The timeworn question—“why are murder mysteries the best place in the entire world to fall in love?”—has brought much debate, and lacks any conclusive answers. At Two Dolphins, our lives are fixated around the sheer joy of a fake murder, and as such we feel as though it is time we share our knowledge and shed some light on a more nuanced aspect of our events: romance. For this first blog entry, we will attempt to paint a landscape of the aforementioned debate and schools of thought. So, before we proceed, delete Tinder, strap in, and get ready for the splash zone. Black Fish might have shown you how physiologically challenged our cousins are, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.

“Of course!” the masses loudly exclaim. “I love going out to queue in the cold in order to maybe gain entry to a fun club in the interest of paying them to hold my coat hostage whilst I simultaneously overpay for drinks so I may conjure up the courage to dance in public with my friends whilst staring at hot people and hoping they fall in love with me”, they often convince themselves whilst also being the people who laugh at the funny bird’s dancing on an Attenborough documentary. But, at TwoDolphins they say: if these are your friends, bin em’. They have led you astray and you might as well be socialising with Flat Earthers.

But fear not newly lone wolf, we’re going to teach you how to swim like Michael Phelps.

 

In many ways, the downfall of such mass clubbing can help explain why murder mysteries are such hotbeds for nurturing intimacy. Just think: if you could create a club, where you'd still be in close proximity to lots of new people, but not have to rub their armpits; where you can dance and talk over music you love, but not go to bed with tinnitus; where you can be who you want, saying what you want, to who you want, without having to get blindingly drunk; wouldn't you drop everything you are doing to spend just one night here?

In line with this, the words of Orwell’s (1946) Pleasure Spots ring even more profoundly today than they did initially for London’s Tribune commies, and, necessarily, he offers the starting point for our answer. “For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions—in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane—is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals”. Aside from the fact that Orwell clumsily overestimates the holiness of a human ontology, he is mostly correct in his prophecy. Modern inventions like the LED club dance-floor, the swipe and the match have left men and woman human-less, confused and poorer. The 2011 ONS census found that not one person in the UK found requited love in a club, film, radio or aeroplane. His prophecy fulfilled, maybe we should rename this Orwell masterpiece Unpleasurable Spots Like Clubs.

In stark contrast to this foretold epidemic of loneliness, Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer—after spending time living amongst Dolphins—found that “Dolphins are social mammals, capable of enjoying their lives. They form close bonds with other members of their group”. Singer (or Swimmer, as he is now known) also found a positive correlation between Dolphins pretending one of the group had been killed, and strength of bonds formed amongst group members. All of this is to say: we know, for a fact, pretending people are dead brings people together. And when people are together, they don’t swipe left or right because they can’t. This forces them to talk and solve crime together. And, as we have conclusively seen at every single Two Dolphins even thus far: when the galactic forces of conversation and detective work meet, babies rain from the sky.

As for “why people club?”—that is perhaps the biggest (murder) mystery of all.

 

 

Piece written by a guest who attended Shlomita’s Murder Mystery event; he wishes to be known as The Dolphin Man Bear Pig.