Ian WhiteThe First Time I Tried Speed
October 8th 2006 14:15
or "Eight Is Enough".
Things in my life have gotten interesting since I started this blog. I was recently invited to my first Speed Dating event (I’ll explain this in further detail later) and being the adventurous type (that’s what my profile says – although it also says I’m well-groomed and this has recently been refuted) I went along for a bit of a look. What an interesting concept – bring together 8 girls and 8 guys (sort of pre-matched) and then pair them up for 8 minutes, to let them quickly get to know each other and then move them along to the next “date” for another rapid-fire shot at finding out some peripheral details about someone in the hope that you might find something attractive enough about them to consider seeing them again, until you have covered everyone in the room. Apparently, it’s a modern phenomenon.
Is that all the time it takes to know if you are suitable for each other? Does it really have anything to do with anything other than physical attraction? I guess it does…but in 8 minutes? What can you learn about someone in 8 minutes? You can learn that you are physically attracted to them, that takes about one tenth of a second. Then what? You can learn whether this person has any conversational skills and yeah – that is actually a pretty good start. Usually you can learn what they do for a job, where they work and what suburb they live in, although the people running the event dont recommend that you discuss any of those things. You can find out that its their first time too, they wanted to try something different, blah blah blah, repeat seven more times.
But can you really learn anything about them of any real value? What I found wasn’t so much that I knew who I did want to see again, rather that I was certain of those I knew I didn’t want to see again…if that makes sense. And from the list of eight girls, I would guess that I would have been selected maybe twice. Maybe. Once I knew who I wasn’t interested in the conversation clearly tapered off. (I am a pretty good reader of body language, so I know the signs to look for…wandering eyes, crossed arms, getting up and walking away, snoring - all good indicators that she may not be all that interested) And that was fair enough. There might be things that you can learn that will help you decide if you do want to see them again, but it takes a special person to really spruik themselves out to a person in order for them to hit on something interesting enough to want to contact them further. And who would do that? Given eight minutes with someone you’ve never met, you launch into a barrage of me, me, me while still trying to find out some information from them. It’s not an ideal situation if you ask me, but maybe I’m not the best person to talk to about that, because I don’t even like selling myself in job interviews. “So, did I mention that I am a rocket scientist with an IQ of 188, on weekends I cook for the homeless in between rehearsing for my band that has just been signed as well as being a hand model, ghost writing for Ricky Gervais, ruck coaching for Melbourne football club, curing the worlds ailments and being a motivational speaker?”. Selling yourself is, as far as I am concerned, an un-Australian activity. Don Bradman was the greatest batsman that ever lived, yet he was modest until the day he died. And lets put it in as honest terms as possible - if you were really that great, why would you need to be somewhere like a speed dating event? So get over yourself.
To be fair, the night was a little out of the ordinary in that it was being filmed for an MTV special and it contained a TV host and some of the nominees for the CLEO magazine Bachelor of the Year award. So the types of girls present were clearly not interested in your run-of-the-mill, somewhat interesting, witty, maybe not so handsome but still genuinely nice bloke like me. It was quite clear that they were there for their shot at a Bachelor of repute.
The punch-line, for me was that one of the Bachelors turned out to be an old workmate of mine, who has recently published a book, and it was genuinely great to see him. He was equally disgusted by the various “fame-fuckers” who had practically thrown themselves at him because he had been nominated as a bachelor, and that was heartening. Interestingly enough, we laughed as he said “Eight minutes is just too long”. It’s all about perspective.
Things in my life have gotten interesting since I started this blog. I was recently invited to my first Speed Dating event (I’ll explain this in further detail later) and being the adventurous type (that’s what my profile says – although it also says I’m well-groomed and this has recently been refuted) I went along for a bit of a look. What an interesting concept – bring together 8 girls and 8 guys (sort of pre-matched) and then pair them up for 8 minutes, to let them quickly get to know each other and then move them along to the next “date” for another rapid-fire shot at finding out some peripheral details about someone in the hope that you might find something attractive enough about them to consider seeing them again, until you have covered everyone in the room. Apparently, it’s a modern phenomenon.
But can you really learn anything about them of any real value? What I found wasn’t so much that I knew who I did want to see again, rather that I was certain of those I knew I didn’t want to see again…if that makes sense. And from the list of eight girls, I would guess that I would have been selected maybe twice. Maybe. Once I knew who I wasn’t interested in the conversation clearly tapered off. (I am a pretty good reader of body language, so I know the signs to look for…wandering eyes, crossed arms, getting up and walking away, snoring - all good indicators that she may not be all that interested) And that was fair enough. There might be things that you can learn that will help you decide if you do want to see them again, but it takes a special person to really spruik themselves out to a person in order for them to hit on something interesting enough to want to contact them further. And who would do that? Given eight minutes with someone you’ve never met, you launch into a barrage of me, me, me while still trying to find out some information from them. It’s not an ideal situation if you ask me, but maybe I’m not the best person to talk to about that, because I don’t even like selling myself in job interviews. “So, did I mention that I am a rocket scientist with an IQ of 188, on weekends I cook for the homeless in between rehearsing for my band that has just been signed as well as being a hand model, ghost writing for Ricky Gervais, ruck coaching for Melbourne football club, curing the worlds ailments and being a motivational speaker?”. Selling yourself is, as far as I am concerned, an un-Australian activity. Don Bradman was the greatest batsman that ever lived, yet he was modest until the day he died. And lets put it in as honest terms as possible - if you were really that great, why would you need to be somewhere like a speed dating event? So get over yourself.
The punch-line, for me was that one of the Bachelors turned out to be an old workmate of mine, who has recently published a book, and it was genuinely great to see him. He was equally disgusted by the various “fame-fuckers” who had practically thrown themselves at him because he had been nominated as a bachelor, and that was heartening. Interestingly enough, we laughed as he said “Eight minutes is just too long”. It’s all about perspective.
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