Finding someone is a sometimes baffling endeavor. There are lots of great services now where you can spell out exactly what you want online and be matched up through various profile points to potentially compatible individuals. I found my partner before the online dating services were really developed, so I still remember when you did things like go out to dance clubs to find someone. I used to go to mixed clubs quite a bit in San Francisco, where some people were straight and others were gay. It was cool that people were mixing but there was of course tension around who was there for what.
If we take the online dating paradigm and integrated it into the nightclub we could create a completely legibile environment to simplify things. Imagine that the floor, furniture and seating were differently colored and labeled, so there was an area to hang out for singles versus people already in a relationship. You could divide it up into straight and gay. You could further subdivide to make it clear who wasn’t tolerant of monogamy or who was really, really into feet. You could divide things by income bracket and political party. Put all the people that have ever been arrested in a particular area along with all kinds of demarcation around who arrived with whom and who has been involved before in past relationships. The club could be called ID (Identifiable Differences).
Of course there would be the problem of people not telling the truth. Beyond that though, what would this legibility produce in terms of pushing or not pushing boundaries? If you’ve never been with a person of the same sex and you all of a sudden get groped in a nightclub by someone fitting that description it does make you think if your lack of experiences makes any sense. But when everything is made legible, are we constrained? Or would it instead through its clear distinctions make you keenly aware of what you were and were not, and hold you accountable for your limitations? It would be great if someone would build it so we could find out. I would be hanging out in the corner with the other magick freak smart boy loners that are really into pinball (we all fit some kind of description in the end).