Is Authentic Dating Possible?

In a recent New York Times article, journalist Eli Tan shared his experiences using AI clones to improve his dating life. After programming these clones with information about his hobbies and mannerisms, he tasked them with evaluating potential matches. The clones interacted with other dating platform users—sometimes real people, sometimes other AI clones—through chat messages and virtual “first dates” to narrow the pool on Tan’s behalf. While this AI experiment was ultimately unsuccessful in finding a viable match for Tan, CEOs of leading dating app companies envision a future where AI bots do the dating for us, saving us the time and agony of going on bad dates.

Confronted with such stories, we might protest that AI dating isn’t authentic, however detailed our instructions to the clones may be. Authenticity matters to us, and it has been recommended as a best practice in dating. But has authenticity ever been possible? From the perspective of a symbolic interactionist—that is, someone concerned with how we make meaning through social interactions, gestures, and language—the barriers to authenticity long predate dating bots. They’re intrinsic to our social world.From the perspective of a symbolic interactionist—that is, someone concerned with how we make meaning through social interactions, gestures, and language—the barriers to authenticity long predate dating bots. They’re intrinsic to our social world.

First, from a symbolic interactionist perspective, our emotions are not really our own. They are formed in response to the expected reactions of others. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, for example, Erving Goffman argues that we approach social interactions as actors approach performances: we deliberately construct our behavior and mannerisms to create social situations that will reflect positively on us. As we interact, we gauge whether our behavior achieves its purpose, and we engage in an iterative process of interpretation and readjustment that allows us to control our image. Our private conduct is, therefore, inherently tangled up with the social responses we expect, making it difficult to locate feelings that are “authentic” to us.

Reaching emotional authenticity is further complicated by the fact that we humans are bad at distinguishing between our real and contrived emotions. In her 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of the Human Feeling, Arlie Hochschild distinguishes between “surface acting”—altering our true feelings to cater to the expectations of others—and “deep acting,” or creating memories that spontaneously evoke a desired emotion. In the former case, we may be aware that we are “faking it,” but we rarely view deep acting as fake. To illustrate, a spurned lover might deliberately recall unhappy moments shared with an ex-partner to cultivate genuine feelings of hate, making it easier to move on. Similarly, a hiker may exaggerate in his own mind the difficulty of a past adventure to sustain a narrative of success and persistence. These instances of deep acting show how our “true” emotions both elude and delude us.

Moreover, even when we feel confident that we know our authentic feelings, we are discouraged from expressing them. Goffman used the metaphor of a “backstage” to symbolize the messy and socially inappropriate thoughts and feelings that we avoid showing others. But why, when we all have such hidden messiness, do we refrain from sharing them, which could lead to meaningful connection and validation?

One reason, I argue, is that we do not want others to show their true selves to us. Seeing others—especially potential dating partners—in all their unlikeability takes away from their appeal and attractiveness. Take a dating app profile that checks all your boxes: hobbies, looks, and witty quips, to boot. While we are aware that these qualities are carefully constructed, we choose to believe that this person “authentically” embodies them. If we thought of these profiles as “acts,” the entire system would crumble. As a result, we not only convince ourselves that a potential partner is an ideal match but also present ourselves in a similarly manicured fashion to appear equally worthy. What we end up showing others is contrived authenticity, a polished version of ourselves that we perceive as socially appropriate.Though true authenticity may be unachievable, I argue that we can cultivate more meaningful connections by pushing at the boundaries of authenticity, gradually expanding the definition of “appropriate behavior” to include our less protected and more vulnerable selves.

These insights add another layer to current discussions around the problem of “authentic” dating in the age of AI. Symbolic interactionism teaches us that this concept has always been elusive due to the performative and socially constructed nature of our actions. Though true authenticity may be unachievable, I argue that we can cultivate more meaningful connections by pushing at the boundaries of authenticity, gradually expanding the definition of “appropriate behavior” to include our less protected and more vulnerable selves. When enough of us courageously share our genuine, unpolished sides, the social system that has long discouraged such interactions might finally begin to reward them.

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Giora Ashkenazi is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He studies intimacy and dating, technology, and culture.

Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Emily Johnson, Tom Nachtigal, and Professors Michelle Jackson and Angèle Christin for their feedback.