; they’re just not aware that it was explicitly pornographic, ‘Cthulhu mythos’ stuff.”
Explicit flirtations aside, their creative connection allowed them to get to know each other on a deeper level. Over time, they revealed details about their real lives, and they decided to meet in person. Soon, the woman who became Rudy’s wife moved to the U.S. to be with him.
“My wife’s wit and cleverness … She makes me laugh more than anybody, and I believe it’s the same for her,” Rudy told TechCrunch. “When we wrote, we wrote lots of poetry together and things like that. That just becomes a connection — we were locked in before we’d ever had any romantic encounter.”
Developing a connection with a friend — even an internet friend — can help speed up the “getting to know you” process that typically comes with online dating, which users have begun to describe as “admin work” or a second job. In contrast with dating apps, this way of meeting more naturally mimics the feel of meeting through friends.
James Cassar, a writer in their 30s, found a similar sense of common ground with their partner Nicole. The couple originally met on Twitter, where they followed each other because they posted about the same niche rock bands.
When they later matched on Tinder, they already recognized each other from the internet, allowing them to skip the small talk.
“When Nicole looked at my Tinder, she was like, ‘You like Cheem? I don’t know anyone that listens to Cheem,’ and I was like, ‘Then you must know that I’m that person [from Twitter],’” Cassar told TechCrunch. “It’s like a weird CAPTCHA — like, which underground indie band do you like?”
Though they had never spoken, they already knew a lot about each other, since they had been reading each other’s posts for years. And often, people are more open about their thoughts and feelings when they’re posting semi-anonymously to a crowd of internet strangers.
“I think that Twitter has changed how we communicate and has definitely changed how we relate to other people,” Cassar said. “It bypasses a lot of the social contract of like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna meet somebody in person, and we’re gonna get a coffee or something, and then I’m not gonna tell them this embarrassing thing about me until seven or eight dates in.’ Whereas on Twitter, you could be dropping lore every five seconds.”
With the internet permeating so much of our everyday lives, the separation between online and offline relationships can blur.
The internet provides beautiful connections of all sorts, all the time.
Recently, when a friendly stranger asked how I met my boyfriend, I was prepared to offer my canned version of the story: We were close friends for seven years, and after our friends pestered us about it long enough, we finally got together.
My boyfriend’s answer was a bit more blunt.
“We met on a meme page,” he said.
With some surprise and amusement, I realized that his version of events was correct, too.
While we did start dating after many years of friendship, we first became friends because we were both moderators of a local Facebook meme group in 2017. We crossed paths in the irony-laden halls of “weird Facebook,” the same collection of esoteric meme groups where Zeke and Owen met.
“There’s always a responsible distance that people should put between their presence online and themselves,” Rudy said. “But I think the internet provides beautiful connections of all sorts, all the time.”
It’s a bit weirder than meeting on Hinge, but so far, it’s working.
