How to Build a Relationship

May 20, 2019

Listen: How to Build a Relationship by Flume & JPEGMAFIA

The title “How to Build a Relationship” might as well be about the dynamic between JPEGMAFIA and Flume, which is surprisingly beautiful. In this song, their two idiosyncratic styles sort of wrestle as equals until they fall into step for as long as they can manage, with JPEG spitting insults over Flume’s punchy electronics. After bars of running in sync, he finally explodes in exhaustion: “FUCK!” You know what they say: relationships are hard work.

A match made in digital heaven

Match.com just announced it’s adding a new premium feature: a human dating consultant. Basically a paid friend who you can call to pick apart confusing text messages and devise a relatively sane reply, they’ll then coach you through future tricky interactions as your relationships progress. This seems like a total no-brainer in that it 1. it actually fulfills a need and 2. would justify a hefty additional cost (we won’t know the $$ deets until the feature rolls out later this month). Nothing like the human touch.

The human touch… of a button

And the new premium feature at Uber is a button you can push in the app to tell your driver to shut up. Just like that, we found a relationship where communication is not key.

One more way

Everyone is going wild over Caity Weaver’s Gen X thing in the NYT this week, but don’t sleep on Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s article about All The Rules, the ’90s book about how to snag yourself a husband. Tl;dr: remain mysterious long enough to keep him interested, making sure to hide all your individual qualities; get divorced once you acknowledge that you actually have human needs. Calling this now as the next hot coffee table book for Snake People* everywhere.

 

*Millennials

 I do.

Margot