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The Brunch round-up: The week and how it made us feel
This week, we’re afraid for the future of dating, trying to bear it all, oiling up, and questioning our empathies
Squinting in disbelief. Bumble founder Whitney Herd has said that the woman-focused dating app she invented is going to embrace AI. As bots filter out matches, your AI dating concierge may talk to hundreds of other digital concierges, before you and your potential match speak to each other directly. Listen lady, we barely trust the people we meet on a date, but we trust AI even less. Not happening.
Stalk broking. Baby Reindeer is the stalker story crime shows never depict. There’s no whodunit, no chase. Richard, our narrator, knows Martha. He admits his own boundaries were hazy. He wonders if he’s led her on. All great art is honest. It’s exactly the ammo Fiona Harvey, the woman Martha is based on, needed in her Piers Morgan interview. Her Q/A feels flat. No surprise: It lacks honesty.
Mopping up the grease. New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon’s decision to reverse the nation’s ban on oil and gas, has had one unexpected fallout. He used the term “oil up” not realising how many young, gutter-brained citizens were listening. They referenced it so much online that Luxon made a video addressing the comments. Props to a leader who A) is listening to young people and B) isn’t afraid to be the joke.
Getting grizzly. Would you choose to be alone in a forest with a strange man or a bear? Most women who encountered the question online said they’d choose the animal over the human. It’s making men realise why men are largely mistrusted, why #NotAllMen is a useless defence. A bear will leave you alone if you seem non-threatening, which is more one can say for a man. Ouch. But it turns out, most men would choose the bear too. Wonder why.
Licking our chops. Peter Cat Recording Co. release their third album, Beta, in August. And they are playing to their strengths: A world tour that concludes in India in December. It’s been five years since their last album, Bismillah. The first single is already here. The album, they say is a collection of stories about the future told 50 years in the past, to make sense of the present. We’re all ears.
Drawing boundaries. A new show, The One, follows MatchDNA, a company that can pair people with their perfect partner based solely on their DNA samples. It’s fiction. But it’s so creepy. Imagine wanting a partner so bad, you’re willing to giving up your personal data for it. Imagine a world where you’re stuck with one person, whom you didn’t even choose, for life. Imagine being matched with Piers Morgan or the stalker from Baby Reindeer? Suddenly, arranged marriage doesn’t seem so bad, no?
From HT Brunch, May 18, 2024
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