‘I wanted to meet a mate and have a baby without wasting time’: the rise of platonic co-parenting

EE62C273-4337-49A1-8600-D987899D3EE9

Jenica Anderson and Stephan DuVal, with their daughter.

They’re ready to start a family, but can’t wait for The One. As ‘mating’ sites boom under lockdown, we meet those hoping for a better way to raise a child

When Jenica Anderson and Stephan DuVal clicked on one another’s online profile on Modamily.com – tagline “A new way to family” – neither was looking for romance. They were both in their late 30s, and their short bios indicated that they shared similar views on health and education, had solid incomes and were searching for the same thing: a non-romantic partner to have – and raise – a child with. A co-parent.

Anderson, 38, a geologist from Montana, US, had matched with and spoken to 10 different men, mostly via so-called mating sites – matchmaking sites for people who want a baby without a romantic relationship – when she had her first phone call with DuVal, from Vancouver, Canada, in spring 2019. Their conversations quickly started to run into the night and, that June, she flew out to spend the weekend with him. They talked, went hiking and jumped into a lake together. “It felt like a date,” says DuVal, 37, a camera operator. “Except we could be totally honest about wanting to have a kid soon, without the goofiness and flirting of a first date. You’re looking to achieve a common goal.”

Continue reading… “‘I wanted to meet a mate and have a baby without wasting time’: the rise of platonic co-parenting”

Online dating in a world of deepfakes

72D1806C-2740-4B27-838C-338217E127E1

Facebook has teamed up with the Partnership on AI, Microsoft, and academics from Cornell Tech, MIT, University of Oxford, UC Berkeley, University of Maryland, College Park, and University at Albany–SUNY to build the Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC).

Deepfake detection is an enduring arms race that will never end. In case you are wondering… no, this technology will not protect the 2020 election from deepfakes. No science is up to that task.

Facebook’s goal is to commission a realistic data set that will use paid actors, with the required consent obtained, to contribute to the challenge. This “benchmark data” will be used to help developers build better tools to detect deepfakes. Everyone should applaud this effort! As I’ve written about recently, deepfakes will be used extensively by both good and bad people.

Facebook also announced it was bringing its dating service to the U.S. after testing it in roughly 20 countries since its launch last year. These two stories may not seem to have much correlation at first glance. But when combined, they present a potential reality as sinister as it is deceitful. Imagine online dating in a world replete with deepfakes.

Continue reading… “Online dating in a world of deepfakes”

Online dating isn’t a game. It’s literally changing humanity.

 

73219FDF-B9F1-4609-9DFF-12840FE9E330

Global Thermonuclear War has nothing on Tinder.

In our Love App-tually series, Mashable shines a light into the foggy world of online dating. After all, it’s still cuffing season.

The swipe is about as casual a gesture as it gets.

On Tinder, Bumble and every copycat dating app, choices are made in the blink of an eye. You’re not making definitive decisions about this stream full of faces; it’s more a question “could this person be hot if we match, if they have something interesting to say, if they’re not a creep and we’re a few drinks in?”

You feel so far removed from the process of dating at this stage, let alone a relationship, that swiping is simply a game. (Indeed, the makers of the mobile medieval royalty RPG Reigns intended its simple left-right controls as a Tinder homage.) You’re like Matthew Broderick at the start of the 1983 movie War Games — enamored with technology’s possibilities, gleefully playing around.

When you swipe, the future of the human race is quite literally at your fingertips.

Continue reading… “Online dating isn’t a game. It’s literally changing humanity.”

The 5 years that changed dating

Tinder Co-Founders Sue Former Parent Company For $2 Billion

When Tinder became available to all smartphone users in 2013, it ushered in a new era in the history of romance.

On the 20th anniversary of The New York Times’ popular Vows column, a weekly feature on notable weddings and engagements launched in 1992, its longtime editor wrote that Vows was meant to be more than just a news notice about society events. It aimed to give readers the backstory on marrying couples and, in the meantime, to explore how romance was changing with the times. “Twenty years ago, as now, most couples told us they’d met through their friends or family, or in college,” wrote the editor, Bob Woletz, in 2012. “For a period that ran into the late 1990s, a number said, often sheepishly, that they had met through personal advertisements.”

But in 2018, seven of the 53 couples profiled in the Vows column met on dating apps. And in the Times’ more populous Wedding Announcements section, 93 out of some 1,000 couples profiled this year met on dating apps—Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel, Happn, and other specialized dating apps designed for smaller communities, like JSwipe for Jewish singles and MuzMatch for Muslims. The year before, 71 couples whose weddings were announced by the Times met on dating apps.

Continue reading… “The 5 years that changed dating”

How Japan can solve its huge sex problem

a

It’s the kind of stat you might casually tell a friend at a bar: For the last six years, Japan has sold more adult diapers than baby diapers. But Japan’s fertility problems are far more grave than toilet-related trivia. Over the last decade, Japan has seen its elderly population swell, new family-planning stall, and its economy shrink because of persistently low spending. Economists are now calling the situation a “demographic time bomb,” and some Japanese researchers have even created a doomsday clock that ticks off the seconds until Japan’s population extinction.

Continue reading… “How Japan can solve its huge sex problem”

On-demand dating? A new app lets women charge for a night out.

vrg_1139_image_LEAD.0

Tara* (*Names have been changed to protect identities.) had struck gold. After spending a lazy Saturday afternoon browsing through the dating app she was currently experimenting with, she hit it off with a nice-sounding guy, and the two exchanged real names and numbers. She found herself Googling Stuart*, a Brit living in Amsterdam. He worked at a startup; he was visiting New York on business. “I was like, oh, he’s kind of cute…”

Continue reading… “On-demand dating? A new app lets women charge for a night out.”

Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.