Remember the Black Mirror episode that follows a couple on their journey with a futuristic dating app called “Coach’? In the episode, called “Hang the DJ” it’s a story of boy meets girl…for a limited amount of time, that is, until it’s time for both of them to move on to the next…all in the name of ultimately finding their one true love. How many partners they must go through and how long that takes is, like life in general, unknown. The app allows them to check the expiry date of each new relationship, if they choose to, that is – and sometimes it’s five minutes, sometimes five years. In real life, of course, we don’t get to know that in advance….until now, anyway.
A new app called ‘coach.dating’ allows you to share a link with your partner and get results on how many years, days, and even minutes you have left to be together. According to their projections, anyway.
Ok, so we were intrigued, and visited the site, which was…eerie. The first thing you see on the home screen is this invitation to enter, and for some reason playing an old school game of “magic 8 ball” came to mind.
What follows is a prompt to copy the unique URL that appears, and send it to your partner. And at that step, it starts to feel a bit scary…is it going to immediately do some voodoo stuff and come back with “you and your current partner will spend exactly one month, plus 2 hours, 4 minutes, and 36 seconds together. Enjoy.” But we were intrigued, so….click.
Next you wait for your partner to join. As soon as she does, that’s when things get very Black Mirror.
But wait. If only one of you chooses to reveal your expiry date, things get wonky. It causes the app to recalibrate, so your 53 years might suddenly be 8 years, or 3 days. Can you change the results? Only the app knows for sure.
Ok. Yes, it’s gimmicky AF but it’s also pretty clever. Who among us doesn’t secretly – or maybe not so secretly – want to know if we are with THE ONE or if someone else is out there waiting for us….possibly on Tinder. Or at Dinah Shore Weekend.
In the meantime, Black Mirror is a really good show.
