X

The make(out)-or-break(up) for Google Glass: Dating

Yes, people have already begun to experiment with wearing Google Glass on a date. Is it a love-killer? Or does it create a frisson of excitement?

Chris Matyszczyk
3 min read
Is she making eyes at me? Or checking the baseball scores?

I have a confession to make.

Please don't tell everyone, but I'd like to kiss someone who's wearing Google Glass.

In fact, if you really push me up against this wall and make me talk, I'd also like to kiss someone while wearing Google Glass.

It's not that I don't think Google Glass is stranger than walking up to a stranger and putting your finger in his or her ear.

It's precisely because of Google Glass's sheer strangeness that I want to know whether it would alter my approach to love.

Would I think -- or even feel -- something different? Would I have to dip my head to an unforeseen angle in order to avoid being poked? Most importantly, would I care whether the camera is on or off?

Sadly, some who bowed, scraped, and applied to own one of the these gadgets have already begun to experiment with seeing how Google Glass might alter their love lives.

Rosa Golijan of NBC's Today.com has thrust herself into this new life with a gusto that Matt Lauer would envy.

She says she's been on "half-a dozen" dates with men while wearing her new object of attraction.

I wondered, naturally, whether these half-a-dozen dates were with half-a-dozen men.

She told me: "Half a dozen different fellas, with some of whom I've had additional dates afterward. (Glass was worn on those, too.)"

You must decide whether these men are brave, foolhardy, or merely enchanted by Golijan regardless of her eyewear.

Golijan does concede that the contraption "sure makes the awkward moments more awkward."

Oddly, she says that her dates didn't seem so worried that she might photograph them through her lens. Rather, wearing Google Glass seemed to turn her into a rockstarish object of attraction, which meant that whenever she was out, everyone wanted to talk about them or even try them on.

She admitted that one date had become not best pleased when other men sidled up in alleged fascination with her gadget.

Now to the question that you (and I) want answered: "Yes, friends, Glass can get in the way, uh, physically. I've got no issues making out with glasses on. But things got weird once when a fella started kissing me while I was still wearing the headset. God forbid two Glass wearers ever hit things off."

When two wearers of normal glasses kiss, they often resort to simply taking them off. Should you not have tried this, please just believe me.

But there's a temptation with Google Glass to leave them on, simply because you remain an object of wonder. Perhaps, indeed, they begin to define you.

I did wonder whether, over time, she had created a more disciplined regimen with respect to, perhaps, taking them off at certain appropriate -- or even important -- moments.

Golijan told me: "I've (very gradually) gotten better when it comes to dealing with interruptions!:) That was bound to improve over time."

Yes, Sean Penn says the same thing.

Perhaps, in time, women wearing Glass will find it easier than men wearing these prized objects.

I say this because I asked my colleague Lori Grunin how she would feel if a date turned up be-Glassed.

She said: "It's an immediate signal that your date is a douchenozzle and probably records himself having sex."

I wonder if any of Golijan's dates thought that she might be a voyeuristic filmmaker.

I wonder, too, whether his-and-hers Glass-wearing will catch on, as an expression of some progressive bent. A sort of cooler-than-thou label.

Naturally, some ER workers can't wait for the first patients wandering in with Google Glass injuries, caused by overly enthusiastic, perhaps drunken, Glass collisions as one or both parties moved in to, um, seal the deal.

Most importantly, though, I asked Golijan whether any of her magnificent half-dozen might pan out to be longer-term prospects, who might tolerate her current (and, perhaps, future) obsession with gadgetalia.

"If only I had a crystal ball to predict how my love life will progress!;)," she told me. "Time will tell."

You mean Google Glass doesn't come with a crystal ball? How retrograde.