Art by Enne Goldstein, you can find more of their work here
“Are you a fan of sports?”
“I consider dating a sport,” quips self-proclaimed queen of confidence, Serena Fucking Kerrigan.
The modern-day Samantha Jones has built a brand for herself from being unabashedly proud of who she is and owning her shit. She’s a bad bitch because she decided to be. Starting off as a producer and host for live content at Refinery29, it’s no surprise that Serena has transitioned those skills into creating her own quarantine Instagram live show “Let’s Fucking Date”. Introducing multiple new suitors per week, Kerrigan shares a drink, a meal, or an activity with each blind date as they get to know each other in front of thousands of viewers.
The magic of “Let’s Fucking Date” could be attributed to its two main defining factors: its host and the live component. “What’s great about live is that [messiness is] expected. That’s why this format works so well because the inauthenticity and the editing and the gimmicks that you would see on a show like The Bachelor or another dating show, you don’t have here. It’s so authentic. The awkward moments you would have on a first date is on the show, not knowing what question to ask next, the miscommunication, the talking over, it’s all there.” That combined with Kerrigan’s quick wit, total honesty, and no bullshit attitude makes for a wildly entertaining form of new media. She comes alive on front-facing camera in a way that would make reality producers everywhere swoon, “I’ve always wanted my own reality show — everyone always tells me I’d be the best person to go on The Bachelor. My mom is a development executive at Viacom, so she creates shows for MTV, VH1, she’s like a reality tv legend, but she would never let me take the risk of someone else producing me and editing me for ratings because you have no control.”
Before the show’s inception, Serena (also known as SFK) wasn’t really dating. “Something that’s really valuable to me is my time and I felt that swiping on someone and having a superficial connection over a photo was ridiculous. Truthfully, you really can’t tell anything about a person based off their [dating app] responses and a picture. So am I really going to give up an entire night of my week after working all day to know within the first five minutes if I’m going to like them or not?”
Quarantine has changed things, though. Not only are we running on different schedules and isolated from our friends and family, but we’re forced to find new ways of meeting and communicating with one another from a distance. As someone who was happily single before, this turn of events shifted perspective for SFK.
“I was alone in my apartment and as someone who is so empowered and so happy being single, I began to question, ‘Am I a fraud? Am I actually happy being single or is that a front?’ Because I felt this extreme anxiety from quarantine and being alone and my friends were leaving the city or going upstate with their boyfriends and it made me realize, ‘Whoah I am so alone right now.’”
I think it’s easy for young people, especially in New York, to have a similar mentality. We’re content being independent. We get fulfillment from other aspects of our lives besides having a partner. Many of those areas of fulfillment have been stripped away, though. People have lost their jobs, their sense of community, all these things that made us happy, fully-formed humans. It’s no wonder the way we view relationships and their value has changed and encouraged us to seek connection in ways we might not have previously.
If you had previously thought that Facetime dating would be awkward, SFK will quickly squash that thinking. While we might not have considered its predecessors Omegle or Chatroulette as a place to find your soulmate, technology aside, dating screen-to-screen is more traditional than we think.
“It is the most raw form of dating. All the bullshit is taken out. If you guys can’t connect just looking at each other on a FaceTime then why do you think you’d be able to get married or have a relationship? Conversation is the most important thing. When it comes to dating pre-Corona I think there were so many distractions that impacted a date. Now it’s stripped down to the core of what a date should be which is face to face communication, charisma, and chemistry.”
All of SFK’s dates have been blind which has been another refreshing reset as we’re often inclined to do our due diligence with social media stalking before we get to know who someone really is. All dates are chosen by her producer or referred by friends, but ultimately Serena says who stays and who goes.
“I think that women, myself included, tend to be like, ‘I think he likes me.’ But do you like them? We tend to ignore the red flags. No! Don’t put up with shit. If they say something you don’t like, call them out. If they have an explanation, great, they might be nervous, but you tend to know a lot, if not everything, about a person from the first date and either you accept it or you move on. And here’s the thing: you don’t have to stick around. In real life you might have to stick around because they bought you a drink, they paid for dinner, you got dressed up, but now in the comfort of your own home, you just hang up, there’s nothing riding on that.”
Modern dating (pre-Corona) had become a difficult minefield to navigate. Between the seemingly unending stream of people you could connect with over the apps and all the logistics that needed to be worked out to get together in the first place, FaceTime dating has proven to relieve a lot of unnecessary dating stressors — making it easier to connect and easier to bail if it’s just not working.
“Not having the money pressure is amazing, or the logistics or the planning. There’s usually so much pressure riding on both ends, ‘I spent so much money on this,’ ‘I got this new outfit,’ you want it to go well because there are so many things factored into this date. Now because that’s all taken away, I think everyone can be really relaxed, people can put less pressure on themselves to find the ‘one,’ and for that reason I think when people hear a red flag they’ll be more inclined to be like ‘bye’ and go on the next date.”
So far on the series, Kerrigan has had dates with people all over the country, previous reality tv show contestants, mamma’s boys, you name it. On the outset, I would make maybe the wrongful assumption that some of these guys wouldn’t be the relationship type — they’d just be looking for a good time. With sex off the table for the foreseeable future, though, have players turned into partners for now and for good?
“I was talking with someone about when this all ends is there just going to be so much sex, and I would argue no,” says Kerrigan. “I would argue that this is our new normal and we’re forced to connect way more intimately and deeply with someone before we even meet them and we’ll see the long-term effects of that. And not even talking about the hygienic part of it, like I don’t wanna fuck someone after we just went through a pandemic, but this is how dating is now: you meet, you talk on the phone, you talk on FaceTime, and you get to know them without sex on the table. Which is incredible.”
In the long run, this period of isolation may prove to be beneficial for relationships. Maybe this will be considered the “cultural reset.” We have all fundamentally changed during this time period. Many of us have lost things that we had tied to our identity or had given us purpose, like our profession or our social life. We can no longer rely on the endless sea of people that dating apps seem to present us with as an option for easy, meaningless sex. We can’t pick someone up at a bar and disappear in anonymity without exchanging last names. We’re forced to make connections, to communicate with one another in the most fundamentally human way — using only our words. As a generation who is generally under-committed already, this could mark a notable shift in how we’ll view our relationships moving forward.
Regardless of if you’re looking for a relationship, happily in one, a Facetime dating pro or newbie, “Let’s Fucking Date” is great escapism and an Instagram live notification you should actually pay attention to. You can catch up on previous episodes on Instagram @letsfuckingdate and keep up with Serena @serenakerrigan
