My friend Azizi is a very successful tech-preneur. He has developed everything from company software to video games and apps. He’s one of the smartest people I know, and that’s coming from me, a medical doctor.
Azizi and I share one thing in common — we are both perpetual bachelors. While my reasoning is more on the philosophical side, Azizi says he has a problem attracting the right kind of women.
“I lose interest too fast,” he says. “I’m a coder. I expect every command I write to produce a certain predetermined result.”
“I hope you don’t use such language with the ladies,” I tease. “Otherwise, they’ll lose interest as fast as you do. But seriously, you can’t compare people to lines of code. They have no buttons that command them to laugh, or act a certain way.”
“Actually, they do,” he posits. “It’s called the truth.”
Confused? Me, too. That’s the thing with Azizi. He’s quite a complicated man.
“The truth?” I prompt.
“Let’s say you’re chatting with someone on social media or an app, right? There are so many filters nowadays, you can never know how a person really is. Anyone can be anything they want. Light skinned, dark skinned, slim fat, funny…”
“Funny? How can you lie about a sense of humour?”
He looks at me as if I just turned into a horse in a dress.
“Are you serious right now?” he says, earnestly. “Don’t you know there is such a thing as copy-paste? So many people who post jokes on social media only copy and paste them from the originators. You’re there laughing at someone’s joke, while in real life, they can’t give you a single knock-knock joke.”
I try to get him back on track. “So, how does truth come into play?”
“If people tell the truth about themselves, then you know exactly what to expect and you’ll never be disappointed. Truth is the real verifiable code.”
I shake my head. “But truth doesn’t always work. If I tell a woman I am ambitious but unemployed, she won’t give me the time of day. And if I’m five-foot-five, what’s the harm in adding a couple inches to appear more appealing?”
“Will you come for the date wearing high heels?”
We laugh at the absurdity of it all.
“Luckily,” he says, “I have come up with an app for it.”
“An app for the truth?”
“Sort of. You download this app on your phone. Once you meet your date, you take a few minutes to analyse him or her, right? Then you excuse yourself and go to the toilet.
“In private, you answer a questionnaire comparing what the date had said versus the truth. Had he said he’s tall? And how tall did end up being. Did she claim to be light-skinned but she came looking like Alek Wek? Fill that in. The algorithm calculates a percentage of truth vis-à-vis the lies. If he or she scores at least 80 per cent, they are worth the risk.”
I’m laughing as I ask, “What if they score lower?”
“The ‘bail me out’ app — that’s what I’m calling it — it creates a reason for you to leave the date. You can say, ‘My grandma just died.’ The app even generates a string of text you can show your partner. Then you’re out of there.”
I find myself shaking my head again. “And I keep wondering how come you don’t have a girlfriend.”
He takes a sip of his beer. “Some have scored 79. So close, yet so far.”
We laugh some more, but inside, I wonder if he’s for real or it’s just the alcohol talking.
