Wot Went Wrong tells you why your date never called back. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The internet can be used for good, it can be used for evil and then it can be used for the ‘just plain wrong’. Wot Went Wrong is just such an example of this, showing that sometimes, what can go wrong is the entire concept for a website. The site, which was launched yesterday from Australia aims to help people find out why their date never called back, why a relationship ended or just what you might have done that meant you never got that second date.

When I first came across the site, I thought it was going to be some clever way of analysing the public social media data of a potential love interest, finding hints through status updates and other info to determine what might have gone wrong, appealing to our natural curiosity in matters of the self. But this isn’t the case. In fact, Wot Went Wrong works by sending a feedback form (yes that’s right, a feedback form on love) to the person in question, where you can ask a number of queries as well as adding your own details and also giving them ratings such as how attractive you found them.

The release of the site is obviously well-timed with Valentine’s Day upcoming to get your love life in order for the big day, but unfortunately it goes about it all wrong.

Socially acceptable?

The site hinges on the fact of being a ‘socially accpetable’ way of finding out what went wrong on a date, allowing you to move on to a more successful love life. But everything about the site seems to be socially unacceptable, turning the idea of human communication on its head and believing that the web can help you find the answers to impossible questions.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that sending out a feedback form to a potential suitor just might be the wrong way to go about things, even if you realise you may never date this particular person again. And the fact the site is gaining high profile coverage shows that we might have just started to go a little bit mad. Just imagine receiving this form in your inbox one day (one of the prefilled options from the site):

While the intentions of the site may be good (and I usually like to see the positive in a new web application), for me this particular site fails because it fundamentally understands the benefits of the internet or social media. Here, the application isn’t actually providing a viable substitute for the current way of doing things – i.e. calling or emailing personally.

It doesn’t allow for anonymity for example, or offer ingenuity beyond what we would get from texting or emailing the person anyway. It also ignores the benefits afforded by social applications, where for example, dating sites allow you to see if someone is interested in you first before you get in touch with them.  It is simply a different, perhaps worse way to get yourself into a socially awkward situation.