It was a well established fact in the 80’s & 90’s that if your heart beat for someone, the surest way to make their heart beat for you was to create a mix tape.
Creating a mix tape was an art among the teenagers of Guwahati when I was growing up. There was no internet, hence this was not an algorithm driven process. You could not simply do a google search of the ‘top 10 romantic songs’. You had to rely on your own experiences, trust your own instincts and in some cases seek out the opinion of your friends who would first ridicule you and then offer their expertise.
There were many fundamental questions to answer.
Should you create a tape of ‘English’ songs or should you also drop in a Bollywood number? Should these be pop songs or can you also add a rock number like Hysteria by Def Leppard or should you include everlasting love songs starting from Elvis?
Creating the tape itself was another effort as you had to first score the songs you wanted and then patiently record them over a blank tape. You had to create the cover art for this blank tape too. So when it was presented to the one you desired, the person knew the effort you had put just like the bower birds did and still do. If you arranged the songs in a particular order in your tape, you could probably tell an entire story using the song titles. And if you knew the origin story of the songs you recorded, ooopf.. you were simply the best!
This ritual of creating mix tapes died around the end of the millennium. For a few years in the early 2000s, folks tried to replicate the magic by creating an audio CD. The nail on the coffin was when folks realised one could copy 300 songs onto a CD / DVD instead of the 9–10 songs on the audio CD. I mean how is one supposed to care and judge when you throw hundreds songs with a lazy copy and paste at them? Where is the effort in that?
Which brings us to today and dating rituals in the current decade.
Dating today is all about swiping left and right.
The question is:
1. Is there a merit in creating an anti -Tinder?
2. What would the nature of this product be?
3. And more importantly, is there even a need for the elaborate rituals of dating and mating for the folks of today?
