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This is why I shouldn’t write for newlywed magazines…

January 18, 2009

(Too) Great Expectations?

January 18, 2009

This is how we’ll learn what’s wrong with our game

January 18, 2009


I’ve come up with a solution to help us figure out why we strike out when meeting (some) people.

It’s a system loosely based on Christian Confession. For yee of other faiths, that’s when we go into a small room where a priest sits behind a screen and tell him the things we think we’ve done wrong and are willing to admit. Then he gives us “punishment” in the form of us saying a lot of prayers so we can still get into heaven. Yeah, I know.

Here’s how it would work.

One person among a tight knit group of friends who’ve all seen each other in trying-to-impress-someone mode secretly invites the group to participate in this process via some online interface. The technology part is still TBD, but I’m sure we could work it out on Facebook.  

The key is that no one knows what other people are participating. The moderator knows the friend group and invites the people to participate but doesn’t tell them who else is in. Right. So maybe not Facebook…that part needs work…Please hold your questions until it all makes sense.

So on the day of the experiment all the parties come to the designated location. They’d have to be secretive about where they’re going and try to somehow hide their identity. Maybe masks could be involved; I’m not sure.

Upon arrival each person is directed to one small room or special booth or something with access to just one other room/booth/whatever – see — like confession.

Among the sets of rooms are “asker” rooms and “answerer” rooms. So rooms where people’s job is to ask questions and rooms where people are required (encouraged…) to answer.

The moderator gives each person in an “asker” room a little pieces of paper that has their name on it so they can slide the piece of paper through some little hole in the dark-screen of the soundproof booth or room informing the person on the “answerer” side knows who they are.

Now this next part is key. In order to maintain the anonymity of the people on each side of the booths so people aren’t offended by what their friends say to the question, “why don’t guys like me” we’d have voice changing machines inside each booth ala Batman.  There is a name for these machines, but I don’t know it.

Okay. So the askers slips his/her name to the answerer. The answerer has a few minutes to consider what he/she knows about the flirting skills (or lack thereof) of that person, and then the asker has…I don’t know…10 minutes?…to ask specific or vague questions about what’s wrong with them. Things like, “so I seem to be able to find nice guys and get them to talk to me, but after a few minutes they tend to lose interest.” 

Now ideally the answerer will have seen this scenario in action one or ten times and will be able to say – in his/her fully disguised voice – “you flirt like an idiot. No guy wants to hear you go on and on about how much you love the Twilight books.” Or perhaps the asker, a guy this time, would say, “I don’t know what the problem is. I meet these fun/nice girls who I just want to hang out with and hook up with a little and then they latch on immediately and I don’t know what to do.” To which the answerer, perhaps a girl who has fallen victim to him should the booths “magically” align, would say, “that’s because you treat them like it going somewhere so you can get them in bed and then let it go on without any indication that you’re not really interested in them. This is called leading someone on.” Again, voice disguised.

After the ten minutes the moderator rings a bell, the people put their disguises back on (maybe robes with hoods would be better than masks…) and then they rotate from one room to the next.

By the end of the session everyone will have had their questions answered by several well-informed people who were able to be honest and direct thanks to the aid of costumes, voice altering devices, and very dark booths.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but I think that pretty much covers it — an organized system to solve the fact that when you ask, “I mean, what is wrong with me that I can’t meet and date a normal guy!?!”  whatever answer you get will be a lie. 

4 comments

  1. if you’re doing this with a group of close, tight-knit friends, shouldn’t ya’ll be able to discuss this face-to-face anyway?

    most of your examples are things i would tell my good friends anyway.

  2. elfster.com had a similar program for creating secret santas… I feel like there could be a similar online thing… to make it completely anonymous you don’t even have to do it in person, you can do it completely online. trademark this immediately!!! brilliant! 😉

  3. I feel this could only work through the internet. Even if the voices were changes, I feel like I would know how my best friends talk. Their speech mannerisms and commonly used phrases would give them away, as would mine with them. Then we just have a bunch of people who know their friend just said some brutally honest stuff, and have to try and pretend they didn’t.

  4. Sort of along the lines of this post…. how do you tell a friend that multiple people have said they’re a bad kisser?

    Jessie, i think a post is needed about bad kissers

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