Dream and Hustle

Is the African-American Community Ready for Group Dating?

Online dating has pretty much been a mono e mono event where one person would meet someone and hopefully they may find each other attractive or enjoy their company. The problem with participating in singles dating operations is too much personal risk is involved. There have been a pop-up of alternative dating arrangements such as team dating and group dating and we are going to explore if this is something that can work in the African-American community.

Online Dating Is Too Risky and Uncomfortable

When I did online dating back in the 90s, it wasn’t so bad because only a few people where on the Internet and you usually met fellow netizens. But nowadays, I’m scare to death to meet anybody online. Back in the days, I remember all the episodes of sistas saying they thick in the right places when they really meant they are thick in all places. I remember sistas showing up and having a flat booty and I specifically would write in my personals ad “NO FLAT BOOTY CHICKS!” in all caps and they still answer my ad.

But with all this Craigslists and early release serial killers, deadbeats, down-low brothas and married or separated or bipolar women pretending they single all on the Internet trying to date, I cannot imagine any brotha or sistas seriously setting themselves up or making arrangement to have a chance encounter with what’s on the Internet today.

By the way, I have to interrupt this article with something I heard the week before last. Some brotha was running around talking about he started dating this sista and she did a Google search on him. The first image that showed up under his name was a mugshot photo. She asked him about it and he told her he only got arrested for a traffic violation (not true, probably didn’t show up to court). So he told me he went to the web site that hosted his mugshot and they wanted $70 from him to remove it from their web site. He actually paid them and I thought that was a pretty scummy but highly effective business model that use public domain mugshot pics and SEO them and blackmail cats to pay to remove it.

So back to what I was saying, I don’t think I or anybody else want to be doing any singles dating sites in 2012 with all of the danger out there. I do not want to be sitting across from some sista who keep busting out in songs and I know yall sistas don’t want to sit across from some guy looking nervous hoping you sistas don’t check his name against a public records web site. (Note: In ATL, these sistas got a secret underground database of dude names they share among each other.) With that said, I do not believe that a singles dating web site model is a viable option anymore.

New Dating Models – Group Dating.

I’ve seen over the years several web sites models promoting a feature called team dating. Here is a YouTube featuring an old-school Tracye Hutchins and Elle Duncan on it.

As you see in the video, everybody had nothing but positive things to say about it. No one felt pressured in a one-on-one situation and they said they felt safer. So overall, we see that team dating creates an atmosphere where you don’t have to be pressured when meeting someone for the first time online.

I also remember seeing two types of group dating setups. The first setup was where the whole female side was all friends and the whole guy side was all friends. I really would not like this setup because that is a very high chance of cat fighting and bro-blocking. What I think works is people have similar interests and hobbies.

My Experience with Group Dating

A few weeks ago, I did a group dating event and this was an experiment that someone is working on to create this type of site in the African-American community. I told her that I wanted to date stripper/model type sistas and hang with brothas who like those kind of sistas. We met at an upscale boutique hotel lobby here in the Atlanta area and it was us three brothas who like sistas with stripper bodies and it was three sistas who were all stacked hard!

I didn’t know these guys but they were like the best friends I ever had as we were gawking these sistas when we saw them come in like little kids at the ice cream truck! I was around brothas who like the kind of chicks I like and we ain’t ashamed to be about that either. And the sistas were all interested in us and it was a perfect ATL setup where we are all pretentious and shallow and had the best dating night of my life!

We didn’t even know each other and started talking about Black male/female relationships, food, places we been and where people would like to travel to, they got friends and other places we can hang out and all of us brothas said “bowling!”, hahaha! Man, f*ck that one-on-one first time dating ish! This was the goddamn ish right here and I wished I dated like this back when I was younger instead of trying to holler and get the attention of one sista.

Here is the thing – I liked all three of the sistas and didn’t have to be all on one of them that night. The brothas and the sistas both said they had a very good time and we all had a positive outing and we didn’t even know each other. Not only I met new people, but I met people that my shallow behind like to see and that really made me felt really good about being there. It was like those cruise ships where they put all the singles people at the table but you specify what kind of sexy you want to see and they deliver that for you.

To be honest – I had more fun with those guys being with me than 100% of my male friends all my life. In the past, I hung out with dudes who tried to block me or try to downplay some sista I was hollering at. Being around brothas who like sistas like I like em and we can relate and be on that same wavelength was really good. I need to stop talking because it is obvious how I felt about group dating.

Can This Be Done in the African-American Community?

I think this type of group dating site can only occur in emerging African-American communities filled with people who moved to the city and they don’t know each other. I do not think this model with work in Black communities where everybody know each other cousin, baby daddy, baby mother, stepfather, who they went to high school with and so on.

Places I think this group dating model will work are suburban places where Black folks who relocated to be near their jobs. These places are the Virginia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Houston, Miami, Raleigh and other areas Black folks are moving to. I do not think it will work in family generational areas like Chicago, Detroit or in Brooklyn. I think it can work near college towns and in some cases, near military installations.

One of the key things I think can make this model really work is having a person who can match up the people to exactly what they are looking for. If there are some fine sistas with silicone breast/butt injections that want to meet some handsome brothas that work out at the gym, then that “matcher” need to be real and give the people in that group what they want.

The key thing in matching is having brothas and sistas be seriously honest about what they want and they can agree to hang out or meet up together. Then the matcher has a profiling system to pick out the ladies or the guys and make the arrangement.

I wonder if this is how the swinger clubs operate where cats are basically expressing that the other guy women is someone they like and that other guy is looking at his woman and saying he like that but they both agree on the type of woman. Maybe this group dating is a play on that model but is designed for single brothas and sistas and if that is the case, I would say the group dating model beats the swinger model hands down because it is more about common seekers than about swapping something personal like a spouse to someone else.

Summary

I really enjoyed the group dating and the sista who is setting up this operation here in Atlanta I cannot wait for her to get it up. I really appreciate the fact she was able to match up some sistas with big round juicy booties in jeans and spandex because we real brothas like that ish and tired of being ashamed of saying it. I felt those sistas had the same thing where they didn’t felt like they were competing and knew all of them were around 100% brothas who like all of them but I can’t speak directly for them but I got their numbers and we all going to hang out again, possibly bowling..haha.