Forget Privacy, Physical Intimacy Is Dead
There has been a great deal of debate on the existence of privacy in the Digital Era, but I think the issue of physical intimacy has been largely neglected.
Oddly enough, studying technology and relationships are two of my favorite interests. That’s why I was fascinated by “Her,” the 2013 movie about a man named Theodore who fell in love with an operating system named Samantha. The biggest critique I heard of the movie was that it was not realistic. After all, what kind of weirdo falls in love with an operating system? My answer: every person who has ever dated online, posted on a social media site, or commented on a post without knowing the author.
In November 2013 — a month before “Her” was released” — I connected with someone on the dating app OkCupid. This was not my first time dating online, as I had dated someone from Match the prior year. We exchanged messages and the next thing I knew, we were talking on the phone for hours. I was so blown away by her personality that I booked a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco to see her on the upcoming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend after only knowing her for about three days.
January finally arrived and, after two months of exchanging pictures and video chats, I was excited to see her in person. However, once she pulled up to the curb at San Francisco International Airport, I was underwhelmed. I just wasn’t physically attracted to her. I tried to make the best of my first visit to San Francisco, but she sensed my lack of excitement and we have not spoken since I arrived back in Atlanta.
Would I have been better off not going to San Francisco and maintaining my image of her? That’s precisely the danger of the Digital Age. People are bound by their bodies, but ideas of people are limitless. That’s precisely why “Her” is entirely possible.
Of course, expectations can outpace reality in real-life encounters, too. Today, a close female friend asked me why guys lose interest because things were fizzling out with a guy who chased after her. My response was that his excitement leading up to the first date may have just been about the idea of her. The Digital Age exacerbates the problem by taking the physical connection out of initial encounters, leaving only the idea of a person.
Think about it, every time you’ve flirted with someone without seeing them in person, you’ve done the same thing Theodore did in the movie. How do you know that person is real? There’s a term for it called “catfish.” But even if that person is real, how do you know that person has provided you with a picture that accurately describes how they look in person? After all, people tend to post favorable pictures.
But let’s not stop at verbal exchanges. Every time you’ve gawked over a picture, especially one that is altered (everyone looks better on Instagram, right?), you’ve done the same thing Theodore did in the movie. We live in a society that is increasingly obsessed with perfection. Buzzfeed recently posted an article that glorified a woman with a perfect body … while she is 8 1/2 months pregnant.
Finally, every time you posted a status update or commented without knowing the author, you’ve done the same thing Theodore did in the movie. After all, to whom are you talking? A status update is not to a person, it’s an amorphous call to the world for someone, anyone, to engage with us. Even this article is a plea for someone to engage with me on Medium.
This is not to say there is no place for physical intimacy in the Digital Age. Obviously, people still have sex in real life. However, addiction to pornography, trolling Instagram, or obsession with “Fifty Shades of Grey” cannot be ignored. Indeed, I believe that if given the choice between having actual sex with someone with a less than perfect body and masturbating to someone with a perfect or perceptively perfect (“Her” spoiler alert) body, many would choose virtual sex.
Similarly, I believe that if given the choice between meeting someone in a bar and using Tinder, most people would pick Tinder. And I believe that if given the choice between having 5 friends in real life and 5,000 social media followers, most people would pick social media.
Is society’s ostensible disdain for physical intimacy an evolution of humanity or has the Digital Age revealed what has been in our character all along? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that if we’re at the point of checking smartwatches during a date or having apps like Invisible Boyfriend or Invisible Girlfriend, Samantha can’t be too far away.
