Skip to main content

Find love this Valentine’s through social gaming

Just a few years ago a stereotypical view of a “gamer” was a kid sitting on a bean bag chair with his hat on backwards pushing a joystick while blowing a huge Bazooka gum bubble. That kid is now 40 years-old, his kid is playing with a Wii and his lips are attached to a beer can. People that grew up playing Pac Man and Sonic the Hedgehog now fit into one of three categories, hard core gamers, casual social game players or they have reverted to curmudgeon mode ignoring today’s digital toys.

TheKissingFishGame is designed for the middle, a single person that enjoys Happy Aquarium who is looking for a date. It is soothing yet comical. A player has a choice of thirty goofy fish characters that serve as an avatar. It is an underwater speed dating masquerade party.

Recommended Videos

Fun or terrifying? Maybe the thought of dating a cuttle fish is appealing? Who knows!

Besides choosing your fish, the game includes a short survey which is supposed to help match you with other fish. You can choose an aquarium for your fish and get down to brass tax — what you’re looking for in another fish.

After picking an avatar, an aquarium is filled with fish based on search criteria. After connecting, contact can be made by email or chat.

A ‘free” member can create a profile, choose a KissingFishGame avatar and create custom aquariums. A Premium Membership opens all the doors and only costs $9.95 a month. A player can be featured as the “Catch of the Day”, increasing exposure to what would have been an unknown audience. Contact can be made by “Tail Mail” or chat if both parties are online.

If you’re brave enough to give this a try, let us know what you think in the comments!

Laura Khalil
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Laura is a tech reporter for Digital Trends, the editor of Dorkbyte and a science blogger for PBS. She's been named one of…
What is Section 230? Inside the legislation protecting social media
social media on phone

A little known piece of legislation called Section 230 is making headlines after President Donald Trump's latest effort to repeal the legislation, demanding that Congress fold that repeal in with another round of stimulus checks, defense spending, and the massive bill that keeps the lights on in Washington D.C. It seems politicians are alwasy struggling to wrap their heads around social media and "Big Tech," a silly term for the technology giants that have defined the modern era.

It's not the first time Section 230 made waves, of course. Trump signed an executive order in May that targeted social media platforms and the content on their sites, aiming to remove the protections of Section 230 in the Communications Decency Act. By repealing Section 230, social networks would be legally responsible for what people post on their platforms. The law that protects speech over the internet has been around for more than 20 years, but has been targeted by politicians of both major parties, including Democratic president-elect Joe Biden.

Read more
2020 forced Big Social to address its flaws, but it’s too late for an easy fix
Trump Twitter

The phrase "out of the frying pan, into the fire" is an incredibly apt description of the plight of the internet's social media giants in 2020. Already grappling to settle into their increasingly large roles in democracy and culture, social networks like Facebook and Twitter suddenly gained an even bigger role in our daily lives as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. In the face of this extra pressure, they had no choice but to adapt.

While these forced adaptations were no doubt difficult for the companies involved, the resulting changes have arguably been good ones -- not only for individual users, but for the world at large.
Too many fires to put out
When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, social media was a natural fallback. People turned to their online networks for community updates, virtual hangouts, news, entertainment, and more. Giants such as Facebook and Twitter faced a fresh coronavirus-related “infodemic,” while at the same time, an urgent responsibility hung on their shoulders to police an influx of controversial political content from President Donald Trump and many others who were quickly racking up huge follower counts.

Read more
Practically every major social app has a Stories function now. This is why
instagram launches location stories to more users 1

When Snapchat introduced the ability to post disappearing text and media over half a decade ago, no one expected that a scruffy new startup’s headlining feature would end up consuming a row of space at the top of every other social platform in a few years. But that’s exactly what has happened.

Snapchat’s Stories has flourished into a social network staple, and now the world's biggest tech companies are clamoring to bake this breakout format into their offerings. Today, a familiar row of avatars sits above all else on some of the most popular apps. You can now post these ephemeral “Stories” on Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google (for publishers), and possibly even Spotify in the near future.

Read more