Dating : The Cure for Ghosting might be Blockchain

My experience with online dating in the past couple of years has been really depressing.

Like, really depressing. Like, “well, he didn’t tell me how he was going to murder me, and he didn’t trick me into getting into a dark hospital closet with him in an attempt to have sex on a first date, so I guess this one is fine” depressing. I have been ghosted, stood up, lied to, insulted, used, and told that I am too sad to be loved. Even worse than that is that I know women who can tell worse stories. Tinder being awful is so predictable that it’s expected.

Part of the problem with online dating is that there’s no incentive to be a decent human being. After you’ve been on an app long enough, people start to feel not quite real. People start to lose their value, because if one rejects you, you can just open your phone and swipe through 100 more of them. Everyone is replaceable. This, combined with the fact that you’re typically chatting to and dating people who you have no mutual connection with, means that they can treat you however they want and there’s no social recourse. They will never see you again, you can never confront them, none of the people they interact with will hear rumors about how they make people feel uncomfortable. They can just keep on being assholes, with none of the typical consequences that you’d get for being an asshole elsewhere in life, like being disliked at their job, being denied service at a restaurant, or being elected president.

If only there was some sort of technology or system that promoted transparency and accountability while also remaining anonymous enough to protect privacy…

Blockchain is built on decentralized data that can be verified. What if you could see that a guy changed his occupation on his profile from ‘unemployed’ to ‘startup CEO’ to ‘doctor’, all in the past two weeks? What if you could flag someone after meeting them, to indicate that they ghosted you, so that the next person could make an informed decision? What if you could see stranger’s conversations and let potential matches know that they would probably send a dick pic?

It also has other potential applications, like crowdsourcing matchmaking. Why let an algorithm tell you who you should be with, when you could have a bunch of well-meaning strangers meddle in your life instead?

If we can see when people are being poorly treated, we can hold that person accountable. It’s not just about “bannable” offenses like unsolicited dick pics, but about ghosting, having ‘no fats, femmes or Asians’ in your profile, and just generally being unkind. It’s got all the benefits of dating in public, without a) having to leave your house, or b) abandoning all the built-in privacy we like about dating apps, being able to choose matches and meet them without inviting judgement from anyone in our lives.

Assholes will still be everywhere, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, but we might be able to make it less acceptable to be one.