Elizabeth,
has been back at work four days a
week as a recruitment consultant in
the City and his daughter, Isabella, is
at school. But Harry, who works as a
management consultant, makes only
occasional forays into London from
their home in the Sussex countryside.
For him, the days of £4,000 season
tickets are over and will never return.
He might go in a bit more to HQ as
clients return to their offices and
require more face-to-face meetings,
but he is now firmly, and, as far as he
can see for ever, WFH Dad. And he
has embraced it. “You can use those
three hours of commuting for other
things. I’ve worked better at home in
some ways than I would have done in
the office.” The key, he says, is to take
proper breaks including an hour for
lunch. “Otherwise you go nuts.”
Two years ago, Matt, a director of a
professional services company, would
be up at 6.30am, out of the door and
off to the train at 7.15 and at his desk
just after 8. There he would remain
until 7pm. Now he goes in only
occasionally and his wife, Katie, who
is back at work three days a week,
brings him a cup of coffee in bed at
7am before she leaves. “I do Wordle in
bed and listen to the radio and I’m in
the shower by eight o’clock and at
my desk at home at 8.30. So I’m
sleeping more than I ever did. I still
finish at 7pm, but then I am finished
and go swimming.”
The kids are off studying and
working, but not everyone is delighted
by this future of work. Katie used to
enjoy her days off. “That was her own
time where she could potter around or
lie in bed all morning and read. Now
I’m here, hovering about and coming
down to make cups of coffee. So she
has no time in the house by herself
any more. She’s actually going back to
work full-time and I’m sure that if I
was not working at home she wouldn’t
be doing that.”
My banker friend, meanwhile, can
only dream of having such daytime
company. “It’s got to the stage where
the dog is fed up of listening to my
monologues and just wanders off.
Even she is bored. There is only so
much rubbish she can listen to.”GETTY IMAGES/WESTEND61