Sign of the times: Intellidating - Dating the brainiac way

Looks like revenge of the nerds on steroids. Washington Post recently ran an article that talks about a new trend in Manhattan - called - intellidating... It is matchmaking for people who find courtship through discussions and debates about art, literature, history and the likes. It definitely seems like a better thing to do rather than explore the texture of cold cobblestones stone drunk at 2am Saturday morning every weekend (which is another alternative for youngsters finding mates)...

In New York and other northeastern urban centers, including Washington and Boston, gray matter is the new black of the hip social scene. Thousands of young singles and couples are eschewing the perfunctory dinner and a movie for a growing circuit of late-night museum prowls, Oxford-style debates with pre-feud cocktail parties and book readings with cash bars and after-hour bands. In New York, even spelling bee nights have popped up as a romantic twist for the chic, unmarried and grammatically gifted.

It is, observers of the trend say, a visceral backlash to life in a Paris Hilton world. It's a chance to impress a mate, or a potential date, by flexing a body part that has lost ground in recent years to biceps and pecs -- the brain.

"Intellidating," first coined in England in 2002, sprang from "Intelligence Squared," a live discussion series launched by a couple of British moguls whose professed aim was to make debating "sexy." The concept leapt across the pond to New York last year with the American version of Intelligence Squared -- IQ2US -- launched by philanthropist and businessman Robert Rosenkranz. A 45-minute cocktail reception precedes each debate, after which comes a cranial lucha libre where, on one night, author Michael Crichton sparred with other panelists on global warming. For the right set, it can be quite the aphrodisiac.

I guess this is a further sign that the world is getting ever more specialized and potential single people want to choose exactly the right partner… Not too sure if this is a good sign or not…

By the way, if you did not notice, it also looks like Yuppie (a shortening of ‘young urban professional’) is out and yocos (the Post explained that yoco's are young cosmopolitans) is in… I thought yuppie was cooler.

Paper: Utilization of neural network and agent technology combination for distributed intelligent application and services. A thesis by Jouni Huhtinen