Microsoft shutting down Skype in May means we don’t have a lot of time to experience our own Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023) if we still haven’t. In the film, childhood sweethearts Nora and Hae Sung get in contact through Facebook —that we can still do— when they’re adults and start video calling each other through Skype, one in South Korea, the other in the US.

There was something special in the anticipation of turning on the computer and getting to see if the person you wanted to talk to was online, or seeing the popup window when they went from offline to online. I have not used Microsoft Teams yet, and with that name, I struggle to imagine it being the substitute for Skype in these matters.

It’s curious that more traditional and not so common ways of meeting a partner are still possible, like at church, or how Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar did in Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) working as shepherds. I’m sure there are a few couples of shepherds sleeping in a tent yet to happen. Of course, meeting a partner or developing the relationship through the internet, in general, is one of the main ways nowadays. But meeting through specific services like Vodafone Live SMS chat —the way Las Tukus did in real life— or bonding through Skype or Google Talk, will not be experienced again.

Links:
Stanford University: How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST)
https://vjayar6.people.uic.edu/ViewersChoice.html
Las Tukus https://www.youtube.com/@lastukus
Past Lives https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/666277-past-lives
Brokeback Mountain https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/142-brokeback-mountain