Dystopian Dating Event Recap: Love & Companionship in the AI Era

Last Friday we gathered the Dystopian Dating community for another exciting evening at the Filmrauschpalast in Moabit (yes, Berliners, traveling to Moabit is part of the Dystopian experience 😉). Guests of all relationship statuses came together to discuss not one but two issues that are very top of mind today: navigating the challenges of modern relationships, and preparing for a future where AI tools play a major role in our social and dating lives.

For those who are new to us, Dystopian Dating is a cinema event series hosted by ReSee Movies. We combine screenings of films that deal with the challenges of modern dating, love, relationships, etc., with interactive activities designed to give our community a chance to reflect, mingle, and maybe even meet someone new. Our event on Friday was the fourth edition in our Dystopian Dating series, which you can learn more about at dystopiandating.com!

Ironically enough, an algorithm was actually what first gave me the idea for last week’s event; since I had been posting on Instagram about dating and loneliness in the modern digital age, it didn’t take long for the almighty algorithm to start sending me the content of Monika Jiang, a local community builder, writer, and speaker who goes deep on the topic of loneliness.

See, technology has its perks!

What’s even more interesting is that I was served a piece of Monika’s content that really surprised me: I saw someone who Fast Company recently dubbed a “loneliness expert” talking about the many ways in which ChatGPT and AI tools could actually help to improve our social lives. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I’d expected to hear in her messaging. To an old-school Luddite like me, that was pretty shocking. “How can interacting with silly robots who want to be human help us get over this epidemic of social isolation,” I scoffed to myself as I packed a fresh pinch of tobacco into my corn-cob pipe 😤

As I scrolled through more and more of Monika’s well-researched and heartfelt content, I realized a couple of things: first: she might be right about AI if we use it properly, and second: we DEFINITELY needed to get her in front of our Dystopian Dating community. So once again, I (hypocritically) used technology to DM her and set up a meeting.

What came out of that meeting was not only a friendship, but an idea for a banger of a Dystopian Dating event centered around the topic of AI. Of course, it didn’t take long for us to connect the dots on what movie to show: there has never been a better time to revisit the romantic sci-fi classic Her.

As always with ReSee events, our goal is to make our community members feel seen by their movie watching options, and to curate community-based experiences that add something extra to your typical movie night. Given how polarizing Artificial Intelligence is in our society, Monika and I decided that the best way to enhance a screening of her would be to pair it with a panel of innovators, scholars, and entrepreneurs in the AI space. We strove to assemble a panel of experts who have differing viewpoints on the future of AI, and who have paid particular attention to how not just AI, but all technology, has already been affecting our social interactions for generations.

In the end, the panel featured three fantastic speakers from different backgrounds and who have all made Artificial Intelligence part of their life’s work:

• Önder Çelik, PhD, an anthropologist and UX researcher who, via his work with the Weizenbaum Institute, has recently focused on the pros and cons of AI companions
• Gleb Kalinin, a psychologist, coach, artist, and technologist who helps organizations integrate AI into their tools in a human-centered way
• And Sara Landi Tortoli, one of the founders of Ayen, an AI coach and companion which aims to get to know you, support you, and eventually connect you to other Ayen users with whom it thinks you’d get along

When guests arrived for the panel, we gave them colored wristbands corresponding to how they felt about the future of AI: guests donned red wristbands if they were more terrified than excited, green ones if they were more excited than terrified, and yellow if they were ambivalent, conflicted, or unsure.

One of my favorite parts of the event was that you could see and feel the diversity in the room: not only is our community incredibly mixed and global, but there was a good balance between red, yellow, and green wristbands…though if I had to guess, “green’ won by a decent margin. Sadly, I had forgotten my corn cob pipe at home, or I would have grumbled to myself about that while tightening my suspenders and emptying the pipe against the heel of my mud-caked, steel-toed boot (I was on team “red” for the evening, if you hadn’t guessed).

Monika then led the panel discussion and keyed in on many of the most important nuances of the dilemma, such as the difference between using an AI companion versus depending on one, how in the past corporations like dating apps have used AI to hook us rather than help us, and how, even if AI therapists might never be a substitute for the real thing, they could potentially bring mental health resources to many parts of the globe where people lack sufficient access to them (including right here in Germany, if we’re being honest).

All of this set the stage for the evening’s main event: the screening of her. I was shocked to discover that probably 75% of our guests for the evening had NEVER seen her! But I was honored that ReSee had given so many people a chance to watch this incredible film for the first time.

During the film, the energy in the room was electric (no technology pun intended). At various points during the movie, Theodore, Samantha, or some other character would say something that harkened directly back to the panel, causing some muffled giggling and quiet side-glances amongst audience members. But what was truly remarkable is how scarily accurate this film was despite being made more than a decade ago. Sure, it oversimplifies the technical aspect and still has elements of melodrama, but its realistic portrayal of how AI and Large Language Models are currently being integrated into every aspect of our lives made the movie feel like it was made just yesterday. Personally, it was my first time watching it in years, and I was again left in awe of Spike Jonze‘s prophetic, relatable storytelling.

When the credits rolled around 11:30pm, there was a mad rush for the cinema lobby, and only partially because of everyone had to pee. Guests launched into conversations about what they would have done in situations from the film, how they saw AI fitting into their own lives, and, perhaps more in red-wristbanned circles, how doomed we all are (ok that was mostly just me). Toasts, introductions, and conversations carried on late into the evening until guests eventually went home…some earlier than others 🌚🌙 Our goal at each ReSee event is to curate a movie watching experience that makes it worth it to get off the couch. We believe that, for it to be worth the effort, watching a film at the cinema has to be more than just a movie – it has to be rooted in our desire to experience things together, create a sense of connection, and provide a really fun story to tell our friends. Maybe I’m biased, but I feel like we accomplished that last Friday, and we can’t wait to bring you the next edition of Dystopian Dating.

Afterword: Takeaways and Feedback from Our Guests

ReSee aims to launch curated cinema experiences at the intersection of film and various aspects of popular culture, beginning with Dystopian Dating. That means that we take all feedback and suggestions into consideration, as there’s no better way to cater an event to an audience than by simply listening to them.

I caught up with as many of our guests as I could after the film/in the last couple of days, and even though the reception was generally positive, some guests did have constructive feedback for us, and I wanted to share that here as well: Striking a Balance Between Structured and Unstructured “Mingling”

A couple of guests shared that they had hoped ReSee would create more of a structure that focused less on the “reflect” and more on the “mingle” and “meet someone new” aspects of the evening, by encouraging guests to break out of their circles and interact with others. That’s definitely a critique we’ve heard before and have taken to heart. We got similar feedback from our very first Dystopian Dating event, where we paired a screening of The Lobster with a “Dystopian Matchmaking Game Show”.

The challenge we face while curating Dystopian Dating events is finding the balance between structured and unstructured activity while also curating an event experience that complements the film we screen. Our event on Friday sacrificed some of that guest-to-guest mingling time in exchange for a panel discussion where they got the chance to interact with professionals in the AI space. That meant that there was less structured time to meet other guests, at least before the film. But at some of our other events, we’ve curated games and activities that are more focused on creating new connections amongst community members.

Striking a Balance Between Introvert- and- Extrovert-Friendly Activities

Another common feedback we’ve gotten from our community is that, especially around the topic of dating, forced social interactions can be intimidating, exhausting, or counter-productive. More introverted guests might prefer to just observe than participate, and I’m personally fine with that. We’ve tried to be very clear that Dystopian Dating is not a singles event and is not speed dating, so we don’t particularly put an emphasis on connecting guests to one another, instead trusting that it will happen organically if and when the time is right. Of course, it would be nice if Dystopian Dating ends up producing a love story or two 💘👼🏽 but we see that more as icing on the cake; the cake itself is just a thought-provoking evening at the cinema.

Listening and Learning From Our Community

Above all else, we want our community members to feel like they are represented not only by our choice of films, but also by the spaces and the activities we curate. So if you’ve been to one of our events and you have suggestions for how to make it better, or if you haven’t been yet but you have an idea for a future concept, please get in touch! We’d love to hear from you and we hope to see you soon, preferably at a ReSee Event 🍿🤓