[Keyshia Cole – Love (Duke Dennis / Kai Cenat)]
We’ve all seen those couples on campus who can’t get off of each other or are always together. Some people think they’re obnoxious, while others think, “Man, I wish I had a love like that.”
We’ve also seen those countless Fizz posts saying “There are no good men on Northwestern’s campus.”
[Vine Thud]
So it begs the question: Where do you find love at NU?
A pretty obvious answer is:
Talk to people! This is how I got my first girlfriend on campus, and if you feel like the other person is showing interest in you, continue the conversation.
Ever see a cute girl or guy in your lecture or discussion group? Walk up to them and introduce yourself!
A 2021 Stanford study of about 5,400 adults said that of couples that didn’t meet online, 9% of them met in school. Even if the chances are slim, you never know what might happen.
Let’s hear from Weinberg freshman Kieran McLean, who met his long-term girlfriend in high school.
[Kieran Clip – “11 months” – “Athlete thing”]
Meeting people organically is the way most people imagine finding their partner, and McLean says it’s a great way to meet somebody.
[Kieran Clip – Recommendation]
McLean himself recommends it here, and seeing as though he and his girlfriend have been together for 11 months, I think it’s pretty good advice.
Another Weinberg freshman who met his girlfriend naturally in school is Sam McLain, but they met while they were both in college.
[Sam McLain – “one month” – “colectivo”]
Meeting someone at a coffee shop is interesting– even though it may sound like the start of an indie romcom, it seems like a pretty chill way to find somebody.
On the contrary, online dating has been popular for decades at this point.
A 2019 Stanford study said that about 40% of heterosexual couples in 2017 met online, and meeting online is the most popular way for adults to find their partners.
With that being said, why don’t we break down dating apps?
[Vine Thud]
I know, I know. As someone who met my girlfriend on Bumble, I know about the stigma of dating apps and not wanting to tell people how you met. But at the same time, how bad could dating apps really be?
[Tinder Match Sound Effect]
Tinder is an infamous dating app, and it’s not taken very seriously by most people on there. Some see it as a hookup app or just a place you shouldn’t be if you’re trying to find a long-term partner.
In my personal opinion, Tinder isn’t the best. If you’re looking for something short-term or just trying to have fun, then go ahead, but if you want a relationship, I’d be remiss to endorse it.
Weinberg Sophomore Brandon Takahashi thinks dating apps are okay, but he recommends two dating apps in particular if that’s the route you’re going down.
[Brandon Clip – “I used Bumble and Hinge”]
He goes further to say that one out of those two is probably the best option.
[Brandon Clip – “Hinge”]
To be honest, I couldn’t agree more with Brandon. I think that structurally, Hinge probably is the best app and there are a lot more people on the app who are looking for something serious compared to Tinder.
This is the other app Brandon told me he used, and I think Bumble has its strengths and weaknesses. Traditionally, men approach women first, and Bumble’s gimmick is that it flips the script by having women text men first whenever there’s a heterosexual match. Again, this is the app me and my girlfriend met on, but to be honest, she was the only interesting person on this entire app for me personally. I’d definitely go with Hinge if you’re only choosing one, and if you’re downloading two, use Hinge and Bumble.
There’s one more app I discovered recently…
[Grindr Sound Effect]
Oh, well, not that one. I don’t have any experience using THAT, but uh…
[Record Scratch Sound Effect]
Anyway, one more app I recently discovered was Twine.
If you’re in Medill, you may have seen those little QR codes on the bathroom walls in MFC with a purple heart in the middle.
If you were curious enough to scan the QR code, you’d see it direct you to Twine, yet another dating app.
Apparently, it’s a dating app meant specifically for college students, with the slogan, “Match with your campus crush.”
I haven’t used it, nor have I found anyone else who has used it, but it seems interesting enough.
Let’s go back to Square One:
Where do you find love at NU?
There’s a Brazilian song called “Deixa Acontecer” by Grupo Revelação with a lyric that goes “Deixa acontecer naturalmente.” I couldn’t agree more with that statement. If there are any lonely, post-valentines’ hearts listening to this, know that there’s somebody out there for you!
If you’re talking to somebody, let things happen naturally, and if you want to try dating apps, go right ahead.
Well, that’s going to be it for oddities today. Thanks for listening, and get out there and find your lover if you don’t already have one. For WNUR News, I’m Francesco Thorik-Saboia
[Bobby Brown – Every Little Step (Fade Out)]
![TREVOR RAINBOLT (via the GeoGuessr World Cup Grand Finale): Consus! The first official GeoGuessr World Champion. He did it from the qualifiers. He’s done it! He’s done it! GABE SHUMWAY: That was the culmination of GeoGuessr’s first-ever World Cup event. But what is GeoGuessr? It’s a video game you play using Google Maps, where you’re placed in a random Google Street View location and must guess where you are. You may recognize it from your TikTok For You page, where someone happened to guess Brazil based on the red soil. It may be something that you played with your friends, determined to find out where you were. But what makes this game so appealing? What is causing this surge in worldwide popularity? Today we set out to find the answers behind GeoGuessr’s meteoric rise. SPENCER McLAUGHLIN: I’m somebody who really likes geography, really likes maps. As somebody who kind of likes to think that I at least have a decent view of what the world looks like and what different parts of the world look like, this is literally just examining how well you know the world. EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: That’s Spencer McLaughlin, a Weinberg freshman here at Northwestern. He was initially drawn to the game through a YouTube video he watched nearly ten years ago. Even though he played the game in a history class, it never stuck until the pandemic. During this time, he picked it up again and began playing with friends regularly. Ryan Almeida is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Hamilton College. He chose to become the faculty advisor of Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club after falling in love with the game under similar circumstances. RYAN ALMEIDA: I really picked it back up during the pandemic – probably it was 2021-ish when I really got back into it. And I think a lot of people got into GeoGuessr during that time in part due to wanderlust and sort of not being able to travel. SHUMWAY: McLaughlin started a geography club at his New Jersey high school that quickly took to GeoGuessr as a form of entertainment. As the club gained popularity, the game became more competitive among its members. McLAUGHLIN: We had, like, a March Madness-style bracket where everyone could compete. We also had, like, when we were playing casually, a leaderboard system, where we had this really complicated Excel spreadsheet where you would put in your scores for individual games and it would give you like an ELO or, like, a rating for your place in the club. SHUMWAY: These competitions also take place at the college level, with schools competing virtually. Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club has both hosted and attended various collegiate competitions centered on the game. ALMEIDA: You have two people per team. Each person places a guess where they think it is on the map, and then whichever guess is closest to the spot gets the most points and the highest score from each team is subtracted. And so the difference represents sort of the score for that round, and people are given a set amount of health. And so if one team gets 4,000 points, the other team gets 3,000 points, the losing team will subtract 1,000 points from the score. CRUZ: And last year, the world’s greatest GeoGuessr players gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, for the first-ever GeoGuessr World Cup, which ended with Patrick Noordijk, known as Consus, being crowned as the eventual champion. This year’s World Cup is already underway, with regional finals for the Americas taking place this weekend. Europe and Asia will have their own regional finals before the top 24 players globally square off in the two-day grand finale this September. But even if you’re not a pro at identifying random spots around the world, you can still find something to enjoy in GeoGuessr. ALMEIDA: There’s quite a diversity in the way students and folks approach how they’re going to figure out where they are. Some people clue straight into something like vegetation or the biome they exist in, right, looking for whether the trees look tropical or whether it looks like an arid climate or whether it looks relatively temperate. Folks can be really interested in looking for things like architecture or potential language clues, right, and I think a lot of that just has to do with sort of what people naturally gravitate to when they’re playing. And so I think one of the fun things about GeoGuessr is there's not really sort of one of those things that trumps the other, right. You really do need to sort of have this holistic view of the world. [music] SHUMWAY: For WNUR News, I’m Gabe Shumway. CRUZ: And I’m Edward Simon Cruz. Audio of Trevor Rainbolt taken from 2023 GeoGuessr World Cup: Grand Final Day](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZpZXdCb3g9IjAgMCAyMDQ4IDExNTAiIHdpZHRoPSIyMDQ4IiBoZWlnaHQ9IjExNTAiIGRhdGEtdT0iaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZ3bnVybmV3cy5vcmclMkZ3cC1jb250ZW50JTJGdXBsb2FkcyUyRjIwMjQlMkYwMiUyRmdlb3N0b3J5cGljLUdhYmUtU2h1bXdheS0yMDQ4eDExNTAuanBnIiBkYXRhLXc9IjIwNDgiIGRhdGEtaD0iMTE1MCIgZGF0YS1iaXA9IiI+PC9zdmc+)
