Hightech dating

Lauria Meadoff, co-founder af Chat the Planet :

 

“How do the cultural clashes between the traditional Indian culture and the emergence of technology such as text messaging and internet dating effect  romantic relationships in India?”

My answer:

I am in Bangalore, the centre of the IT-boom in India. I have been discussing this with a photographer. His friends claim him to be “the digital Romeo”. Apparently the internet and sms does not help that much in building relationships, for that you need to meet. However it helps people to maintain distance relations when jobs and other realities forces people to live apart. He also like to take first contact with the computer. According to his friends he has thousands of nice girls in his contact list of which 900 can be found online any given time. In my opinion these functions are more or less universal, so I ask if there is something more specific. The answer is that there are websites for arranging marriages where you can browse for race, caste, wealth and so on. This service is used by all kinds of people, not just parents. Another particularity is that it is more common to own a mobile than being able to read. So mms is more frequent than sms. Frequency of messages is also because of the prices. Depending on what plan you have you can send messages very cheap and it doesn’t take long time. It appears as if people in rural India communicate with pictures rather than words (at least written words). I like the thought that there is a new way of communicating growing in forgotten places.