Singapore Plays Matchmaker, Hoping to Boost Its Birth Rate

Thursday, January 30th, 2003

I always find Singapore’s ambitious social-engineering projects darkly comical. Singapore Plays Matchmaker, Hoping to Boost Its Birth Rate describes a program that tops “caning” vandals or outlawing chewing gum:

This tiny, Type A city-state, worried by a steep decline in population growth, is trying to get its best and brightest to mate and breed with a new generation of government-sponsored dating games, some of which it has copied from American singles groups.

Government-sponsored dating games?

It’s American-style Speed Dating, sponsored by the government’s official matchmaking agency, the Social Development unit. The SDU assembles a group of men and women and pairs them off at tables. They chat for seven minutes until a bell rings, and then rotate on to a new mystery date. At the end of the session, participants write down who they’d like to meet again. If there are matches, they’ll get a date.

The SDU also organizes Zodiac Dates, in which singles try to guess each other’s astrological signs. Prizes for right answers include bath gels and restaurant vouchers.

Then there are Library Dates, in which eight men and eight women are paired off and given 45 minutes to look through bookshelves, choosing books that reflect their interests. Then they write down their impressions of each other based on the books they have chosen. Over drinks and cake, everyone gathers at a roundtable discussion to present the partner to the rest of the group.

I won’t cast aspersions on the dating games themselves — they have a certain dorky charm — but there’s something seriously creepy about a Zodiac Dates session set up by the government’s Social Development unit. Seriously creepy.

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