BlackBerry Flings For Just-In-Time Dating

Culture

from the just-in-time-dating dept

Ah, the unintended consequences of technology… We’ve had stories before about people getting dumped by SMS text messaging, but it appears that wireless-technologies-as-relationship-mediators are becoming even more common. While folks in more SMS-happy parts of the world probably won’t understand what the big deal is in the US, it appears that the broad adoption of BlackBerry devices among young Washington DC workers has created a whole new method for getting dates – though, the descriptions in the article certainly make it sound more like a tool for last minute flings than for carefully planned out dates. If you read (just slightly) between the lines of the article, it appears the main advantage of the BlackBerries in this situation is that you can send a message to someone late at night to figure out if they’ve… well… found someone else for the evening (or perhaps already gone to bed), without having to call them directly on the phone. In some ways this represents the furthering of our “just-in-time” culture. People tend to plan things out less now that everyone has a mobile phone and can change plans easily on the fly. So, now, thanks to the BlackBerry (and to text messaging, I’m sure) we’re entering an age of “just-in-time” dating as well.