Background:

A common issue in many interactions is that different people have different ideas of what is enjoyable. This comes up a lot when multiple people are trying to decide on a single dinner location, pick a movie to watch, etc.

The Issue:

In particular, let’s investigate the situation where two people want to go on a date, but they have different ideas as to what constitutes a “fun” date venue (Figure 1).

Normally, one (or both) people must compromise so that they can find a venue that both enjoy. But, what if instead of having a normal discussion and regular human interaction, we could solve this problem with soul-sapping technology!

Proposal:

Amazingly, modern advances in virtual reality (“VR”) and augmented reality (“AR”) make this a possibility!

Imagine the scenario described in Figure 1: Person A wants to go to the snake club, and Person B wants to go to the jazz club. Thanks to the power of augmented reality, both people can just put on their augmented reality glasses, go to their preferred date venue, obtain a table for two (even though only one person will be physically present), and virtually project the other person to the other side of the table (as shown in Figure 2).

There are many situations where this could apply: two people could attend 1) a monster truck rally and an opera, 2) a Shakespeare play and the Korean StarCraft finals, 3) a tour of a botanical garden and a laser tag match (this last one might be a little more difficult to synchronize).

Other uses of this technology:

This might also be great for selecting dining venues: suppose two people want Thai food, and two people want Indian food: now, the group can split and go to two separate restaurants, eating their food of choice and socializing remotely via the power of augmented reality.

PROS: All of them!

CONS: None, it’s totally healthy and will definitely not cause people to be unable to compromise or deal with even the slightest pushback!

Originally published 2025-10-20.