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Posted by Daniel B. on Sep. 5, 2009 in Dating and related topics

I have always found speed-dating a fascinating concept from the very beginning.  It wasn't just that we knew that it worked as a business model, and helped people find relationships - it was also that it's an immensely interesting social development.

Here is the piece that I find the most intriguing.  Where did speed-dating come from?  By this, I don't mean who ran the first events - certainly, in the States this is claimed by the Jewish singles group Aish, but I believe I read somewhere that it originated in Japan.

What I really mean is, why did speed-dating appear?  There is no reason why speed-dating couldn't have been arranged 20 years ago or 200 years ago.  It's not a matter of technology as would be the case with online dating, which came into being once internet usage was mainstream.  

What is true of basically all products and services is this - the reason the product or service exists is because there is consumer demand and there is the means to provide it.  So since there was always the means to run a speed-dating event, the only conclusion is that there was no demand (it can not be that no one thought of it).  Speed-dating is unique in that, if speed-dating is here to stay, then it must have been brought about by a fundamental shift in the way we think about dating. 

This doesn't sound like a very insightful comment - we all know that the way we date has changed, but the degree to which it has changed is (I think) demonstrated by speed-dating.  Because here is a product that will probably be here in 50 years in some form, and one that could have been reproduced 50 years ago but wasn't - that's unusual.

A competing opinion is that online dating prepared us for speed-dating - in other words, online dating was the fundamental shift, not speed-dating.    People realized it was effective, and that its one serious gap was the lack of easy face-to-face contact.  Speed-dating became the natural next step in a progressive and open dating culture.

As I think about it, I wonder if perhaps speed-dating works because it has really always been in existence, just not in the structured format we have now.  If you think back to formal or village dances of hundreds of years ago, at regular and frequent intervals people would change dance partners.  Throughout time, we have arranged get-togethers with coordinated brief introductions with many different people, as it has always been seen as an effective and efficient way to begin the process of building relationships.