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Bad dates are a fact of life in NYC — from agonizing, job interview-esque nights out with unchecked egomaniacs, to marathon get-togethers that wind up leaving you both deflated and ghosted, it’s no secret that making connections in today’s Big Apple is a toxic, metropolitan mess.
Exhausted by the swipe culture of the apps and the pressure to perform when you actually do manage to get to meet someone in person, some New Yorkers are hanging up their hat on romantic connections altogether — favoring taking their AI partners out for a night on the town, instead.
While I’ve not quite sunk to falling-in-love-with-a-chatbot levels of desperation myself, my Gotham dating resume has been filled with memorable disasters — like the aspiring writer who explained his bad screenplay to me for an hour and a half, or the poor guy who suffered a full-blown, two hour panic attack in the middle of dinner. (Was it something I said?)
So when I recently came across an Instagram ad for an event touting a new way to date in real life — where participants are blindfolded until a proper connection has been established, like in the hit Netflix reality show, “Love is Blind” — the still-single lady in me was more than a little intrigued.
My Hoang Nguyen, 38, is the co-founder of Unseen Connection, a popular gathering that made its initial debut in Lisbon, Portugal, last year. The point, she told The Post, is to help people get over today’s looks-obsessed digital dating culture — and facilitate actual sparks.
“We both (loved) ‘Love Is Blind,’” Nguyen told The Post — referring to her co-founder/best friend Martina Grüber. “So we said to each other, ‘Why not host our own event and bring the concept of “LIB” to real life?’ We wanted to make dating more fun and exciting again, without being so superficial.”
The in-the-dark evenings are kept small, to a curated, short list of 30 daters — usually 15 men and 15 women — kept tight to ensure each participant is paired up with four potential matches.
After forking over the $100 fee that includes a drink and hors d’oeuvres, attendees fill out a 20-part survey that includes questions on shared values, desired relationship dynamics and intimacy.
The matches are then made by a virtual agent that Nguyen built in, using ChatGPT — though she noted that she and her team still read every application.
Unseen Connection’s NYC chapter lead, Arya — a former dater at one of the brand’s Lisbon events and co-host with his girlfriend Ellen Yaffe — shared that while a surplus of Big Apple women immediately for tickets when they became available, it was harder to convince Gotham’s men to take the blindfolded dating plunge.
To attract quality gents, he decided to get creative.
“For guys who I thought were attractive on the subway, I’d give them a card that read, ‘You’re hot,’” Arya told The Post. “Then on the back it had our QR code and said, ‘I’m giving you this because I think you’re good-looking, but your person isn’t on your algorithm. Try this instead.’”
Ready to try something new, I filled out the questionnaire and anxiously awaited Unseen Connection’s first New York night.
The actual event
The night of Unseen Connection’s NYC debut, I arrived at It’s Him — the swanky Hell’s Kitchen cocktail lounge where the event would take place — dressed in a cream shell top and black pants that made me feel confident. It felt ironic that I’d be the only one able to see my ensemble for most of the night.
As I sipped my vodka martini at the small table where my dates and I would meet, I chatted with the other women who had come to the event. One, a 32-year-old software engineer named Scarlett, shared that she had been single for nearly three years and signed up because she’s “not a fan of the apps.”
Ladies had been instructed to arrive 15 minutes early so that the volunteers could help us get situated — and to prevent us from catching a glimpse of our potential suitors.
“I’m very open to however this turns out, whether it’s a match or not,” Scarlett told me. “It’s more for my self-confidence — to be like, I’m trying again.”
Inspired by her optimism, I took a breath and donned my blindfold. After a quick recap of the night’s structure — the men would be led to each woman’s table by a volunteer for three 12-minute dates, with a surprise twist for the fourth round — the guys were brought into the venue.
Then came the fun part — the actual dating. For the next hour, I had the pleasure of speaking and connecting with three different men, sight entirely unseen.
Instantly, I was struck by how my other senses tuned in to gather data on who could be sitting in front of me. Smell, the sound of their voice and the feel of their hands — not to mention conversation and chemistry — all played into my choice on whether or not to ultimately link up.
After the bonus round of taking off our blindfolds and finding the match to the names on our wristbands (As “Barbie,” I was instructed to find my “Ken”), I came away from the night with one match — an intriguing man I had a strong connection with, who somehow also turned out to be handsome.
Whatever comes next — or doesn’t — the experience felt like a resounding success. The real victory, Nguyen reminded me, was simply leaping to pursue a real-life connection — and learn more about myself in the process.
“It’s so exciting to see people being vulnerable — to meet someone in such a unique way,” said Nguyen. “It’s (about) getting out of your head without looking at appearance, and not needing to pretend about who you are…Hopefully, something beautiful comes out of that.”
English (US)