Videomate: Men

In 1987, Blockbuster video stores in Southern California were doing a brisk business renting Dirty Dancing and Alien, Fullmetal Jacket, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

But up at the counter, next to the Red Vines and the MMs, there were usually some other VHS tapes for sale.

The kind of niche titles and curiosities a person might buy on impulse.

One of them, priced at $29.95 and with a runtime of 90 minutes, promised footage of 60 single men, all looking for dates.

The love of your life could be on your TV tonight, it said on the box.

It was called Video Mate, Men.

Are you a little crazy?

Do you like to laugh a lot?

Do you like to take long walks along the beach or drive along the ocean with the top down?

Boy, have I got a guy for you.

He's warm, passionate, very honest.

Who's this wonderful person you're asking yourself?

To me?

Video mate men, there was also a video mate women, opens with poorly rendered palm trees flying by before getting to the guys.

LA-based men between the ages of 18 and 60, all white, in sweaters and suit jackets, with fluffy 80s haircuts and mustaches.

Looking straight at the camera, they pitch themselves directly to whoever's watching.

Seriously, if you're looking for the kind of guy who's going to spirit you off into a Beverly Hills sunset and a Lamborghini or a Mercedes, well, you better fast forward on to the next guy.

If the idea of hopping into my Honda and snuggling up close to me and my dog and heading off to the San Gabriel Mountains to watch a sunset from around a cozy campfire sounds good to you, well then this is I'm the man for you.

After each man speaks, various statistics appear on screen.

Weight, height, occupation, religion, and a code.

Women watching at home could send a letter to VideoMate with that code, and for a $2 forwarding fee, the service would send the letter on to the man selected.

Many of the men in the video are ridiculous.

I am looking for the goddess.

Are you the goddess?

Who is the goddess?

Some are surprisingly honest.

I'm doing this because over the last six months, I decided that I'm lonely.

That's the truth.

One guy does a magic trick.

A few of them brandish a rose.

There's even a Viking, a man holding a shield and an axe, draped in a fur and wearing a horned Viking helmet.

I'm lucky to have friends that enjoy parties, and

I just came back from a party and decided to wear this

here.

VideoMate is clearly a funny and ridiculous time capsule, but it's more than that.

It's a relevant, funny and ridiculous time capsule.

Here are all of these men trying to be their best selves and instead coming across as anything but.

The whole thing may reek of the 1980s, but having no idea how to put your best foot forward is a timeless problem.

One lots of us and lots of dating services are still trying to solve.

VideoMate is a relic from the past, but also maybe a glimpse of the future.

This is Decodering, a show about cracking cultural mysteries.

I'm Willip Haskin.

Every month we take a question, habit, or idea, crack it open, and try to figure out what it means and why it matters.

VideoMate existed for less than two years, a short-lived business that was part of a much larger ecosystem of video dating services operating in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

On today's episode, we're going to look closely at VideoMate Men, an artifact from the lost world of video dating.

A world that may seem like a throwback, but actually remains exceedingly relevant to the dating apps of today,

where people still have to navigate the tension between vulnerability and control, authenticity and self-protection, sharing too much are not quite enough.

Why did people come to think that video dating was a good idea, and then why do we give that idea up?

Did we really have at all?

So, today, on Decodering, what happened to video dating?

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Whatever the thing, Men's Warehouse has the clothes for it.

Love the way you look.

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Did you see the Viking guy in there?

There's one guy who's dressed like a Viking.

I think of all the people in that video dating montage, like he's the realest one.

That's Joe Pickett.

He and Nick Pruer are the creators of the Found Footage Festival.

They have a massive collection of funny, bizarre VHS tapes that they share on a touring live show and a weekly web one.

They have thousands upon thousands of VHS tapes from the 1980s, of which dating videos make up a robust subgenre.

Like, look at this one.

Alaska men.

Apparently, there's so many men in Alaska, it's to try and get Alaska men hooked up.

This is How to Seduce Women Through Hypnosis.

Oh, here's this is video girlfriend.

So this is like you could actually win a date with the real video girlfriend.

How to meet women in St.

Louis.

Very specific.

We have a category in our office called Unusually Specific, and this is like right at the top.

This is amazing.

Joe and Nick are the reason that VideoMate has not been lost to the sands of time.

Or, you know, the 1980s.

A lot of our early videos came from sort of the tape trading circuit.

That was basically before the internet.

It was a way to find other video collectors or a lot of bands who would be on tour buses, would you know, have crazy video compilations of it?

And it would be a copy of a copy of a copy so it was just you could barely even see anything video mate men was on this circuit and about 10 years ago it was passed on to them by the comedian david cross when this one popped in like you knew instantly like it was like oh this this is a slam dunk oh i was shaking while i was watching it because i was like oh i can't wait to edit this thing In 2010, Joe and Nick uploaded an edited version of VideoMate to their website.

The four-minute clip found its way to YouTube or went viral, racking up millions of views.

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No fatties.

I want it all.

No dopers, no smokers, no alcoholics.

I still want it.

Joe and Nick were kind enough to pass us the full, unedited, 90-minute version of VideoMate Men.

When I saw it, I immediately wanted to know everything about it.

Why was it made?

Who made it?

Had it worked?

To answer all of this, I had to talk to the owner and creator of VideoMate, a man named Steve Dwarm.

Steve is the first person you see in VideoMate Men.

Hi, I'm Steve Dwarman.

I'm the creator and president of VideoMate.

We created VideoMate not as a dating service, but as a way to meet people that you otherwise wouldn't have met in your normal life.

Today, Steve lives in Los Angeles and has had a long and varied career, much of it involving infomercials.

But in the 1980s, he was a writer, working mostly on spec with an entrepreneurial bent.

He'd written a popular episode of Happy Days, where the Fonz has to go roller skating, the one thing he's bad at.

And he co-wrote a Jaws spoof script called Sardino, about a 30-foot sardine that got optioned.

In 1986, during a writing lull, he had the idea for a video mate, which would be two separate cassettes, one of 60 single men and the other of 60 single women, pitching themselves to people watching from the comfort of their own homes.

We took out really large ads.

When I say large, either a half page or full page, are you looking for the love of your life?

Literally interviewed hundreds of people, probably close to six to seven hundred people.

So when you say we, who's we?

No, I just use that figuratively to make it sound bigger than myself.

Who's you?

Steve ran the auditions, selected the participants, and then filmed their segments.

I was right behind the camera on every single interview and asked him to look at me.

And they were talking directly in the camera, camera, which is, even for professionals, is a really difficult thing to do.

But we pulled it off.

You know, they're supposed to be looking for the love of their life, and they should be reaching out and addressing them directly.

Video Mate Men and Video Mate Women, which unfortunately has never resurfaced, were released in 1987.

Those initial tapes were on the market for three months, and literally within two months, three women got engaged.

Entertainment Tonight did did a big segment on it.

And all of a sudden, that's what really catapulted the sales to go crazy.

We sold thousands of them.

Steve really wanted to help people meet, but he always wanted the tapes to work on another level as well.

They had to be entertaining.

Otherwise, you would have turned it off after five minutes.

You sort of knew the guys were being like a little hammy.

Oh, come on.

A Viking?

I wanted the tape to be, you know,

every couple tapes, you're listening to somebody sincere, and then, oh my God, where did this guy come from?

Steve wasn't only after entertainment value for its own sake.

He genuinely thought that entertainment value might improve the experience of video dating, something he'd already tried out for himself.

I had joined at one point, the very high-end video dating service, Great Expectations.

And the problem with it is it became like a job.

I just thought there was a much better way to do it.

Steve didn't invent video dating.

That honor belonged to great expectations, which video mate was a kind of reaction, a correction to.

So to understand video mate, really to understand dating services in general, you have to understand great expectations.

By far the most successful video dating service in history.

So what was great expectations?

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In 1990, Julie Fuhrman was single.

I was a girl who needed to do marriage in babies, right?

I was 29.9 years old, fertility challenged and freaking out.

The best thing you could do back then was place a personal ad in the newspaper, which I did several times.

And then she learned about another option.

I'll never forget it.

It was a Friday night.

I'm sitting in an Ethiopian restaurant in St.

Louis, Missouri on the Del Mar Loop, feeling like the world's greatest loser, eating by myself, drinking a beer, and looking through the personal ads.

And I thought, oh my God, I can't do it again.

And there was an ad there for Great Expectations.

Great Expectations was founded in Los Angeles in 1976 and quickly became lucrative.

By the 1990s, it had 50 franchises across the country and over 200,000 active users.

It advertised in newspapers, direct mail, and even on TV infomercials.

During the next half hour, you'll hear from countless people who've met the man or woman of their dreams by using the most comprehensive and personal dating service in the world, introducing the nation's premier dating service for singles, Great Expectations.

Great Expectations was the brainchild of a man named Jeffrey Ullman, who'd come up with the idea for video dating while at a dinner party hosted by his parents.

My cousin couldn't find a guy, and I remember saying, well, why don't you advertise for yourself?

Why don't you put yourself on TV?

Everybody watches TV.

And that's when the idea of video dating hit me.

Great Expectations members would fill out a profile, have their picture taken, and then the thing that was most innovative about the whole operation, record a video.

All of these materials were housed at the membership center for other members to peruse.

Ullman was very intentional about using the language of membership, like Great Expectations was an exclusive club, because he was trying to counteract the idea that there was something weird or desperate about using a dating service.

We built it to be the largest dating brand in the world.

At the same time, we are battling the stigma stigma of I wouldn't touch a dating service with an 11-foot pole.

In fact, one of the biggest ad campaigns we had was the campaign was called,

What's a Nice Person Like You Coming to a Place Like This?

But Julie wasn't put off by this part of Great Expectations' reputation.

One of my girlfriends had done this video dating thing in Chicago, and she said it was a blast.

So I thought, what the heck?

I'm making enough money.

I'm just going to hire help.

She went in for a consultation, and her intake interview was conducted by the owner of that particular franchise, a man named Gil.

He wasn't interested in me as a human being.

He just wanted my credit card.

But we had a great interview and even that night, this took us like three hours before I was done signing all the paperwork and giving him all my money.

And then he asked me if I wanted to go grab a drink and I was thinking, no, I'm not going to do that because I got to check out who's in his inventory.

I just spent a lot of money.

I got to get my money's worth and see who's there.

Great Expectations was not cheap.

It cost about $1,400 a year.

That would make it about $2,800 in 2019 terms.

So Julie went through the process of recording her video, an unedited six or seven minute snippet of a conversation conducted by a person asking questions off camera that could be watched by any other member of that Great Expectations franchise.

So many people were intimidated by it and they hated the whole thought of getting a video done, but I was a bit of a ham, always was.

So for me, it was like a blessed.

Julie's photos and profiles went into a binder at the membership center, which were alphabetized by first name, and her video was entered into the library there.

When one member was interested in another, the service would send a postcard on the interested party's behalf.

If after looking at the sender's materials, the other party was interested too, the service would exchange phone numbers.

It's the same basic setup in which anonymized people can only meet up if both parties agree, but still used by dating sites today.

At first, Julie used great expectations as intended.

But one of the first days she was there browsing the materials, she started talking with Gil, the franchise owner who had previously interviewed her.

So I was flirting with him one day and I said, hey, you know, I looked in the G-book under Gil and I didn't see you, buddy.

What's the story with you?

And he said, well, you know, I'm not supposed to ask out my members.

And I said, well, what would you do if one of your members asked you out?

And he said, if she was cute, I'd probably go.

And I said, come on, let's go have a beer.

And then five weeks later, we got engaged.

And five months after that, we were married.

And two months later, got pregnant.

And our two boys are now 27 and 25 living in Los Angeles.

He calls it the conversation that got out of control.

So Great Expectations worked for Julie, but not at all in the way that it was supposed to.

Julie ended up leaving her job in the hotel business.

And for the next eight years, she worked at Great Expectations in St.

Louis and Kansas City.

She says she saw thousands of marriages.

In 2002, she started her own matchmaking business, Los Angeles Matchmaking, for which she has never ever tried to use video.

I thought about doing video, but honestly, maybe 5% of people would be excited to come into an office and get a video done.

And I didn't want that high a bar.

How do you think it ever worked at all then?

Like, why did it work at all?

If you are running it well and you've got that many people who are motivated, who spent thousands of dollars to be there with pure intentions, a lot of them are going to figure it out.

They're going to not get the yes response from the girl they think they should be dating and then they're going to realize, okay, maybe I should broaden my interpretation of who might be an acceptable candidate.

And they had people on staff like me who would, like, I would literally meet with my clients when they would come in and I'd get in an hour early to pick for them and show them the top five that I thought they should pick, people I thought they actually had a shot at.

Right.

I mean, you were suggesting in a way then, like, a video was like was not important.

So people were buying in and being thoughtful about it.

And if you could recreate those circumstances, it's not about any other part of it.

Yeah, there's a lot of value in both people having skin in the game.

The thing is, having so much skin in the game is exactly what Steve Dwarman was trying to alleviate with VideoMade.

Steve's idea to make dating easier, cheaper, more enjoyable is the same idea that has guided most iterations of online dating, up to and including the industry-changing innovation of swiping on Tinder.

But it turns out it was the commitment, the buy-in, the effort, all of the things that made great expectations relatively onerous that also made it work.

Meanwhile, despite selling thousands of copies, Steve could not figure out how to make Videomates scale.

Video was a really sloppy means of delivery because there was a lot of of cost involved.

So we started looking for other means of doing this in which

it could be broken out on a national basis and it could be done in a way where the video wasn't used.

And that was really a technological problem because

there was no internet then.

In 1988, less than a year after VideoMate first went on sale, Dwarman had to declare bankruptcy.

Without something like the internet, he just couldn't make it work financially.

But more than 30 years later, here we are with the internet.

And where's video dating?

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In 1995, Match.com, the first internet dating site, went live.

And for a while, it seemed like the death of video dating.

Jeff Ullman sold great expectations around this time and it folded shortly thereafter.

Early on, slow internet speeds and the pace of internet adoption more generally made any kind of internet-based video dating service a non-starter.

In the late 90s, Julie Fuhrman actually worked for a company that was trying to be the first internet video dating service, but she spent most of her time at people's houses trying to help them set up their computers.

Oddly enough, though, during the nearly 20-year period when video dating couldn't really exist, because the internet had outmoded other types of dating services, but wasn't fast enough to enable video dating itself, it kept lurking around in popular culture as a punchline.

My goals are serenity and knowledge and men who can understand me.

Oh, no druggies, please.

That's the kooky dating video of a kooky character from Cameron Crowe's 1992 movie Singles, set amongst singles in the early Seattle grunge scene.

In the mid-1990s, the sketch comedy show Mad TV had a recurring spoof about video dating called Lowered Expectations.

Sorry to get any calls, ladies.

What's up?

Your boyfriends by the phone?

You'd want to be obvious?

I mean, something must have been wrong.

Tim and Eric's awesome show also had a recurring video dating sketch in the late aughts.

This one features the office's Rain Wilson.

My online alter ego is 18 feet tall and has giant wings like an angel's, but also like a demon's.

His name is Carlor.

Even Joe and Nick's cutdown of the original video mate men, which they put online in 2010, fits into this lineage.

A bit of comedy about some zany thing people used to do that keeps the memory of that zany thing alive.

All of these bits are sending up self-awareness, or rather, a lack of it.

They're about people who think they're one thing, but who come across as something else entirely.

It's like they're tattling on themselves, inadvertently telling you who they really are while trying to feed you a line.

Like this guy from VideoMate: I'm an executive by day and a wild man by night.

I, um, like modern art as well as exotic sports cars.

I have kind of a flair for the exotic.

He wants to be cool, but he just seems kind of smarmy and absurd.

If you watch all 90 minutes of video mate men, though, you'll see that it's not all ripe for lampooning.

There are plenty of would-be slicksters, inadvertently comedic goofuses, but there are far more guys who are nervous.

They're not projecting much cool, even a false one.

They're too sincere.

I grew up in East Los Angeles.

Psychology background, which means nothing.

It's just that I sort of understand my own neurosis a little better.

Whatever the guys are doing though, posturing or worrying, they are exposing something about themselves.

You get a real sense of them as genuinely nerdy, good looking, but extremely dull, actually self-aware, falsely self-aware, earnest, smart Alec, exceedingly particular, and on and on.

That video might be capable of telling you something about someone is really like, no matter how hard they're trying to present themselves in a particular way, is the reason that video dating to this day seems like such a good idea.

You know, people say pictures are worth more than a thousand words, right?

And I think video actually can be worth more than a thousand pictures, even in a very, very short clip.

Da Woon Kang is the co-founder and co-CEO of the dating site, Coffee Meets Bagel.

It's much easier to get a feel for who this person is, his or her mannerism, just the way he or she speaks, gives us a truthful kind of

representation of who they really are.

And so

I think it has a ton of potential.

Video dating seems like it has a lot of potential to a lot of people.

The past decade is littered with failed online video dating services, startups built around video chatting or some sort of pre-taped video segment.

YouTube, before it was YouTube, was imagined as a dating platform.

No one uploaded any video though, so it quickly pivoted to becoming YouTube.

More recently, a number of successful dating apps have introduced various video elements.

Some apps are experimenting with video speed dating and video chatting.

Tinder lets you upload a two-second clip.

You can now add videos in the place of photographs to your hinge profile.

The problem is though, that despite being a basic kind of security measure, despite being a gut attraction check that gives you so much much additional contextual, otherwise hard to express information.

Despite us finally living in a moment when relatively high quality self-produced video is a regular feature of our online habits.

Despite all of this, very few real people want to video date.

There's something that happens when it starts moving that you're just, it catches you by surprise.

Andrea Salenzi is the host of the podcast Longest Shortest Time and has covered the dating world for

And it almost, it's so intimate, right?

They're on my phone and now I'm watching how they move their body.

There's just something so creepy when you see them moving.

In late 2017, Coffee Meets Bagel tried to challenge the general aversion to video dating with a new video feature.

Dawun Kang says that in the research phase, they saw that people kept retaping themselves to make the videos perfect.

So they tried to correct for that.

The video could only be 10 seconds.

It would self-delete in 24 hours.

And they would provide a daily prompt so users didn't have to talk into their phones extemporaneously.

In the example Coffee Meets Bagel included in their marketing materials, a young, pretty white woman answered the question, what stereotype do you live up to?

I guess I'm like every other basic girl because fall is definitely my favorite season.

Okay, so to me, this is a kind of perfect example of what is potentially so helpful about video dating.

The way that this woman frames her answer, I guess I'm just like every other basic girl, is not profile making 101.

She's kind of lightly nagging herself, but her delivery is very cutesy, with a hint of knowingness.

She may be a basic girl answering basic video dating questions, but she knows how to present herself.

There's some confidence there.

I feel like I have a much fuller sense of her and her whole social context than I would if I had just read this exact same sentence.

But the thing is, I can say all of that, and still,

video dating did not work on Coffee Meats Bagel.

Andrea Salenzi was one of the people who tried it.

I remember when they launched the feature, you know, maybe in the first couple of weeks, there was like a nice diversity of people on it.

But what was so weird and interesting about it, it had that effect of chat roulette, where you're scrolling through videos and you're seeing the insides of people's homes.

You know, I wasn't looking for a match.

I was just kind of watching a show.

Because we have no practice video dating, there are no customs, habits, or guidelines around it.

And that makes it strange and scary.

Where do you put the camera?

Should you be at your kitchen table or in your bedroom?

What should you wear?

How made up should you be?

The absence of norms means that you start staring at the walls, wondering who all of these people are who are willing to do this weird thing.

For Andrea, the whole experiment started to feel really bad.

If this is the party that I'm a part of, I would rather not be here.

Because it didn't feel like the group that I considered my peer group.

Because they only had so many people who were actually willing to even give it a spin.

I was just seeing a real raw sample of the actual single people around me.

And

it was hard.

Andrea deleted the app, and then after a few months, Coffee Meets Bagel stopped using the feature.

We always have to weigh our priorities.

Video, maybe not the right time right now.

And let's just move on to something else.

I spoke to a number of people who run dating apps for this piece, and many of them seem to think that video dating's future is brighter than it's ever been.

Thanks to social media platforms like Snapchat, people who are in their teens and early 20s now, so still a little younger than the prime online dating age, have more experience making and sharing video than anyone ever has had before.

The hope then is that video dating will finally take off because of them, people who are comfortable making video, who are practiced at not doing anything excruciating there.

The idea is that video will finally take off when video doesn't make people feel that vulnerable anymore.

But we're not there yet.

The promise of each new iteration of dating technology is that dating will get better, easier, less painful.

And video may be better, but it's not easier.

It's not less painful.

And that's why video dating for now is stuck where it has been for a long time.

A good sounding idea, a future-facing technology, a theoretically helpful tool that only a small percentage of single people are willing to use.

When it comes to online dating and so many other human activities, there are two big unknowns.

The first and more commonly fretted about is other people.

Who is this other person?

Are they who they say they are?

Are they shorter?

Are they older?

Are they actually funny?

What are they really like?

Video dating seems like it could really help with all of these questions, really help with the problem of other people.

But the other less discussed, but no less mysterious unknown isn't other people.

It's ourselves.

Dating can highlight the disconnect between who we think we are and who other people think we are.

This is the vulnerable, soft, fleshy underbelly of dating, maybe of existence.

You do all of this work to present yourself in an appealing way.

And then some people don't find it appealing at all.

This is why VideoMate, in addition to being funny, is so poignant.

Yes, there are guys who don't seem to know how they are coming across on there.

This is a very exciting time for my life because I'm just starting a new claims-adjusting business.

But there are also guys who really do seem to know themselves.

and are still coming across pretty intensely.

What I'm doing right now is making a movie about World War II.

It's an amateur movie.

I'm a terrible actor.

I'm a lot better in person than I am on the screen, if my movie's of any indicator of that.

The clothes may be old, but the predicament is contemporary.

To find people who will really like you for you and who you will like in turn, it helps to be open and vulnerable and genuinely yourself.

It actually helps to be the Viking.

I'm really looking for somebody I can feel special about, and I don't encounter people like that very often, and I'm hoping you're one of them.

But if you're going to do that, if you're going to be the Viking, you also have made it that much easier for your actual vulnerable self to be laughed at, to be rejected.

Because who you really are, no matter what, it's not for everyone.

Video is theoretically great at showing other people who we really are.

That's what's good about it.

But that's also what's bad about it.

This is the paradox of all dating apps and services.

There is no technology in the world that is going to be able to make being really seen and then rejected feel good, which is maybe why the most popular dating technology, more and more, shows us less and less.

We've never had more access to more information about more people, but we are increasingly going on a photo, on a swipe.

Having only a sliver of who you are rejected just sucks less.

Asking people to invest as much emotion, money, and time into dating as great expectations did, even as Video Mate did, is a total non-starter.

Because among other things, it's terrifying to be that exposed.

Video dating may have technology and time on its side, but it keeps running into the problem of being human.

Other people can hurt us.

And to face that, you need some bravery.

The video mate men, as laughable as they are, are at least a little brave.

Sure, they know less than we do, especially about the possibility possibility that 30 years later we might still be watching them.

But they're putting themselves out there.

Putting yourself out there can feel really bad, but sometimes to get what you really want, you have to do it anyway.

I don't know what else I can tell you except I'm not having fun doing this.

Make life easy, just give me a call.

All right.

This is Decodering.

I'm Willa Haskin.

You can find me on Twitter at Willipaskin.

And if you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at decodering at slate.com.

If you haven't yet, subscribe and rate our feed and Apple podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

And even better, tell your friends.

This podcast was written by Willipaskin and was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also does illustrations for every episode.

Cleo Levin is our research assistant.

Thanks to Chloe Rose, Meredith Golden, Stephanie Tong, Alex Williamson, Melissa Gunning, Justin McLeod, Zoe Strimple, Lori Essig, H.G.

Cox, June Thomas, Merit Jacob, Gabe Roth, and everyone else who gave us help and feedback along the way.

Thanks for listening.

See you soon.

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at ov.coop and taste the difference.