隔离时期的爱情

Love under lockdown

隔离时期的爱情

翻译：凤梨是只胖柯基

校阅：Yates

图源：网络，版权归原作者所有，侵删

Under quarantine, video courtship replaces hookup culture

隔离期间，线上约会软件取代了勾搭文化

FOR TREVOR BARNES, a 27-year-old teacher from Hershey, Pennsylvania, quarantine could be terrible. He lives on his own in an apartment attached to the boarding school he works at, and he is fully locked down. For ten days he has not been able to go outside even to buy groceries. Yet Mr Barnes has discovered that being cooped up inside at least does not mean he has to give up his romantic dreams. Over the past week he has met several women, all by phone call and video conference. “I go on a lot of dates normally, from Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, all that stuff,” he says, but has never found somebody he really hit it off with. “This has been a good way to figure out a more serious approach,” he says.

对于来自宾夕法尼亚州赫尔希镇(Hershey)的27岁教师特雷弗·巴恩斯(TREVOR BARNES)来说，居家隔离可以是很糟糕的。他一个人住在他工作的寄宿学校的公寓里，完全被锁在里面。他已经有十天不能出门了，连外出买杂货都不行。然而，巴恩斯先生发现，至少关在家里并不意味着他必须放弃憧憬他的浪漫。在过去的一周里，他通过电话和视频结识了几位女性。他说:“我通常会线上约会很多次，通过Tinder、Hinge、Bumble等软件。”但从来没有找到真正合得来的人。他表示:“这是找出一个更谨慎的方法（之前，唯一）的好方法。”

Though older people will suffer the brunt of the coronavirus, it is the footloose young who will see their lives turned upside down. But a generation that is tied to its phones anyway is perhaps also well-equipped to innovate around some of the problems social isolation imposes. And a lot of young people are proving that just because you cannot actually meet somebody in person does not mean you cannot date.

虽然老年人会更容易感染新冠，但自由自在的年轻人将看到他们的生活发生翻天覆地的变化。但无论如何，与手机联系在一起的一代人，或许也有能力围绕社会隔离带来的一些问题进行创新。很多年轻人都在证明，你不能亲自见某人并不意味着你不能约会。

One popular app, Hinge, says that 70% of its users have expressed an interest in going on digital dates. Match Group, the owners of Tinder, are giving away some features of the app that usually cost money to reflect the fact that people have more time to kill by swiping left and right. All dating apps are encouraging users to try video dating. One Instagram feed, called Love is Quarantine, has taken off by parodying a popular Netflix show called Love is Blind. Its creators, Thi Lam and Rance Nix, who share a flat in Brooklyn, New York, joke that their invention has “gone viral”.

流行应用软件Hinge表明，70%的用户表示有兴趣进行线上约会。Tinder的所有者Match Group正在免费提供这款应用的一些功能（之前这些功能需要花钱），反映了人们现在有更多的时间来滑手机消磨时间。所有的约会软件都鼓励用户尝试视频约会。一个名为“爱是隔离”(Love is Quarantine)的Instagram账号模仿了网飞公司(Netflix)的热播剧《爱情是盲目的》(Love is Blind)。它的发明者林天(Thi Lam，音译)和兰斯·尼克斯(Rance Nix)在纽约布鲁克林合租了一套公寓，他们开玩笑说，他们的发明“像病毒一样传播开来”。

It is not all easy, dating in a lockdown. Kevin, a 26-year-old tech worker, says he met somebody online recently. “After work I set up a hammock in my tiny back yard, grabbed a beer from my fridge and we chatted for an hour,” he says. It went well—he and his date are going to have a walk around a local park next. But he wonders what comes after that. “I am comfortable adding one more person to my isolation group if it comes to that,” he says. Whether his three flatmates will be equally comfortable is less clear.

在隔离期间里约会并不容易。26岁的科技工作者凯文(Kevin)说，他最近在网上认识了一个人。他说:“下班后，我在狭小的后院里搭起吊床，从冰箱里拿了瓶啤酒，我们聊了一个小时。”一切进展顺利——他和他的约会对象接下来要去附近的公园散步。但他想知道接下来会发生什么。他说:“在这种情况下，我愿意在我的隔离小组中再增加一个人。”他的另外三个室友是否同样舒适还不清楚。

Still, it could be worse. “It has brought us back to an older way of connecting with people, which is just talking, not all these visual branding cues on profiles,” says Katie Nelson, a journalist confined to her parents’ home in Minneapolis. She used to despair of men rushing to meet up before she knew anything about them. When lockdowns end, it may be too much to hope that the return of slow courtship will last. But by then some people might have become experts at it.

然而，情况可能会更糟。“它让我们回到了一种更古老的与人沟通的方式，那就是单纯地交谈，而不是纯粹在个人资料看颜值，”住在明尼阿波利斯父母家中的记者凯蒂•纳尔逊(Katie Nelson)表示。她曾经对男人们在她对他们有任何了解之前就冲过来见面感到反感。当隔离期结束时，希望这种缓慢求爱的回归能够持续下去可能有点不切实际。但到那时，有些人可能已经成为这方面的专家了。