Back in my second semester of community college I took a cultural anthropology class that pretty much put me off the mating process for good. An overworked and underpaid lecturer attempted to get a classroom full of skittish teens to pretend to pick each other up as though in a bar. Needless to say, it was hopeless. What with my four-year degree in Smiths lyrics, I was pretty well looking forward to a life of stoop-sitting and poetry reading, just hoping that one day in the used bookstore my fingers would brush against those of a boy looking for the same collection of Éluard or Valéry. We would draw back, aghast at the touch of another, but upon gazing at each other, realize the inevitablility of our fates. Lucky for me, this courting process worked for a long while.

But suddenly you find yourself in a big city with lots of friends but not necessarily the same coltish awkwardness to fall back on. Nowadays, I'm pleased as punch to enjoy the unthreatening intimacy of a backyard barbecue, but in that casualness there's the inkling that everything becomes much smaller and inconsequential and therefore, just a tad prosaic. And so, with the help of my unflinching courage (and about five phone calls from my editor), I find myself with my old adversary, the industrial dating complex, wondering how I went from being the wingman to the one asking, "So, what brings you here?"

Speed dating is a fickle creature. One moment, you're pretty well sure you can handle yourself, proud of coming up with a clever response to the obvious weirdness of the process (ladies stake a claim on a barstool and the fellas work the room, rotating every four minutes), and by the next date you're wishing you had prepared some stock questions ("So, what's your new favorite meme?").

The last time, I was the anthropologist, enjoying my notetaking and name-calling: "Striped Shirt takes Dirty Martini. Low-cut moves in for the arm-touch: Checkmate!" With this round, I discover the truth: The tech industry is one lonely place. All but one of the guys I talk to are engineers, programmers and the like, and this is their rally to escape the fate of their workaholic colleagues.

"At some point, I just realized that my best years will be gone," says one of my dates for the evening. "If I look back and see that happening, then I know I'll be the only one to blame." Touché.

Still, I cannot help but feel that some amount of self-sacrifice would make these guys' lives better. One, who seemed a major go-getter (or slightly intoxicated), illustrated what he would do if he could get a lady to go on a date with him.

" I feel I know what a woman wants. We go to dinner, I send her some flowers every so often, we go on trips. I believe that if I find the right woman, it just works. If I go on enough of these..."

"If” is the word. According to psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, speed daters can tell within three seconds whether or not they've made a match. That means that no matter how much we talk the talk, we're doomed to fall in love (or at least in serious like) with whomever smells good, tells the best stupid joke, or just seems like the third bowl of porridge. It's a matter of finding someone not too hot, not too cold, but just right – and that's impossibly romantic.

Still, you have to admire the pluck of the veteran speed daters who go just to meet people and get out of their comfort zones. There's one here tonight that I saw the last time, when I shadowed my friend. That night, she had exclaimed that she remembered him from a previous evening, and at this point, he seems tired.

"Yeah, I've done this before, seen it all, but tell me more about yourself."

The hardest part is to resist turning cynical, but as one of the gentlemen calls to my attention, everyone around the room is smiling. These are, from what I can tell, genuine smiles. These are the smiles of people who are finally, blissfully, stepping out from behind keyboards and memos and the worlds of artifice – yes, to a bar – but also to a place where it's not seen as a threat to share a few words, a smile, and four minutes of time, only to say at the whistle's trill, "Well, that was too short, wasn't it?"

Nicole Harvey is a major overthinker who used to run a nonprofit, but now just works for one. She spends her time making, taking and writing about pictures, and denying her involvement with a band called the Screws. See also: thenicoleharvey.blogspot.com.