The 1970s and the Birth of Internet Dating

Machines are like servants; they fulfill our everyday needs. Today’s communicative technology, with its focus on facilitating our social relationships, reflects our core desires. People want relationships, thus technology helps us meet others who share our interests. The recent emergence of computer dating illustrates this point. Beginning in the late 1960s, businessmen created computer dating during a time of great social-sexual change. Both British and American investors saw the marketing potential of computerised match-making  and cultivated its growth. At the centre of this story is the making of the ‘single’ as a more familiar and concrete term of identity.

In a recent article, Zoe Strimpel focuses on the marketing strategies of Dateline International, a computer dating agency, to offer a new insight into the ‘anxieties surrounding romantic status in post-1960s Britain’ (p. 319). She argues that Dateline employed a ‘self-positioning strategy’ which countered concerns over the mediation of machines in amorous match-making. It tied itself ‘with wider anxieties about emotional life [such as loneliness]’ by justifying its cause to the public throughout the 1970s (p. 320).

In mid-twentieth century Britain, the single-occupant household began to rise. National surveys showed that the number of single people rose by almost 10% between 1970 and 1998 (p. 323). Strimpel explains that the reasons for this are complex, including, among other factors, the loosening of ties between sex and marriage. In the 1970s, the rise of single men and women gave computer dating a sense of commercial authority - more people were now applicable to the promises it offered.   

Pre-internet computer courtship marketed itself via two strands: through technological prowess and the claims of psychology. Strimpel observes that ‘Dateline proposed itself as a modern solution to a modern situation’ (p. 323). These features intended to sell Dateline through what Strimpel calls a ‘double-punch’ strategy.

In the London Underground, for instance, Dateline adverts tackled potential user scepticism over the role computers played in their match-making process. The premise was this: Dateline possessed a super-computer that read punch-cards specifying the person’s traits and matched potential couples based on the card’s similarities for the fee of £50 (shocking!).

But these claims to a ‘super-computer’ were much about rhetorical lingo as they were about reality. Adverts reassured customers of the machine’s positive role – that users should never be ashamed to use technology in their quest for love. As such, these adverts tapped into the language of faith to sell Dateline’s service, vowing to make customer’s a ‘believer in computer dating’ (p. 326). (As shown by my example, this mode of thought persisted in the 1980s which asserts success through a powerful two-word statement: ‘Dateline Works!’). Ultimately, Strimpel argues, this strategy tackled the social stigmas that surrounded computer dating by selling the service through the ‘awe of modern machinery’ (p. 325).

Dateline advertised in a British magazine, 1986. © The List.

 

Dateline’s second strategy focused on the ‘wisdom of human insight’. The agency deployed the language of psychological know-how, making the case for the benefits of their personality matching system in the quest for the customer’s romantic destiny.

This process, quite alarmingly, redefined notions of ‘selfhood’, forcing customers to map their personality onto multiple-choice questionnaires. This being so, the status of ‘the single’ became a staple of the customer's identity. This was about finding ‘the one’ in a field now filled with various personality types. So-called ‘experts’, Strimpel says, constructed this notion which set the stage ‘for what would eventually become the backbone of major dating sites such as Eharmony’ (p. 331).

Today, almost everyone possesses a super-computer in their pocket. Whilst ‘expertise’ drove Dateline’s business, today’s world has no need for such mediators. Online dating focuses on the individual will, crafting a user profile to match their requirements. Although electronic platforms like Tinder facilitate computer dating, it is now up to us, ourselves, rather than the computer’s logic, to pick and choose partners. Agency is key to these contemporary sites.  

Electronic dating created fears in the past which persist today. For instance, the writer, Jill Tweedie, said in 1970 that she felt terrible about the way ‘the computer has moved into the [realm] of love’. No computer, she continued, ‘however flashy its innards’ can ever introduce you to anyone whose details are not within its electronic jaws (p. 328). In other words, singles place too much faith in the computer’s match-making process.  

In the age of social media, we need to view dating apps as mere utensils and nothing more. Our self-representations on the web are never true to our self-perceptions: we craft ideal images of ourselves to attract potential partners. But we can still step away from the smartphone screen. Beyond this, internet love wields the power to consume. A healthy balancing act between reality and technology is the best way forward.

Source:

Zoe Strimpel, ‘Computer Dating in the 1970s: Dateline and the making of the modern British single’ Contemporary British History, 31/3 (2017), pp 319-42.