Thanks to the rise of popular smart phone apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Friendsy, online dating has become more and more common over the last few years. Of course, there is still a stigma associated with these apps, a slight sense of shame in the presumption that one couldn’t just go out and meet someone in the real world. However, in the post-human era, this stigma will dissolve, as online dating will reveal itself as a much more efficient way of finding the ideal mate, through advanced search engines and match-making algorithms. Further still, technology is developing to the point where entire sexual relationships can theoretically be maintained without ever meeting, replaced instead by a combination of customizable bots, remote controlled pleasure giving devices called teledildonics, and virtual sex simulators using Haptic technology. For now, those with a preference for this sort of relationship are stigmatized as being “Internet-Sexual”, but perhaps we are not far off from a point where growing old with a synthetically-built significant other will not be uncommon.
