This procedure lets the practitioner take a detailed look inside the patient's pelvic cavity though a miniature camera. Easier than admitting that this was a risk I was willing to take. Easier than admitting that an algorithm someone had made to sell ads to singles was now in charge of my happiness. It was easier to pretend I was a woman conducting a scientific investigation of language and love than it was to admit I was lonely. I began seeing similarities between the Turing test and what us Tinder-searchers were doing - whether we were looking for sex or looking for love. I love such things; I am a magpie at heart. It will not surprise you to learn that this is a totally batshit way to approach Tinder and that, Bestcamporn.com for my snobbery, I paid a price. This seems a good moment to tell you that, for a civilian, I know a lot about robots.



I know people are into that. I chalked this experience up to bad luck, and continued to only date people with whom I had interesting online conversations. None of this was bad on its own, but it was so much. That’s when I realised that what I was doing amounted to a kind of Turing test. This effort is, in short, called a Turing test; an artificial intelligence that manages, over text, to convince a person that it is actually human can be said to have passed the Turing test. A Tinder chat was its own kind of test - one in which we tried to prove to one another that we were real, that we were human, fuckable, or possibly more than that: dateable. But once I gave up on the banterers, my Tinder chats became uniform. Once I gave up on the banterers, my Tinder chats became uniform. I knew a little bit about how to proceed with my Tinder Turing tests from one of my favourite books - one I was teaching at the time: The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian.



In fact, I was teaching undergrads about robots in science writing and science fiction when I began online dating. Online dating seemed more bearable when I thought of it this way. It's the kind of adult entertainment that will get you coming back for more. After I said I didn’t want to date any more he sent me adorable letterpress cards in the mail with upsetting notes inside that said he was upset, no, angry, that I wouldn’t give us a shot. Afterwards, he chatted to me as I counted the appropriate number of minutes I needed to wait before making an exit that wouldn’t seem like I was running away. The first man I chatted with who met my conversational standards was an academic, a musician. Even through our little chat window it was obvious he was fully and messily human, which I loved, and so we chatted all day long, for days, and I could not wait to meet him.



There were multiple bouts of tears, there were proposed road trips to Florida to meet his mother and dog, there was an unexpected accordion serenade, and there was the assertion that I would make a very beautiful pregnant woman. The trial had to be held in Bristol because there was no court big enough in Devon. He had a dark sense of humour, he was witty, and he laid all his baggage out there on the line right away. He said that he was really interested in mass shooters and the kinds of messages they left behind and, still naked in bed, he pulled out his phone and showed me a video from 4Chan. It was a compilation of mass shooters’ video manifestos, but set to comically upbeat music. Reality was different. What had seemed passionate and daring online, turned out to be alarmingly intense. Keezer was the best player and biggest enthusiast—he had helped stream live Foosball-training sessions online, and drawn praise for his wicked push shot—but all three liked to play, and Keezer and Youssef traveled across the States to compete.