NYT 36 questions that lead to love: 2023 UPDATE
Remember those corny questions that everyone asked on second dates in 2015 in NYC, SF and LA? These are far more useful.
Back in 2015 a team of psychologists wrote 36 questions that were designed to accelerate intimacy between two people by giving them a structured format in which to make soulful-pondering facial expressions and performatively cry. The New York Times published these questions, and within a week, millions of pairs of hitherto normal strangers became drooling schmoopies, together adopting perpetually incontinent rescue puppies, buying Upstate houses in need of gut renovation, and deleting most of their you-up contacts.
To quote the study’s author, “one key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Back then, this meant really deep, revealing, emotional conversation. Today, this means sending nudes, and one could say that the context has changed a bit since the original 36 questions dropped: we have experienced a sociopathic autocratic twice-indicted sex offender in the oval office (who is inexplicably a frontrunner for a second term), a pandemic, the collapse of the two biggest ponzi schemes in history (crypto and tech), the closest thing we’ve seen to a world war in eight decades, ubiquitous addiction to social media that has decimated attention spans, and an over-sensitive ambiguation of language that has rendered everyone under the age of 75 confused and conversationally impotent.
We no longer need 36 questions to accelerate intimacy.
We need 36 questions to cut through the veneer of highly curated Instagram personas, validate that two people will be tolerable post-coital company for at least an hour or two, and ensure that prospective couples, throuples and polycules will be good survival teams once humanity goes entirely feral.
Read and answer these questions with the last person who sent you a nude:
1. What is your position on glitter?
2. Which would you rather have forever: a piece of food stuck in between two of your molars or a pimple on your cheek?
3. What search terms do you use on PornHub?
4. Now open PornHub and show me the last video you watched.
5. Delta or United?
6. When you’re in the gym, what’s your ratio of exercise to staring at your phone to staring at other peoples’ butts? (eg 1:3:6)
7. What percentage of the time do you go to the bathroom just to look at yourself in the mirror, and what do you fixate on?
8. Which way do you hang the toilet paper roll - facing outward like normal people, or inward like total psychopaths?
9. How often do you change your sheets?
10. Do you use sex towels, or do you just make your partner sleep on the wet spot?
11. When was the last time you walked by a stranger’s table in the outdoor seating area of a restaurant and seriously considered stealing a french fry?
12. What would you do if a stranger stole one of your french fries?
13. What are you most likely to be arrested for?
14. Who would post bail for you?
15. What’s the thing you tell yourself you’re going to do every day but never do, which causes you to judge yourself and binge on sugar, salty carbs and trashy Netflix series?
16. How soon after you’re added to yet another WhatsApp or Telegram group do you mute notifications?
a) instantly
b) within seconds
c) I leave it unmuted because dopamine is my favorite food group
17. What percentage of the time do you fake orgasms? What percentage of the time do you think your partner has a real orgasm?
18. What format of infidelity are you most likely to engage in?
a) emotional cheating
b) anal sex cheating
c) don’t worry, my secret other spouse and children call me by a different name
19. Which song makes you want to die more? The Macarena, or literally any song ever performed by Barenaked Ladies?
20. How many years of marriage before we can poop in front of each other? [This is a trick question. Hint: the answer rhymes with CLEVER]
21. If you had to live anywhere in the world other than New York City, would you live in Roma Norte or Lisbon?
22. Which of the following best describes your preferable Burning Man accommodations:
a) tent that I brought on my back
b) yurt with AC set up by my plug-and-play camp with a very lofty profit margin:
c) RV provided by Eric Schmidt
23. How much have you spent on illegal drugs in your lifetime?
24. How much have other people spent on the illegal drugs that you’ve mooched?
25. Have you ever talked about composting just to get laid?
26. How much longer after the obligatory 5 minutes do you require / tolerate post-sex cuddling?
27. What is your thermostat set at during sleeping hours?
28. When you can’t sleep at night, do you do your best to be quiet and not wake your partner up, or do you passive aggressively sigh until they wake up and ask you what’s wrong?
29. A sex tape leaks of us - do you hire a lawyer or a publicist?
30. On a scale of 0 to heart attack, how would you feel about giving me your phone and its password for 24 hours?
31. Are you into BDSM, or did your parents give you enough attention?
32. What prescription medications do you take daily? Include the ones your doctor doesn’t know about and especially the ones that your shaman prescribes.
33. Besides Psychedelics and polyamory, which topic do you talk about the most?
a) wellness
34. Fill in the blank: I’m really only with you because _______.
35. What’s the worst thing your least favorite ex would say about you, and how true is it?
36. Why are you still single?