What computer dating was like in the 1960s

Originally published at: What computer dating was like in the 1960s | Boing Boing

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My parents met as a result of a late 1960’s computer dating project at the University of Michigan. My dad had my mom as a match and reached out to her. She didn’t have him, but had someone else, who she reached out to and did not connect with.

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Computer dating was rough in the '50s, too.

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Does no one remember the episode of The Andy Griffith Show, “A Girl for Goober”? It was a computer dating cautionary tale if ever there was one. However, it did accurately predict that in the future, comic books would be considered to be books.

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I met someone on GEnie in 1991. Our initial interactions were entire over rtc (“real time chat”), eventually leading to an in person meeting, then my moving to Chicago. We were together for 13 years. Not quite as far back as the service referenced in the article, of course, but also most definitely before 2000!

Imagine that time period when talking about how you met included having to explain computer networks. You think people are freaked out about meeting strangers online now?

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(CW, depiction of (faked) suicide)

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What is it about Harvard that makes the students so desperate to come up with new ways to socialize?

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In 1967 I was in the 7th grade and a newly appointed member of the student council at our local public middle school. At my first meeting the idea came up to have a computer dating dance. I was really excited by the idea, as was everyone else on the council, so we somehow managed to make it happen.

The day came when it was time to fill out the forms, I passed out a bunch of them, then filled out my own. After all of the questions about personality and interest, I got to the last two questions, one asking for race, the other for religion. I was black, there were no black girls at the school, and the school was about 95% Jewish, which I was not. I assumed there would be no match for me. So, I tore up the form, did not go to that dance, nor did I attend any other dances (or date) during middle or high school.

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To be fair, the ol’ feces book started out as an app to rate women based on attractiveness, so not really about socializing.
But the Harvard men do seem to corner the market on rating people’s appearances and somehow monetizing that!

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Yeah exactly! I wasn’t trying to suggest that a Hahvahd man’s version of socializing was anything most women would appreciate!

I actually have known a few decent guys who happened to have gone there. But the unearned privilege most of them have soaked in since birth does not magically disappear just because they’re away from home in a higher education setting for around 4 years.

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