I went to socialist speed dating because as all of you know by now, I am a staunch defender of romance and also flirting and also socialism. I’ve never speed dated before. The way I pictured it was something like a conference where you go from table to table talking to different people. An assembly line of prospects if you will.
This event rejected the assembly line, maybe for socialist reasons, but I suspect for (dis)organizational reasons. Instead, it was more like a summer camp mingle. They made us break into random groups and do icebreakers about things like your astrological sign or your favorite thing about yourself. They had volunteers holding up signs with number groups (50-100 say) and you had to mill around and find your match based on the numbered name tags you were given. Each rotation, they would dictate new conversation prompts which were the kinds of questions you get on hinge dot com, except with a leftist spin sometimes. Because of this, men kept coming up to me the wh…