The Organic Meeting

To meet someone ‘organically’ is to meet someone in the flesh. To meet a person ‘in the wild’ and ask them on a date, rather than to meet them on a dating site. For our parents, the organic meeting was the norm — there wasn’t even a phrase to describe offline dating. In fact, there was huge stigma that surrounded meeting your partner inorganically.

As Susie Lee says in The History of Online Dating, The Lonely Hearts ads in newspapers were seen to be so full of ‘all sorts of scams and perversities’ that police in Britain would ‘prosecute those who placed personals until the late 1960s.’ Those who posted them were seen as desperate losers, so inept at meeting people that they would risk the murky waters of the inorganic date.

These days, meeting people off Tinder seems to be the ordinary, and the organic meeting extraordinary.

Many people would argue that this is a terrible thing, claiming that dating is becoming ‘more of a sport or an online shopping binge’.

Gone are the days of building up the courage to go up to a beautiful stranger on the street and expressing romantic interest. Nowadays there’s no need. It’s scary. It’s potentially embarrassing, and there’s the possibility of rejection — why bother when you can probably find them on Tinder and talk to them then when you’re sure they like you back?

Gone is the thrill of not knowing whether someone fancies you or not. As soon as you match with someone, you know they’re interested. You don’t have to look for signs, you don’t have to watch their body language, and you don’t have to see if their pupils dilate when they look at you.

Having a one night stand and then being able to disappear completely (in a mysterious — not cruel — way) is now a thing of the past, because they’ll probably be on your page of matches, or your friend matched with them too. In one way or another, they’ll always be part of your life.

Does Tinder mean that we have forgotten how to approach people, that we have forgotten how to meet organically? It seems as though we have got lazy and cowardly, unable to take rejection and too restless to pursue someone unless you know they’re into you.

It could be argued that the rise of online dating means that mystery and romance have broken up with dating.

However, this isn’t true. There’s no link between online dating and the death of romance. So what if you know that someone found you attractive? There can be mystery and romance during the date — finding a person attractive isn’t synonymous to falling for them, as ‘chemistry is a mercurial thing’.

Many people see organic meetings as more meaningful than an online meeting. But why? Is it because it’s easier to meet someone? In just a few minutes you can bag yourself a date which would be much harder in person. Is it because dating apps are associated with having a one night stand rather than a meaningful relationship? If that is the case, then rather than getting rid of dating apps, the mindset needs to change.

Is it because people in the past didn’t use dating apps? Many people see the past as a ‘good, old-fashioned love story’. Yes — people in the past didn’t meet their lovers online, but that doesn’t mean that their way was any better.

While dating apps themselves are new, meeting people inorganically has been done from as far back as the 1700s where British bachelors would place personal ads in newspapers to find wives.

Meeting someone online isn’t worse than meeting someone organically, it’s just a new response to our changing way of life. The youth of today now have so much freedom of choice in most aspects of their lives, and it seems natural that this includes dating. There is the urge to explore and travel and expand, and online dating helps with this discovery.

Today, meeting people goes beyond people that you work with, people that you went to school with and people that your friends know. You can now meet exceptional people who you would never have met had you not been online. Your social circle and knowledge of the world can grow exponentially in a way that it wouldn’t if you relied totally on the organic.

In this case, living inorganically is just as good as living organically.

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