"Hi, good to meet you. I'm from the Internet."
New Yorkers want to derail a bar that apparently attracts Tinder dates. Or "Internet people meeting" as one resident put it, garnering howls from said Internet.
At a recent community board meeting, residents of the Upper West Side voiced their concern about a local bar's bid for a patio liquor licence, claiming it's a hotbed of online dating. The bar, Riposo 72, wants to extend its license to serve beer, wine and liquor at its 16-seat outdoor sidewalk cafe.
"I have seen people say, 'I met you on the Internet,' and you're putting that on the sidewalk?" resident Al Salsano told DNAinfo.com. "I don't want children walking near 'Internet people' meeting." (Another resident chimed in with, "I don't go out to meet people I found on the Internet.")
It's NIMBYism with a touch of Grampa Simpson, given that online dating is now increasingly the norm.
Some 38 per cent of single Americans looking for a partner have used online dating at one point or another, according to the Pew Research Center, an American thinktank. In 2013, one quarter of online daters (23 per cent) said they had gotten married or started a long-term relationship with someone they had met through a dating website or app. More than a third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 began online, according to research from the University of Chicago, which also found that online couples have longer and happier unions.
Even so, online dating is still not yet universally accepted: Pew found that 21 per cent of internet users agree with the statement "people who use online dating sites are desperate." And yes, it can still be awkward explaining to elderly relatives that you met on the World Wide Web. And sure, some online dating is arguably menacing: I'm thinking Mingleton, a Tinder for people who are already in the same room together.
But the Upper West Side's "children" will likely be fine.
Zosia Bielski