Jubilee

The pandemic, obviously, was not good for dating. Most people were confined to only seeing a few other people, which meant that either they weren’t in a relationship at all, or the relationship they were in was de facto pretty serious. I hope many people found this a fun adventure where they got to find out they really were into the person they happened to be with, but probably most relationships were ‘good enough for now’ or ‘I’ll put up with this until I don’t have to any more’ or they ended and people stayed single.

Naturally the end to the pandemic has resulted in a lot of people being single and available, either because they were already single, they broke up with their partner now that they could, or their partner broke up with them now that they could. Everybody being single at the same time is a good thing. Following Metcalfe’s Law the more people in a dating pool at once the better. Usually the dating pool has people dribbling in and out, so anyone who’s been single for a while is effectively looking in the very small pool of recently single people and they’re diluted by people who also have been single for a while but probably are unlikely to be good matches because it hasn’t happened already. The odds of two people who would be a great match ever both being single and looking at the same time are dubious at best. Dating apps help sort through everyone a bit, even though as I repeat ad nauseum they could be better and they don’t have as many people on them as they should because the experience sucks. But even perfect sorting can’t possibly work as well as everybody regularly becoming single on a schedule.

It would be so much more convenient if we humans had seasonal mating. Then everyone who was single could simply wait until mating season began, skipping the effort of looking for anyone in a thin dating pool. When the season finally began the numbers would be on everyone’s side. Instead what we have is constant seeking with dubious results. Part of the problem with switching over is a tragedy of the commons, where everybody has at least a little chance of getting ahead by searching all the time, but giving it a rest and accepting being single for a while, especially during the off-season times, would be a small sacrifice for most people. The seemingly more technical issue is coordination. I don’t have a good answer for how to coordinate this. On paper it seems like making it annual is a good idea, but that feels like a huge amount of time for people to wait while single, and it isn’t obvious what the end date for being single and not looking should be. Maybe a good time is the beginning of fall, for the start of the holiday season where there are party traditions already. But unless this becomes a movement it isn’t going to make any difference, and that’s very unlikely to happen.