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The Trouble With a Public 40-Day Dating...
The Trouble With a Public 40-Day Dating Experiment
If, in your Internet wanderings, you haven’t stumbled across 40 Days of Dating, let me catch you up. Two friends with opposite relationship foibles had to date each other for 40 days. Jessica Walsh is the romantic, and Timothy Goodman is the commitmentphobe. The idea is that it takes 40 days to change a habit. They were hoping to mellow each other out, I guess, and in so doing give the voyeurism-hungry internet a glimpse into the inner machinations of a blossoming relationship.
The whole thing was documented on their elaborately designed website.It finished today with the capstone Day 40 post.
In the earlier stages of the project, Meher Ahmad at Jezebel wrote: “My theory? Their friends wanted to make a trendy website, replete with sooo many cool fonts, and they obliged by closed-mouth kissing each other for over a month.” I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’d like to believe that their only goal was self-improvement. But with the quirky videos of them sitting stoically in chairs while paint is dripped on their heads (seemingly apropos of nothing but maybe I just don’t get ART), and unnecessary typography gifs sprinkled throughout the posts, it all smacks of something just south of sincerity.
In the early posts there’s a lot of talk about whether or not their relationship is “real.” Is it still real if it’s not physical? (They eventually have sex, so we don’t have to wrestle with that question.) Is it real if they do the experiment just as friends? Why don’t they just actually date?
Read more. [Image: 40 Days of Dating]
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