Actual dating is a collaborative project riven with anxiety, negotiation, and compromise; it is a matter of taking the first tentative feints toward building a collective social unit whose needs will take precedence over one’s petty personal desires. Consuming stories about dating, though, can be a purely solitary affair, with no contingencies to impede the pleasure.

The mission of online-dating CEOs like Sam Yagan of OkCupid and Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish is to convince us that actual dating can and should be more like enjoying a good story; it is entertainment consumption, an individualistic pursuit that takes advantage of the way technology has improved on-demand commerce. 

-Rob Horning, “Single Servings”