Merchants of Love

I got my favorite business (Apps) combined with my favorite book (Merchants of Venice) combined with my favorite hobby (writing) combined with my ONLY love (Chhavi) featured on her birth day today by the ET Sunday:)))

When I was mandated by the Economic Times to ‘test drive’ some of the popular dating apps and write about the ones that I picked, I kinda gulped. I mean, here I was – a 45 year old, hooked and booked dude who was expected to go out pretending to be looking for dates on mobile apps?

The doubt didn’t last for long and soon turned into a smile. After all, I remembered my favorite character of all times – Shylock (from The Merchant of Venice) and how he could trade anything for anything. So what if I was supposed to pretend to be a ‘Merchant of Love’ for a few days? It was possible that I would earn my pound of… learnings, if nothing else!

Act 1, Scene 1: Getting Inside

I downloaded a few dating apps and tried registering on them, quite methodically. A relatively new app called ‘Woo’ that has been making a bit of noise on the circuit, rejected me outright. What had I done wrong? I looked carefully at the registration process and discovered my faux pas! I had signed-in using my facebook id that had automatically declared my marital status (married, obviously) to the Woo servers in charge of registration. Hmmm – I guess the Woo servers didn’t like married men and came back with a silly, “Woo accepts only limited signups. We will come back to you when a slot opens up”.

Heck – why couldn’t the app simply tell me that married men were not allowed?
Was “love ever supposed to be delayed”? I could have changed my facebook profile to a fake one but that wouldn’t seem genuine. So I said boo to Woo and went on to the other apps!

The ones that seemed to ‘accept’ me as I am were ‘OkCupid’ (ranked in 142 countries on the iTunes stores), ‘Zoosk’ (ranked in 155 countries on iTunes) and ‘Tinder’ (ranked in 149 countries on iTunes). It seemed that I had chosen apps that were the best in the world (they had chosen me too!) and I was ready to go on some serious date hunting!

Act 1, Scene 2: Getting Started

Registering using facebook was the easy part. Adding a picture (typically the same that I was using on facebook) was a breeze. The process that really challenged me away was replying to the questions that were part of the ‘profiling’ part of the dating apps!

The question and multiple answer section seemed like a never-ending treadmill that made me more and more tired plus surprised after every question I answered!

For instance, imagine my reaction when I was asked, “STALE is to STEAL is 89475 to…?” This was a question in a dating app that was supposed to match people for compatibility!

Other awesome questions asked included:

“How often do you brush your teeth?”
“Do you think the government should limit chain stores to give small business a chance?”
“Overall, has capitalism made the world a better place?”

The killer question was:

“If you were to die, would whoever goes through your personal belongings be shocked by what they find?”

I grimaced and thought that the agenda using these apps was planning my life to get more romantic – not de-risking my death?!

Takeaway: Dating via these apps, didn’t appear to be about meeting someone, getting butterflies in your stomach and wondering for weeks if she likes you. Sure, profiling and creating deep insights could be logical for digital match-making, but the process seemed to be like a post-mortem of my heart and mind.

PS: The answer to “STALE is to STEAL is 89475 to…?” is 89547. If you didn’t get it, I refuse to date you ☺

Act 2, Scene 1: Getting Hooked

‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a complete play built around events that occur when Bassiano (a young Venetian nobleman) borrows 3000 ducats from his wealthy merchant friend Antonio to woo (no pun intended) the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia.

If there were no Portia, there would be no Merchant of Venice. In the dating apps that I downloaded, there seemed to be many Portias, waiting to be wooed.

If you diligently answered the profiling questions asked (I counted over 50), gave accurate information and didn’t shy away from being honest, a ‘menu’ of lots of interesting, attractive and likable ‘dates’ began to show up as people eligible for you to chase.

Now, back to ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (If you haven’t read it, please buy a copy and send me the bill. I will fund your read!) – the beautiful Portia is aggressively wooed by suitors; but her father has left a will stipulating each of her suitors must choose correctly from one of three caskets – one each of gold, silver and lead in order to win her. If the suitor picked the right casket, he got Portia.

The first suitor, the luxurious Prince of Morocco, chose the gold casket, interpreting its slogan, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” as referring to Portia. Tsk, tsk, foolish fellow.

The second suitor, the conceited Prince of Arragon, chose the silver casket, which proclaimed, “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves”, imagining himself to be full of merit. Obviously he did not win Portia either. Paagal!

Both suitors left empty-handed, having rejected the lead casket because of the baseness of its material and the uninviting nature of its slogan, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” The last suitor was Bassanio, whom Portia wished to have as a husband, having met him before.

As Bassanio pondered his choice, members of Portia’s household sang a song which prompted Bassanio to disregard “outward shows” and “ornament” and choose the lead casket, winning Portia’s hand.

Mota Moti (old Marwari saying) – Bassiano was humble and not averse to betting all that he had to win his love. And he won!

Now, the co-relation of this long story and the dating apps I reviewed?

Each of the damsels (Portias) in the dating apps had set up their own ‘caskets’ of questions that needed to be answered by potential suitors if they hoped to win their love!

A pretty lady whom I ‘winked’ at (errr… just a button called ‘wink’ that you click) replied saying, “Winks are flattering. Now if you are interested, tell me why YOU are interesting!”

A rather aggressive date-in-the-waiting wrote, “Thanks for noticing me. Now, what do you wanna talk about?” Even before I hazarded a reply, I noticed her profile which mentioned, “Nobody is perfect – I am nobody. I love lying about my age. I wish I could date Sting (the singer), but since he is busy with his wife, I can give you a chance…”

Oh Boy! If Portia’s father were alive today, he would have simply asked these suitors to download these apps and try and win Portia.

Acknowledging that I was no Bassiano, I exited this casket part of the game with empty hands.

Takeaway: Dating apps are competitive! Just like board meetings and sales pitches, the women I seemed to have been ‘matched with’ were so demanding in their approach that I gave up and set my goals to pleasing my VCs instead ☺

Act 2, Scene 2: Getting Booked

Shylock was the quintessential Marwari. Always talked trade, money, interest, compound interest, business and profits. Above all, a very smart entrepreneur.

It was no surprise that he readily loaned Antonio money sensing a larger opportunity at hand. Shylock was interested in trapping Antonio first and then extracting much more value from him.

The dating apps that I encountered (created by some of the most ingenious entrepreneurs in the world) were even more clever and scheming.

In ‘Zoosk’, all the potential women dates I was presented were open to ‘chat’ with. I quickly sent safe, “How are you… Nice profile pic” type of messages to at least eight damsels.

In a few hours, I was very surprised (and pleased) to have received notifications saying that each of the women had replied to my message! I was curious to their level of interest in me and quickly fired up the app to read their replies. But to my utter shock, I learnt that while sending messages was free, reading the replies received from the dates required a ‘subscription’ account. And the minimum amount to acquire a subscription was Rs. 1000!!

In my enthusiasm (and endeavor to honestly report the findings to you), I paid up. I became Antonio. I slipped. I succumbed. And very quickly learnt that I had been fooled. It turned out that none of these women had replied to me personally; instead an ‘auto-responder’ they had set up had broadcast some canned messages back to me.

Shucks.

Other ‘Shylockesque’ tricks included a feature that let you know “if she had read the message” you sent (to potential dates). And this was not part of the subscription! It required coins to unlock (these coins needed to be further purchased – minimum amount Rs. 850).

As I prowled the Apps of Love, my profile was suddenly pronounced as ‘highly unpopular’ and was graphically depicted as a gas tank that was below the ‘E’ mark. How sad I felt. Of course, the way to fill up the tank was to pay more money!

Shylock would have loved to meet these app creators! There were options to ‘Mega Flirt’ that allowed me to send a tsunami of a hand-picked message to lots of dates. (A canned message I particularly liked was, “Why aren’t you in Jail? It’s illegal to look that good.”) Another really interesting trap was to ‘look for dates in your area’ – cleverly using a mobile phone’s geo locater to show people close to each other.

All said and done, I barely received any signs of love, save alone a potential date. And reasonably so. I guess that the apps and its users had cleverly figured out that this guy was not around for the real deal. Further proving that the apps were really doing a good job!

Takeaway (for me, personally): Love was not really meant to be an app. Meeting people to date was not supposed to be an algorithm. Was it something else then? Maybe the chase was more meaningful than the prize? The excitement of wooing and getting wooed?

To quote Gratiano:
“All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.”

****

Happy Burrdday Chhavi 🙂