Episode Transcript
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Morgan Sung, Host: Look, covering what we cover on this show, things right now can feel pretty bleak — surveillance culture, environmental injustice, the erosion of constitutional rights, the way algorithms silo and divide us.
At a time when it feels like the machines are taking over, we thought we could spend an episode reminding all of you of what makes us most human: Love. And what better time to do that than a commercialized holiday designed to sell mass-produced chocolate?
Welcome to our Valentine’s Day episode! Today, we have a little heart shaped box of chocolates for you: three stories about how we connect as humans … even in this modern digital hellscape.
Whether it’s through a human matchmaker, in a sea of AI-powered dating apps, or stumbling across a comment thread of hot singles in your area.
Or, literally finding the one and that involves unpacking a very thorny relationship debate: Do you share your location with your partner?
Morgan Sung: Let’s get into our first story today. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, dating apps have been part of the romance ecosystem for over a decade. And they can be exhausting. But, we live so much of our lives online these days, and it’s not easy to meet someone in real life either. So some people have taken it upon themselves to play digital matchmaker.
Let’s open up a new tab: Doom scroll speed date.
So picture this: It’s late at night, you’re doomscrolling. Just consuming content until your brain shuts down and you can finally fall asleep. And then you come across a guy who also appears to be laying in bed, in the dark, in the same situation as you. And he starts talking directly to you, through the screen.
[Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend]
Oh, hi. It appears as though we’re both doom scrolling at the same time right now. Uh, how, how’s it going? What the hell’s going on on your feed right now?
Morgan Sung: These are doomscroll dates. It’s like a meet-cute, in the middle of the night when neither person should be awake.
[Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend]
Actually, you know what? Don’t answer that. Um, it’s getting late. You should probably go to bed and I should probably go to bed, so it was cool bumping into you.
Morgan Sung: Joseph Manzo, also known as Jojo Manzo, also known by his TikTok handle, ThisShouldBeATrend, started his TikTok account as marketing research for his job. Then last year, on a whim, Jojo started a series where he pretended to take viewers on dates in the middle of a doom scrolling session.
People started really responding to his series. And Jojo realized that he could use his platform to play matchmaker. So he put together what he calls the doomscroll speed date. I’ll let Jojo tell the story.
Jojo Manzo, Guest: So I noticed how many people in the comment sections of the doom scroll date videos that I was putting out. I, I feel like everyone’s just like craving connection, you know? Speaking for myself, I love being the matchmaker. Like I, I really want to put a bunch of people in a room just to see what happens and hope that some of them fall in love or some of them like connect in some way, shape, or form.
Morgan Sung: So Jojo posted a video asking his audience to respond with comments, and laid out some instructions.
Jojo Manzo: So, basically the ground rules of this, uh, doom scroll, speed date, is what I called it, is basically post a photo of yourself or a meme that you really like, and then your age and where you’re from.
Once people did that. Other users were encouraged to leave a reply underneath with a photo of themselves or another meme that might match the energy, and whoever left the original comment, was the only person that is allowed to reach out to someone who replied to them. So that way it kind of respected boundaries on everyone’s parts.
Morgan Sung: The comments poured in, gym selfies, polished headshots, goofy unposed photos that you probably wouldn’t find on a typical dating app profile and lots of memes.
Jojo Manzo: This user said Dallas, Texas with a meme of a very nefarious cartoon just kind of sticking out their tongue, all like, and then someone said, ain’t too far drive for me with the eye emojis. But as this user, so absolutely put, “I don’t have a meme, but I did see this cool apple in the store the other day. This is flirting, right? Why does this feel like a better dating opportunity than hinge? “
Someone decided to post a photo of them on Halloween, dressed as Benjamin Franklin, and yes, this is a woman dressed as Benjamin Franklin, uh, with a 0.5 camera selfie, and also put some of their music taste
Morgan Sung: Jojo’s doom scroll speed date video got thousands of comments overnight.
Jojo Manzo: I think that post resonated with people so well is because I was almost selling them on a pitch to be like. H Hinge and Bumble aren’t working, but TikTok might work Dating app algorithms are very much like Instagram, like everyone really curates their profiles, whereas I feel like people on TikTok are. A lot more comfortable in being careless.
That kind of just develops this opportunity for people to not feel like there’s so much pressure. like it is a casual interaction. You either connect or you don’t
Morgan Sung: While a lot of people did put themselves out there in the comments, they weren’t getting many replies …
Jojo Manzo: All the comments that were coming in were largely women:, “The comments are full of baddies, but I’m not seeing a male in New York City.” The straight men were not making moves. I actually left a reply to somebody who had asked, “Where are all the men at?” And I think one of my comments verbatim was, “Yo! Respectfully, y’all aren’t flirting enough.” And that comment got lit up with likes and then a lot of replies started coming in for the people who already posted.
Jojo Manzo: “38-year-old anime nerd in Columbus, Ohio. Forgive the gym photo, don’t have a lot of full body pictures.” And it’s, it’s a dude in the gym,
Uh, that this person sent high with five eyes and a classic smiley face really, really cheesing. Aw, she’s so cute. With a little cardigan on and the glasses. Aw, I hope they work out. I hope they get to meet up.
I did not follow up with anyone. Quite frankly, there are thousands of comments on that post that I would have to, I would have to doom scroll the comment section that that’s how many there are and that’s how much time it would take.
But I think some of the, these ones, like I just mentioned, might have a little bit of merit and I’ll need to reach out to them on the side. Just be like, so, uh, you guys meet up yet? and then there were a lot of, there was actually a lot of requests for me to do this again, but to do it by city, which I haven’t done yet.
I really do think this experiment was a success. I mean, my head canon is that there’s at least one potential couple now, you know, I, I really do feel like. This was a good exercise for people to put themselves out there and, um, for either starting the conversation or to drive the conversation. Um, and man, I really, really hope that I can be invited to somebody’s wedding someday
Morgan Sung: Jojo Manzo tapped into people’s frustration with dating apps and swipe fatigue and tried to DIY a solution. Like he said, he likes playing matchmaker. Tech companies also say they have a solution, with the hottest feature in dating apps right now: AI matchmakers.
But will they actually help? Well, let’s open a new tab. What are AI matchmakers missing?
To be clear, these aren’t AI companions that would replace human dates. These are AI-powered features to help users connect with dates. Like one called Amata, that talks to users, and then describes them to potential matches. Or Rizz, the digital wingman that analyzes screenshots of messages, and generates a quippy, conversation-sparking response. Sliding into DMs? You can outsource your flirting! There are now dozens of apps that offer AI-powered relationship advice. A dating coach in your pocket, available 24/7.
All of these features are designed to alleviate swipe fatigue: the mental, emotional, and physical burnout of modern dating.
But I wanted to hear from a human matchmaker about why she’s so suspicious of integrating AI features into dating apps, and what it really takes to find a match. What’s the secret sauce to meeting new people?
This is Matchmaker Maria.
Maria Avgitidis, Guest: I am Maria Avgitidis better known as Matchmaker Maria, and I am the founder of Agape Match, which is a matchmaking service based out of New York City.
Morgan Sung: She’s also an author, and the host of the podcast Ask A Matchmaker. Maria comes from a long line of matchmakers. Before her, her grandmother, her great grandmother, and her great great grandmother were matchmakers in Greece. These previous generations lived through times of famine and political unrest. So back then, matchmaking was really more about building alliances between families.
Maria Avgitidis: And so when I say alliance, you have to think about bartering and trade. And you know, if my family makes milk and your family makes glass bottles, that’s a pretty good match. So these are the things that they were thinking about.They weren’t thinking about are these two people in love? They were thinking about are these families gonna get on.
You know, when my grandmother was matchmaking, first of all, there’s no computers, let alone the internet, let alone mobile phones where we would swipe on potential soulmates while sitting on the couch. And a lot of my clientele now in 2026 and didn’t just start now, it started, I wanna say 11 years ago. In 2015 we started getting the new audience of people who just felt a lot of dating fatigue.
So it, they didn’t have problem going on dates, you know, they could open up an app, but if it takes too long to go from online to offline, you can feel a bit of dating fatigue. But in 2026 what I see the biggest difference in singles is how the algorithm and also how an AI can reaffirm things that might not necessarily be the right thing for us. And I think about that a lot because, there is a rise in AI in dating.
Morgan Sung: Yeah. I’m so glad you brought up AI because that’s what we’re here to talk about today. the biggest trend in, in dating app tech right now is so-called AI matchmaking. Everyone’s trying to get their LLMs to be the next cupid. Um, a lot of them use AI chatbots to basically ask users questions and then match them with other users based on their answers so that they don’t have to build a profile, they don’t have to swipe, removing a lot of that friction, you know, what do you make of this trend?
Maria Avgitidis: Um, first of all, I resent the fact that it’s called matchmaker. just because I’m maybe a generational matchmaker. I know what it takes to be a professional matchmaker. It’s so much about community building. At the end of the day, you know, matchmaking is considered one of the oldest professions.
It ranks up there with a midwife and uh, and sex work and, The reason why matchmaking has always existed is because dating is a communal activity. You know, don’t look at yourself right now if you are single, laying on the couch, swiping while an episode of Friends or Big Bang Theory playing in the background.
That’s not what dating, that’s not what courtship is supposed to be like. It’s supposed to be your parents meddling. It’s supposed to be your cousin setting up with their friends. It’s your friends setting you up with their friends and you meeting their coworkers at a barbecue. Like dating is a communal effort, ’cause we were not meant to date alone. Humans have this instinct to connect. So that’s the first part, but now what is it exactly doing? And it goes back to my suspicions of, you know, what algorithms and AI can do. I’m not saying that they’re not helpful in certain elements of our jobs,
You know, I just actually put the privacy policy of a social media site on my ChatGPT to be like, what am I, what’s wrong with it? You know, and like, let me know so I don’t have to read the whole privacy policy. So I’m not saying that there’s not some really great benefits with having ai, um, help us, but I do feel like people have a very poor perception of who they actually are.
I think when you talk to an AI, you wanna say really good things about yourself. You’re not necessarily being tasked to look at yourself critically and. Because the AI is built to reaffirm you, even if you’re making a very bad decision. So now take it to dating, what questions are these apps asking to really get to know you, to really understand what kind of partner you will be?
I think a chat bot can do a really great job at making some assumptions on your horoscope or numerology or your Enneagram because a lot of content in on the internet already exists, where it pulls from. I wonder what kind of content it would pull from to help someone who is experiencing extreme loneliness. And then it goes back to the end of who is this for?
No one’s building an AI matchmaking company from the goodness of their heart. There’s probably gonna be investors, there’s probably gonna be shareholders. There’s probably a company that wants to buy it and someone’s gonna profit. And I’m not saying that a dating company or a dating service provider should not get paid for the work that they do. They should absolutely get paid. I’ll be the first to say it. Hello!
But I, as a human matchmaker, have a motivation to get my client into a relationship as quickly as possible, because as a human being, I don’t wanna talk to my clients longer than I have to. Right? Like, I really want them in relationships because I want them to leave me alone. That’s not, that’s an optimistic way of looking at it. Right? I wanna be good at my job. I wanna be a good matchmaker. Right? But dating companies, they don’t have that, they can tell us, oh, you know, it’s not just about shareholders.
Like, we wanna help people fall in love. Okay. But you, you, you’re not creating apps that are providing that safe environment. Women are looking for. And you are showing men, women that don’t wanna date them, so they’re having a terrible dating experience and all this because they get to pay every month their subscription to make the shareholders happy.
Morgan Sung: a lot of these dating apps or a lot of these, I, I know you hate the term, but that’s what they’re calling themselves, AI matchmakers, um, report to. Yeah. Just take that kind of friction out of, swiping,out of like having to sift through all these new people and all these new profiles. I mean, Facebook’s dating assistant for example, it works by basically telling the chat bot, uh, a bunch of unique traits that you’re looking for in a partner and they will present you with matches. And the example that meta itself used was find me a Brooklyn girl in tech and.
The chatbot will present profiles of Brooklyn Girls in Tech. I, it’s not dissimilar to what you do, but also, you know, it’s, it seems to be the final evolution of everything that people have been complaining about when it comes to dating apps.
Maria Avgitidis: We are all living pretty frictionless lives in 2026 in the United States. What I mean by that is you do most things that you need to do on technology on your phone. You can order food through Uber Eats. You can order a car through Lyft you can go to the Starbucks checkout line and actually use the app, not have to interact with a barista at all.
And so when you look at dating, I just said before that, you know, dating was never meant to be done, like solo. It’s supposed to be a communal thing because at the end of the day, should you two work out, the alliance of family is still there. And it, that is important because family is what determines our long-term values, even the ones we don’t agree with. that is where our attachment comes from.That is where our initial beliefs, our initial philosophies in life come from.
Like it’s all developed from these families that we are a part of and what we might create, so for dating apps or AI matchmakers, which I hate that I’m even using that word, but whatever, um, what I find really shocking is that it’s because the environment is so frictionless that people are experiencing dating fatigue. Why would you make it even more frictionless? Like, I don’t know how that helps people. and by the way, I’m not anti dating app, but we, we, you don’t have to participate in it.
There is a world out there where you could use. An an online tool to get offline. And those tools are called Eventbrite. There’s also social clubs in New York. The fastest growing social club is New York City Backgammon Club. Uh, people, hundreds of people show up to play an ancient game.
Maria Avgitidis: They put their phones away. And I know that sounds for some people it’s like, ‘oh my God, you want me to go out?’ But you wouldn’t be thinking, this is weird. If it was 2016 or if it was 2006. But now that we have worked from home, now that we have these hybrid work schedules, which again, I’m not against, I think these are fantastic opportunities, but if you’re gonna work from home, that means you have to put in even more effort to actually be involved in social events.
Morgan Sung: Yeah. You’ve really talked about how friction is necessary for. Community. You need to be a little uncomfortable to meet people, and that community is the secret to relationships. Can you expand on that?
Maria Avgitidis: The reason why I say that you have to fill up a social calendar is because it’s not just romantic relationships, but friendships. We have this idea that friendship is supposed to be organic, but romantic relationships are supposed to be intentional. And it’s actually the reverse. Your friendships have always been intentional, right? The friendships you made in high school or in elementary school, it wasn’t your intention, but your parents intended to live in that neighborhood.
You and your group of friends went to the same school and you met, and through proximity, you became friends. You see this with your college friends, you see this with your work friends. You see this with most adult friendships, that these were intentional choices that had you meet this person.
So to think that friendship is now organic, it really collapses like how we make friends, because you typically don’t make friends just walking in the supermarket. more than half of you’re wearing AirPods when you go in there. So you know, no one’s really talking to you either. So. The way to create any sort of relationship is we have to have the baseline foundation of friendship.
Maria Avgitidis: Well, friendship can only happen with two things in this formula, proximity and familiarity. If your algorithm is only showing you one single race, one single body type, one single lifestyle, then that is what you’re familiar with. And I can understand when people say to me, I’m just not attracted to this, or I’m not attracted to that. I, I get it. Your, your own upbringing is going to influence what you are familiar with. Right? But then there’s that proximity and that re, you know, proximity is also about repetition. You have to have that time invested in that person.
So if you were to develop friendships, if you really put that as your goal in 2026, the odds of you getting a relationship through this friendship circle, through this brand new social circle would exponentially grow. Because the people that are going to have the most influence over what your future looks like at this point is whoever is new to that social circle that you’re developing,
Maria Avgitidis: I remember when I met my spouse, my husband, the people that introduced us, who I intentionally met, I actively did things to meet these people. I had only met them three months before and they completely changed my life and I will forever be grateful for them. But that’s it though, is why did that friendship flourish? Familiarity, proximity. I was constantly seeing them, so that way when I met the rest of their friendship circle. I was familiar with the values that both my spouse and our mutual friend shared.
What my grandmother, her mother, and her grandmother did really well was build community and they also understood that marriage was a long term commitment, not necessarily by just two people, but by two families because you know, they had a village and that village has to be there for each other.
Morgan Sung: Thank you so much for joining us.
Maria Avgitidis: Thank you for having me.
Morgan Sung: That was Matchmaker Maria, the host of the podcast Ask a Matchmaker and author of the book, Matchmaker Maria’s No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love.
So we’ve been talking about how to find someone online and in real life — and hate to break it to you, but sometimes that does involve going outside.
But once you’ve found the one do you keep tabs on them? That’s after this break.
Morgan Sung: So this episode is all about finding love in this very online landscape. And so far, we’ve heard about how people are finding connection — whether it’s through a matchmaker, an AI-powered dating app, or a doom scroll speed date. Now, for the last chocolate in our Valentine’s Day assortment, it’s time for a story about literally finding your love … Or at least, finding your love’s location. And this one’s personal for me.
Ready? How about opening one last tab?: Did I digitally u-haul?
In Chinese folklore, there is the Red Thread of Fate. It’s a magical red cord that connects lovers who are destined to be together, no matter what happens. The lore says that the old god of matchmaking binds the couple together by tying the cord around their ankles or their pinkies, depending on who you ask.
Although the cord might twist and tangle, it’ll never break. They’ll always find their way back to each other in the end. Today, we just have Find My Friends. With this nifty little app, you can see all your loved ones as little dots on a map, whenever you want!
I share my location with over a dozen people — family members, close friends, and my partner. Over the holidays, a relative who isn’t much older than me was shocked that I’m so cavalier about sharing my location with others. Especially because we just put out an episode on digital hygiene and personal security. And their reaction made me reevaluate some of my online habits: Am I a digital u-hauler?
If you aren’t familiar with this, u-hauling is a lesbian stereotype. Many queer women are inclined to develop intense emotional bonds and commit to new relationships, very quickly. So quickly, they move in together.
[Audio clip from TikTok account @Madeitoutpodcast]
What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A u-haul!
Morgan Sung: That was comedian Lea DeLaria recently retelling her 30-year old joke. She first told it during her comedy special in the 90s, and the u-haul lesbian has been a community-defining punchline ever since.
And now, the so-called “urge to merge” is influencing digital habits, too.
I have managed to avoid the stereotype of actually u-hauling. It took me well over a year of dating, and before that, eight years of friendship, to move in with my partner. And in previous relationships, I’d always been adamant that we really know each other before sharing a home. In fact, I didn’t even want to share an Instagram grid. Up until my partner and I got together, I had never hard launched a girlfriend. I always had very firm boundaries in relationships. But when it comes to sharing my location? Maybe it’s a different story.
And I’m definitely not the first queer person to hop into the proverbial digital u-haul. For this story, our team asked people to send voice notes about their experiences with location sharing and romance. Our producer Maya Cueva got this voice note from her friend, Taj.
Taj: I sent this person, who I was dating, my location and I thought that was fine. They shared their location with me uh, really early on, like probably in the first, like month or two. And at the time I shared locations with all my friends, like 15 people at this time, like, I didn’t think anything of it. Did it early on. Had no idea it was called digital U-Hauling.
Morgan Sung: Ok, it’s not really a thing. I made it up, because I’ve done it so often. I may not be a serial u-hauler, but I am definitely guilty of digital u-hauling.
And it may be a surprise that I myself am guilty of this, because, as a tech journalist you’d think that I’d be more guarded about this. Right?
But sharing my location like that felt like wearing my heart on my sleeve. Here! I’m giving you access to my whereabouts all the time! I’m trusting you to find me, but only when it’s socially appropriate! And I would never expect the object of my very trackable affections to send me their location — although, whenever they did reciprocate, it was always like, a nice affirmation that we were on the same page. And more importantly, it was convenient.
My friend Tanya, though, has a completely different approach to this than I do. Tanya is a tech journalist too, and she takes privacy pretty seriously. She sent me this voice note:
Tanya Chen: it’s not that I refuse to share my location, especially with, close, uh, trusted friends and family and I have, it’s just something I really prioritize just to be unsearchable and unknowable, just to kind of like be able to exist freely without people knowing where I am. Or bothering me.
I do not like knowing, you know, where I am. I do like knowing where you are though, but you can’t have a one way situation, uh, relationship as it turns out like that. so if I were to offer my own thoughts on this yeah.
Just to be really precious about like who you share it with, I mean, for the obvious reason, like precarious stalking stuff. Right? it’s an absolute right. And even, um, now something that’s kind of rare to just like, not have anyone find you. Um, love you. Bye.
Morgan Sung: U-hauling may be a lesbian stereotype, but the practice of sharing locations is of course, not exclusive to sapphic relationships. And It’s not always a philosophical debate about privacy and personal freedom.
A lot of times, it’s just a matter of practicality. Like, I have these friends, Mandy and Jackson. They’re engaged now, been together for six and a half years, and they’ve been sharing their location for most of their relationship.
Mandy Seiner: Jackson only shares his location with me, but I actually share my location with 14 people, including my mom. I just, I like to look at my little sims and see where my friends are. When do you check my location?
Jackson Maxwell: it’s pretty rare that I do, uh, Mandy recently had a foot surgery a few months ago, and, uh, getting around, uh, with limited mobility on the New York City subway system, really not easy. Uh, getting around on the streets also not easy, so I would just double check
Mandy Seiner: and similar, I mean, Jackson making sure I’m okay. but Jackson used to have. seizures. and so if he was out like taking a walk or running errands and I hadn’t heard from him for a while, it gave me a lot of peace of mind to be able to see where he was and know that if something happened and he was stuck somewhere, that I would be able to come find him.
I think of our long-term partnership or any long-term partnership as being like the buddy system in school. Like you always have to know, be with your buddy and know where your buddy is. And that’s what, that’s what having a fiance is, is the buddy system. so I just gotta be able to check on my buddy.
Morgan Sung: Location sharing in relationships has been a decade long debate at this point. It’s super polarizing. Some see it as another form of surveillance, while others can’t trust their partners without location sharing. Like, for my friend Amanda, location sharing is a sticking point. Not between Amanda and her boyfriend, but between the couple and everyone else they know.
Amanda Silberling: I am very online. I am an internet culture reporter. I am professionally, very online. I share my location with a bunch of people, but I don’t have my boyfriend’s location.
It is interesting to me how some friends, when I’ve told them I don’t have his location, they’re like, what are you doing? That’s a red flag. Like, is that okay? And I’m like, I don’t think he’s hiding anything. and I don’t think that we should assume that not sharing your location means you’re hiding something. Because like. Like, I think it’s very reasonable to not want someone to know where you are at all times of the day, like as long as he texts me when he gets home, if he’s out late, I don’t really care that I don’t have his location. But then it’s funny because some of our other friends have been like, I would be worried if you did have your, that their location, like that’s a sign of distrust.
It’s almost like a micro generational gap where people born in like 1998 think it’s weird that I don’t have my boyfriend’s location and people born in like 1994 are like, it would be really weird if you had it.
Morgan Sung: There are legitimate reasons to hide or obscure your location, and it’s not always to hide cheating or anything nefarious. On this show, we’re always talking about the surveillance state, and how our right to privacy is getting chipped away every day. Big tech companies are collecting all of our data and selling it off to the highest bidder, all the time. And at the individual level, people do abuse these apps to stalk and monitor and control others. My friend Anna is a journalist who’s covered sex and relationships for years, so I consider her an expert in the realm of love and the internet.
Anna lovine: So I’m pretty ambivalent about location sharing because it’s absolutely a tool to surveil people and I ultimately think that breeds more paranoia and, honestly hiding things that don’t need to be hidden. I generally think that more surveillance doesn’t work and just like encourages people to find loopholes.
Morgan Sung: That being said, Anna and her fiancee, Kat, do share their locations with each other.
Anna lovine: and I prefer it that way. I think it’s a great utility. And I ultimately think if someone, if you share your location and someone’s doing something nefarious, they will figure out a way to, um, not be seen. And even in like other ways where you don’t really want someone to know what you’re doing. Like last year when I was. Planning on proposing, um, a week before Kat had plans. So I went to the location and I swapped the location of my device to my iPad. So if Kat did check my location, in that instance I was like, oh, I need her to see that I’m home. So I changed my location. Bu that was like, so galaxy-brained. I was like, what am I doing? But hey, she didn’t find out.
Morgan Sung: There is a degree of vulnerability involved in sharing locations, especially in a new relationship. In a way, it’s like giving a piece of yourself to another person. Screw the predestined red thread of fate! With a couple of taps, you can give someone the other end of a digital tether to yourself. No old god of matchmaking needed!
But not everyone is comfortable with that. My friend Harriet has the complete opposite approach to new relationships than I did.
Harriet Weber: I would need to build a lot of trust with someone before wanting to do that. It, it was even a big deal to me to share my location with friends. Um, and I only started doing that because I’ve been going on dates, uh, with total strangers. So if you’re my friend and I’ve shared my location with you, that is a big deal.
Morgan Sung: I’m honored to be one of the select few that Harriet does share her location with. We swapped locations when she got back on the apps, and wanted to make sure that her friends knew that she got home safe. And since then, it has been really convenient. Like, having each others’ locations came in handy when we were trying to find each other in a crowded park during Pride.
Like many other people in this story, Harriet is also a tech journalist. Hey, a lot of my friends are, ok? And I, as well as a lot of my friends, are hyperaware of the fact that convenience often comes at the cost of personal privacy.
Harriet Weber: Something I have feelings on myself is, um, the feeling of being surveilled. It’s so abstracted that it’s not really in my face, like a camera would be in my face. For example. If, if a camera’s in your face, you’re gonna act a little different, um, regardless of what you’re doing. There’s just something about it that reminds me a little bit too much of like, spyware.I guess it just makes me a little bit uncomfortable.
Morgan Sung: This is something I had grappled with, amid all of my digital u-hauling antics. You’re giving the other person the option to surveil you, sure, but you’re also trusting that they won’t. The social contract dictates that location sharing is a sacred bond. When you opt in, you’re agreeing that you’ll only use that connection when it’s appropriate. To me, the inherent vulnerability in location sharing is what makes it feel like such a romantic gesture. I mean, it’s commitment, right?
Taj: I don’t recommend it. Clearly, I think it is a little too much.
Morgan Sung: This is Taj again. They had shared their location after just a month of dating their new girlfriend. Long story short, they aren’t together anymore.
Taj: I think it put a lot of stress in like, I don’t know, a weird surveillance on the relationship and there was a few times where it was like, okay, she could see my location. And she’s like, oh, like, ‘what’s up? You haven’t hit me,’ versus like, oh, maybe you’re just at home focusing on yourself.
Morgan Sung: It only takes one weird experience to drain the romance out of location sharing. Years ago, amid a breakup, I felt that exact sense of surveillance that Taj was talking about. The whole thing made me a lot more parsimonious about sharing my location especially when there are romantic stakes involved. When it came to finding my dates in crowded places, I had become a big fan of the “share for one hour” option. The other person can see where you are, but that link expires. You get all the convenience, without any of the commitment or vulnerability.
But then when is the right time to permanently share locations? When do you take that leap of faith? My friend Anna weighed in on this again.
Anna lovine: I don’t remember having a discussion like, oh, are we gonna share locations now? Or, oh, can I have your location? I’m sure it was an instance where, like, oh, the subway’s down and I’m gonna be late, so why don’t, I’m gonna give you my location so you can see where I am. It definitely felt good. It didn’t feel like as significant as, say, becoming girlfriends or obviously like moving in together or something like that. But it felt nice. It’s like an even deeper level of trust.
Morgan Sung: My days of digital u-hauling, of sharing and then un-sharing with new people, came to an end three years ago, when my partner and I got together. We were best friends for nearly a decade at that point, and had each others’ locations the entire time.
By the time we finally started dating, we had already established a routine of following the other person’s little blue dot to find each other — at concerts, at the farmer’s market, and yes, even as friends at the giant IKEA in Burbank, California. In fact, I didn’t know her address for a good year, because I would just drive to her location on Find My Friends. Although we didn’t literally u-haul, we were already sharing this hugely vulnerable connection. I don’t remember when we actually started sharing our locations with each other. But I like to think that the red thread of fate bound us together long before an app ever did.
In all of my digital u-hauling, things would end, and I would inevitably cut that tether — digital and emotional. But this time, I know it won’t break.
Morgan Sung: Special thanks to our friends for sending us their location sharing stories: Taj Weaver, Tanya Chen, Mandy Seiner and Jackson Maxwell, Amanda Silberling, Anna lovine, and Harriet Weber. If there’s anything I love more than love stories, it’s a juicy voice note.
Ok, happy Valentine’s day, lovers. Let’s close all these tabs.
Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.
This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, with support from Gabriela Glueck. It was edited by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts.
Our team includes editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.
Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.
Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.
This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps.
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