– We chatted with each other for three months without knowing what the other person actually looked like. In the end I asked for a skype call so I could make sure she wasn’t a 50 year old guy, hahahah. American Joel Bray tells news. In 2014, through World of Warcraft, he had come into contact with someone who called herself Anastasia Miliutina. She was apparently from Ukraine. This was right after Russia had invaded the Crimean peninsula, and Joel was curious about the geopolitical situation and what life was like for Eastern Europeans. – Anastasia was incredibly articulate and her English was extremely good. When we exchanged pictures of each other, I also saw how beautiful she was. Gorgeous, as he says in his native tongue. – So I thought: “She is beautiful. She’s smart. She is good at writing. “What’s the catch, you know?”. This is the internet after all”. FROM AMERICA TO EUROPE: Love finally brought Joel Bray to Ukraine. Here in the city of Dnipro. Photo: Privat Digital dominance In the last decade, there has been a major technological and cultural change in the society we live in. This affects us, and our relationships. Namely where we find our partner. Before we found love through work, school, friends and the pub. Or maybe you lived in the time when you could search for your dream partner via a personal ad in the newspaper, such as this one? CONTACT ADVERTISEMENT: This is also how it can be done. Photo: Facsimile: Dagbladet Meeting people in ordinary social contexts still happens to some extent. But more and more often you start flirting via a screen. Because according to the Swedish documentary “Amor’s algorithms” from 2024, 4 out of 10 romantic relationships now start via dating apps, while 1 out of 10 start with a real meeting. While it used to be taboo to meet your partner on match.com or Tinder, it is now the norm. More and more people are also meeting each other through gaming and a shared virtual reality. But is it equally accepted? Stigma – There is definitely still a stigma around it, says Anastasia. – Many people asked questions with my concerns, she adds. Luckily for Joel, it wasn’t a 50-year-old man who revealed himself on Skype the night he called. It was Anastasia, as gorgeous as the picture he had been sent a few weeks before. But it would take a long time before he got the hang of it. Because Anastasia also had prejudices against those who date online. She was skeptical. – I was not interested in a romantic relationship at all. I couldn’t imagine how it would work. I just wanted to play, explains Anastasia. SKEPTICAL: For Stacey, it was not relevant to have an online relationship. Life was busy with studies, work and friends, and she couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to combine it with Joel. Photo: Private Super small meeting It also didn’t help that the aforementioned Skype conversation didn’t go completely smoothly. – It was super small. Imagine two internet nerds meeting on Skype for the first time, says Anastasia, noticeably embarrassed. Joel, who had been interested in Anastasia from the first chat message, therefore had to be patient. But after three years of daily gaming, chatting and video calls, they took their friendship to the next level and became lovers. – Even though we couldn’t visit each other, hug or see each other physically, it was like being in love with someone in the physical world, says Joel. – We knew each other so completely well in all other ways than the physical aspect, and well, I mean, there’s a lot you can do with video calls, he hints further. – Let’s not go into that here. You can watch everything in the series, retorts Anastasia, quickly. Celebrate geek culture The series she refers to is “Dates in real life”. It is about Ida and Marvin, who have been together for three years, but have never met physically. When Marvin ends it, Ida embarks on a sort of dating spree IRL. ON THE GO: The character Ida in “Dates in Real life”, played by Gina Bernhoft Gørvell ANNIVERSARY: The character Marvin celebrates his three-year anniversary with his girlfriend Ida in “Dates in real life”.AVATARS: The avatars of Marvin and Ida meet in virtual reality, and do things that normal boyfriends do. VIRTUAL REALITY: The character Ida in tears after her boyfriend Marvin ends it. DATE: Ida gets her wet dream fulfilled when she checks out one of her favorite artists. PARALLEL WORLD: The series “Dates in real life” will show that human feelings and relationships overlap in the physical and virtual world. The series is written and directed by Jakob Rørvik. In developing the project, he interviewed several people who live their lives online. Among them were Joel and Anastasia, who could sign that an online relationship can be close and real. – The idea for “Dates in real life” came from a curiosity about young adults, who through internet culture have a lot of knowledge about the world, but who do not have much practical experience of physical reality, says the series creator. – And I wanted to celebrate geek culture. Nerd is, for me, an honorific. In addition, Rørvik wanted to include the modern dating culture, and the way we staged ourselves online. – In the time we live in now, there is always an overlap between the digital and the physical reality. It flows into each other, adds Rørvik. Recording: Jakob Rørvik during the recording of “Dates in real life”. DIRECTOR: Skodespeler Mathias Luppichini is directed during the recording of “Dates in real life”. SUCCESS: “Dates in real life” won both the main jury’s and the youth jury’s prize for best series at the Valencia International Film Festival. Here is Jakob Rørvik together with lead actor Gina Bernhoft Gørvell. Freedom to be who you want “Dates in real life” has received a lot of attention for the way it has portrayed today’s modern dating life, and it has received several prestigious awards, including the award for best series at Series Mania, International Panorama – Europe’s largest TV -festival. In the series, we follow Ida, who would prefer to live in the virtual world. Here she has created an avatar that can live out what she cannot so easily achieve in the physical world. With VR glasses, she goes to parties with her online friends, has dinner with her boyfriend, goes on holiday and does things that people usually do in the physical world. – The advantage of online dating is that you can be a version of yourself in which you are more secure, Rørvik found out in the work on the series. – Because when you create your own avatar, it’s like putting on a mask that creates greater freedom to be who you deeply want to be, he underlines. Ida and Marvin in the series “Dates in real life” have been together for three years, but never met physically. Does that mean that virtual relationships could be the future? Buying a partner in the shop Maybe, if PhD candidate Marius Stavang, who researches dating at NTNU, is to be believed. He believes that the digital will eventually win over the non-digital. – When there are robots that realistically look like humans and behave like humans, we will finally not be able to measure ourselves on traditional attraction parameters, he says. Because robots can potentially become physically more beautiful than us, better conversation partners, better listeners, better in bed and they also don’t want annoying facts like snoring and smacking. – Everyone eventually wants to be together with their “perfect partner”. Finally, the right one has arrived in the store. And one should also not ignore the fact that someone wants to “make” virtual children. – A utopia for some, a dystopia for others, adds the dating researcher. DISTANCE: Virtual relationships can be reminiscent of distance relationships, to the extent that they are temporary, Marius Stavang believes. Photo: Caroline Boman Grundekjøn “Phantom touch” Series creator Jakob Rørvik has seen in recent years that VR technology is becoming more and more user-friendly, and he believes that this will again lead to more people having virtual relationships in the future. In addition, he discovered something exciting in the work on the series. It is that many of those who spend a lot of time in VR develop a feeling that they are touching another body or an object. – If you stroke your lover’s hair in VR, it looks like you’re doing it for real, he explains. In the environment it is called “phantom touch”. – It underlines how physical and virtual reality blend into each other, says Rørvik. PHANTOM TOUCH: The avatars of the characters Ida and Marvin hold hands in the series “Dates in real life”. Series creator Rørvik, on the other hand, does not believe that the physical meetings will lose their value. – I think humans are more complicated than we choose one thing or the other. The virtual and the physical world compliment each other and talk to each other. – That is what I also want to show in the series. Ida will not have to make a choice about choosing one or the other. She can choose both. This was also the case for Joel and Anastasia. – Hopefully my future wife Because in 2018, Joel finally makes a choice that takes his life in a new direction. He decides to let go of what he has in the US to meet Anastasia. – Straight ahead I thought “Okay, here we go. The person standing in the arrival hall waiting for me is hopefully my future wife. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for that.” Because now he was suddenly there, at the airport in Kyiv, ready to start his new life with a roommate he had only seen through a screen. – Meeting “in person” was completely electric. The intellectual and emotional connection that was there before only made the physical connection even stronger, says Joel. – Nothing changed. EMBRACE: Joel Bray and Anastasia Miliutina on their honeymoon outside the city of Dnipro in Ukraine. War and love The transition from having a digital relationship to a physical relationship went smoothly because they were already so compatible, they say. – In addition, we got to experience moments like holding hands for the first time, our first kiss, etc. We lived as normal, emphasizes Joel. But the idyll was abruptly interrupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. They had to flee and even end up in Germany. It is a new language for both of them. Now they hope that other opportunities will open up for them. A place where they can put down roots. Stacey Bray in Jyväskylä, Finland, during a demonstration in support of Ukraine 26 February 2022, just a few days after the war in Ukraine broke out. Photo: Private – There has been a lot of stress, feelings and anxiety in recent years. We have been through a lot. Life didn’t turn out the way we had imagined, says Anastasia. – But you manage to overcome these problems when you are with the right person, she concludes. Because Joel was right in what he thought when he arrived in Ukraine that time. Anastasia agreed to become his wife. Joel and Stacey hold hands right after the marriage was formalized. Joel and Stacey chose to have a quiet wedding day with the two of them at a restaurant and cinema afterwards.
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– It was electric – Culture
