Slow Discovery Vs. Information Overload

How dating apps and social media changed how we select, approach, and evaluate people.

I’m 35 years old, and I’m part of a generation that has no idea what it was like to date before social media.

Facebook was created in 2004, but it was originally exclusive to Harvard students, and then to other elite American Universities. It wasn’t until 2006 that Facebook finally allowed anyone over the age of 13 to join. Before my friends and I were allowed into Facebook’s walled garden, however, there was Orkut. Created by Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer in 2004, Orkut was far more democratic, quickly becoming popular in countries like India and my native Brazil. I joined when I was only 15 in 2005.

Orkut had features like a photo album that only allowed for 12 photos, and a wall where people could leave public messages, but no private chat. Selecting those 12 photos took us hours. We had a lot to consider: the aesthetics we were aiming for, the image we wanted to convey, and the friends or family members we wanted to shout out to. It was precisely the kind of task that appealed to our developing teenage brains.

The public messages on the wall were another challenge. We wanted to talk to our friends and crushes, but we were well aware that everyone else could read those messages too. There were also testimonials that people could write about you, but would only become public and show on your wall if you approved them, so they became our preferred method for secret communication. We would send testimonials back and forth to our friends, revealing our deepest secrets, trusting that the friend in question would be smart enough to hit delete instead of accepting it and accidentally making it all public. There were other, better means to communicate privately online. We could email each other, for instance, but we didn’t. We liked to play with fire. Those were exciting times.