Fan Expo Speed Dating: You can't hurry love

Victoria Alarcon
Features & Opinions Editor
Robin LeBlanc would rather not relive her speed dating experience.

“I didn’t find anyone that I connected with and I didn’t put down any numbers,” explains LeBlanc, visibly deflated.  “Part of it was because the conversation was lacking and the other was because the age factor came into play.”
“Nothing good is going to come out of this stuff,” says LeBlanc.”Essentially it’s only good for meeting people and getting to work on your first impression and just bettering yourself in terms of social situations.” She rated her overall Fan Expo speed dating session a six or a seven.
LeBlanc wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Other people came out of the session empty-handed. However, her less-than-ideal experience was not shared by everyone.
“I’m having a great time,” says Zack Klebanoff. He had three potential dates written on his card. “I thought this would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. I’m currently single and thought ‘why not?’ You meet really cool people and it’s nice to have it all in a sort of more intimate setting,”

Speed dating is nothing new to the world of serious daters and people looking for love. It’s a quick way to meet numerous potential partners and, in theory, it’s a quick way to see if you’ve found the right one. As speed dating gained mainstream popularity by appearing in Sex and the City and Hitch, it has been portrayed as both glamorous and somewhat comical. However, pop culture tends to skip over an important question: does it actually work?
According to Marco Francesconi, a professor of economics at the University of Essex, and Alison Lenton, a lecturer in the department of psychology at the University of Edinburgh, speed dating will only result in failure. They analysed 84 speed dating sessions that included 1,868 female participants and 1,870 male participants, and saw them converse in pairs for three minutes. What Francesconi and Lenton found was that the majority of participants ended up single. The reason: too much variety leads to poor decision-making.

“In contexts in which time is a limited resource, choice variety — rather than facilitating choice quality or increasing choosiness — is confusing and potentially detrimental to choice quality,” noted the two researchers in their journal article “Too Much of a Good Thing? Variety is Confusing in Mate Choice.”
By giving only three minutes to decide who can be considered as a potential mate, otherwise notable traits such as age, weight, and height become a blur, explained Francesconi. When it is time to make a decision, we forget what we liked and didn’t like about the potential partner and make a blinded decision
But relationship journalist for AskMen.com, Jessica McGovern, believes that not every speed dater is bound to be doomed. The ways she sees it is that it all really depends on what kind of expectations you have when going into the session.
“It really depends on your standards. If the girl is just going in for the fun of it and will only hook up with someone who amazes her then the chances are very low,” says McGovern who went to a speed dating session herself.
And it’s not only the standards you go into it with, but the amount of times you try it. “If you are organizing something where 100 couples are meeting every night eventually you are bound to get one or two couples who hook up,” explains McGovern.
Though, speed dating is not a bad way to meet someone, it is still not for everyone.
“If you have trouble in real life and if you really are incredibly shy and you have trouble approaching people then definitely give it a try, but if you’re pretty outgoing and you’re a relatively relaxed person then I think you’ll be disappointed.”
Even though studies and pieces of anecdotal evidence argue that speed dating will probably not work, veteran speed dating co-ordinator Ryan Glitch believes that you shouldn’t count speed dating out just yet.
“Yes, I am absolutely convinced it works,” says Glitch, a co-ordinator for speed dating sessions all over North America for several years now.  “I know one couple who is engaged from it and I know several other couples who are dating seriously and have moved in together.”
With speed dating you’re dating a whole bunch of people, not just one and everyone is looking for the same thing: someone they can be themselves around.
All photos by Phil Darlington