本期精读选自The Economist关于在线社交的一篇文章The return of slow courtship to American dating

疫情让很多行业都遭遇了巨大损失，但在线社交行业可能除外——很多人因为出不了门只能选择网上交友约会。这篇文章选取了几名年轻人的故事来说明疫情期间线上交友服务的发展及其利弊。

文章总体不难，我对一些值得重点关注的知识点做了解析：

开头段介绍了宾夕法尼亚州一名教师在隔离期间的线上约会故事。

For Trevor Barnes, a 27-year-old teacher from Hershey, Pennsylvania, quarantine could be terrible.

特雷弗·巴恩斯是一名来自宾夕法尼亚州赫尔希的27岁教师，对于他来说，隔离可能会很可怕。

这里作者写的是quarantine could be terrible，而不是quarantine is terrible，因为这样可以表达一种猜测的意思“隔离可能会很可怕（也有可能不那么可怕）”，后面提到他在隔离期间还能在线上约会，说明隔离生活也并非优点全无，用could可以委婉地表达这层含义，如果用quarantine is terrible则意思过于绝对。

He lives on his own in an apartment attached to the boarding school he works at, and he is fully locked down. For ten days he has not been able to go outside even to buy groceries.

他独自住一套公寓，公寓就位于他工作的寄宿学校里面，并且他已被完全隔离。十天来，他连出门买食品杂货都不行。

Yet Mr Barnes has discovered that being cooped up inside at least does not mean he has to give up his romantic dreams. Over the past week he has met several women, all by phone call and video conference.

但巴恩斯先生发现，被困在家里还好并不意味着他必须放弃自己的浪漫追求。在过去一周中，他通过电话和视频聊天结识了几名女生。

作者从开头到现在用了三个不同的说法来表达“隔离”：quarantine/lock down/ coop up，这种用词多样的手法值得学习。

“I go on a lot of dates normally, from Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, all that stuff,” he says, but has never found somebody he really hit it off with. “This has been a good way to figure out a more serious approach,” he says.

他说：“我通常会从Tinder，Hinge，Bumble等软件上与很多人约会”，但他还从未找到真正与他合得来的人。他说：“这些线上交流能很好地帮助我找到一种更严肃的约会交往方式”。

Normally在这里相当于usually，即“通常，平常”，hit it off with somebody是一个在口语中经常出现的表达，意思是“与某人合得来”，比如：I didn't really hit it off with his friends. 我和他的朋友们并不怎么合得来。

第二段介绍了年轻人面对隔离的良好适应能力。

Though older people will suffer the brunt of the coronavirus, it is the footloose young who will see their lives turned upside down.

尽管老年人将会首当其冲受到新冠病毒的影响，但生活发生重大变化的是那些无拘无束的年轻人。

bear/take/suffer the brunt of something 是一个常见的固定表达，意思是“首当其冲受到……的影响”，比如：Schools will bear the brunt of cuts in government spending. 政府削减开支，学校将首当其冲受到影响。

Turn something upside down意思是“使……变得凌乱不堪”（to cause something to change completely and in a bad way），它强调使事物往坏的方向发展。例如：Their lives were turned upside down when their son was arrested. 儿子被捕后，他们的生活变得一团糟。

But a generation that is tied to its phones anyway is perhaps also well-equipped to innovate around some of the problems social isolation imposes.

但无论如何，这一代从小习惯了手机的年轻人应该能够很好地用新方法来解决社会隔离所带来的一些问题。

Somebody is well-equipped to do something是一个固定表达，意思是“某人能够很好地完成某事，某人能够胜任某事”。innovate around problems 这一用法很灵活，意思是“通过创新的方法来解决问题”，这种搭配在词典中一般查不到，属于活用现象，平时遇到可以多加积累。

And a lot of young people are proving that just because you cannot actually meet somebody in person does not mean you cannot date.

而且很多年轻人正在证明，仅仅因为你不能与某人在线下见面，并不意味着你们不能约会。

第三段介绍了一些社交应用的表现。

Match Group, the owners of Tinder, are giving away some features of the app that usually cost money to reflect the fact that people have more time to kill by swiping left and right.

社交应用Tinder的所有者Match Group向用户免费赠送了应用中的一些功能，这些功能通常要花钱才能获取。这说明人们有更多时间消磨在社交应用的左划右划配对上。

swiping left and right是不少交友应用都有的一个功能，用户通过左划或右划的方式来挑选感兴趣的人进行匹配。

All dating apps are encouraging users to try video dating. One Instagram feed, called Love is Quarantine, has taken off by parodying a popular Netflix show called Love is Blind.

所有的约会应用都在鼓励用户尝试视频约会。最近Instagram有一个很火的信息流：“隔离期间的爱情”，它戏仿了网飞一个流行节目“爱情盲选”。

Its creators, Thi Lam and Rance Nix, who share a flat in Brooklyn, New York, joke that their invention has “gone viral”.

信息流的发起者蒂姆·林和兰斯·尼克斯在纽约布鲁克林合租了一套公寓。他们开玩笑说这一发明已经开始了“病毒式传播”。

第四段介绍了一名年轻人的线上约会情况。

It is not all easy, dating in a lockdown. Kevin, a 26-year-old tech worker, says he met somebody online recently.

在隔离期间约会并不容易。26岁的科技公司员工凯文说，他最近在网上认识了一个人。

“After work I set up a hammock in my tiny back yard, grabbed a beer from my fridge and we chatted for an hour,” he says. It went well—he and his date are going to have a walk around a local park next.

他说：“下班后，我在小后院里支起了吊床，从冰箱里拿了啤酒，我们聊了一个小时。” 约会进行得很顺利——他和他的约会对象接下来会在当地的公园里散步。

But he wonders what comes after that. “I am comfortable adding one more person to my isolation group if it comes to that,” he says. Whether his three flatmates will be equally comfortable is less clear.

但他不太确定公园散步后会发生什么。他说：“如果有必要的话，我很乐意在我的隔离小组中再增加一个人”。他的三个室友是否会同样乐意就不太清楚了。

if it comes to that是一个固定搭配，相当于if that is necessary 

结尾段介绍了线上约会的一些优点以及作者对此的展望。

Still, it could be worse.

然而，（如果没有线上约会）情况可能会更糟。

上一段提到了科技公司员工在线上约会中遇到的一些小问题，这一段开头作者用Still, it could be worse. 进行转折，指出虽然线上约会存在不足，但它相比线下还是有优势的。

“It has brought us back to an older way of connecting with people, which is just talking, not all these visual branding cues on profiles,” says Katie Nelson, a journalist confined to her parents’ home in Minneapolis.

记者凯蒂·尼尔森被困在明尼阿波利斯的父母家中。她说：“线上交流使得我们回到了一种更古老的与人联系的方式。人们只是交谈，而不是给出各种能美化其形象的视觉暗示”。

She used to despair of men rushing to meet up before she knew anything about them.

她曾经对那些她还不了解就急着要见面的男人感到绝望。

When lockdowns end, it may be too much to hope that the return of slow courtship will last. But by then some people might have become experts at it.

当隔离结束后，寄希望于这种慢节奏恋爱能够持续回归可能并不现实。但到那时候一些人可能已经成为这方面的专家了。

it may be too much to hope that... 意思是“寄希望于……可能并不现实”，比如我们可以说：It may be too much to hope that stock prices will keep rising.