Is Virtual Reality The Future Of Online Dating?

The time has come to meet your significant other… In a virtual realm.
Virtual Reality is changing the way we live, that much is certain. The boundaries of the virtual and real worlds are blurring to bring static experiences to life, meaning that the online dating world is set for radical change.
Online dating, once seen as the preserve of the reclusive, is now a $3 billion a year industry. Tinder’s rise to fame in 2014 threw the final shackles off the online dating world, and the popularity of sites like Match.com and eHarmony’s TV is testimony to the online dating boom. The statistics say no different: one in 10 Americans admits to using an online dating site, 66% of these users have subsequently met in real life and 23% of them met their current spouse on the internet.
The value of online dating is a drop in the ocean compared to the video games industry, which is fast approaching $100 billion a year. Both industries are set to see yet more acceleration from the advent of VR, which could revolutionize the way we look for love online:
With Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift, an obvious precursor to taking social media into a virtual world, the tools will already be in place to meet a potential partner with no strings attached.
Online dating sites as they stand are antiquated; profiles are simply 2D adverts and there’s always the suspicion that the other person is trading off 5-year-old photographs. ‘Catfishing’ has become mainstream terminology for pretending to be someone else online; US television series Catfish investigates these fabricated relationships.
Virtual Reality could make catfishing a redundant concept, however, as people can feel free to ‘meet’ in the virtual world for the first time. Of course there will be a huge market in third-party software that effectively creates the VR equivalent of a fake profile, but certainly online daters can feel more secure in the knowledge that their potential suitor is indeed who they say they are with Virtual Reality technology.
There are more than 2500 dating sites in the US alone, ranging from the mainstream cyber-Cupids like Match.com to niche sites that bring disparate users with their own unique tastes together. In the days before the internet, these isolated souls might have had more difficulty finding likeminded partners.
Virtual Reality will allow people to dip their toe in the water with a new person or experiment with niche themes without any of the risk attached. They can also pull the plug on a date in the first few minutes if they’re lacking in spark, safe in the knowledge that they never have to invent elaborate get-out clauses.
From a more romantic perspective, VR has the potential to expand horizons quite literally, allowing you to have your first date in any number of locations both real and fictional. In the virtual world you could sip champagne on top of the Eiffel Tower while one of you sits in LA and the other in Baltimore. It will allow imagination to rule the roost; the choice of settings for your virtual date will be limited only by your imagination. In fact that will become part of the dating strategy in the near future; creating the perfect virtual world will become as important as eye contact and positive body language.
Virtual Reality will change everything from social media to a trip to the movies. It will have a profound effect on the online dating world, too, and could change the way we find true love in just a few short years.
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