In Pursuit of Something Real
Dating, connection, and relationships in the digital age.
Let’s face it. Dating today sucks. Okay, it always kind of sucked, even before a time when people could seemingly learn more about you in a fifteen-minute online stalking session than they could from an hour with you at dinner. It seems like every few months there are new ways for people to research, evaluate, and communicate with potential partners. We almost can’t keep up with them all. And what’s more, we now take this as a given, and the “natural” way for people to communicate and meet.
But what happens when we view these behaviors through a slightly more critical lens?
The following observations don’t always seem strange on the surface, especially because so many of us do them without thinking twice, but when you take a bird’s eye view they take on a slightly different aura.
Dating as if shopping.
Dating apps (of which there are many and the particulars of which I will not go into here) have a way of encouraging us to sort and evaluate our romantic prospects in an oddly consumerist way. They encourage the curation of people the way one would sort and curate their online media queues, or shopping wish lists. We “favorite” people we might want to date the way we “favorite” products for later follow-up and potential purchase. We evaluate their online presence with our own individually unique alchemy, calibrated towards our own internal romantic compass, and whether or not their digital presence points us towards feelings of “attraction”, “potential” and “curiosity”.
On the one hand, I get it. People want to make sure they’re not inadvertently setting themselves up with a gun-toting, NRA card carrying, “Make America Great Again” slogan chanting troglodyte. But then again, maybe they do want that, in which case, kudos. On the other hand, I find it odd and somewhat rather impersonal to try and form opinions about someone entirely before meeting them.
Surveying away risk.
We are a society with an ever decreasing propensity for natural discovery, whether that be of things or people. This need to collect, curate, and evaluate potential partners stems, in part, from our contemporary need (and now expectation), to control and manage every aspect of our lives. Just like our phones have tried to make us more efficient, healthy, productive, fit, balanced, smart — name the quality, so too have our romantic lives been relegated to an app that gives us the (false?) impression of efficiently and effectively evaluating our romantic prospects in such a way that eliminates risk.
The dating platform OkCupid, for example, has a feature whereby users answer a series of questions about themselves around certain thematic topics. The more one answers and reveals about themselves through these questions, the more likely the OkCupid algorithms will match you with a person that is most compatible with you. The questions range from the innocuous “Do you like cats?” or “ How many books do you read a year?” to the downright scandalous, “What crime are you most likely to commit?” and “With how many people have you had sex in the last year?” The fact that people would answer these potentially incriminating questions in an honest way, let alone the idea that one’s answers will somehow lead them to their ideal mate, begs for reputable data.
What is the motivation behind all of this surveying?
Questionnaires can give you a lot of trivial information. However, they cannot tell you how a person smiles when talking, the type of look they have in their eye when they talk to you, their skill (or creepy lack thereof) at regulating eye contact, how they sit, how they smell, how they behave towards waiters, the list goes on. All of the texts, photos, and questionnaires in the world cannot take the place of one hour with someone in a restaurant.
When in doubt, add an Emoji :-) ❤!!!!
Once the algorithms have allowed one to connect with a potential candidate, many of us engage in what could be described as a digital form of courting. We spend weeks chatting with this person in some online form, doing everything we possibly can to “know them” (i.e., evaluate them) before we ever actually meet them. Often times, these online conversations lead nowhere. The messages become shorter, the responses even shorter until finally, we are either the victim or perpetrator of, to use a modern turn of phrase, “ghosting”.
There is a fine art to texting. Whether one is in a new relationship, or one that is well established, there is a fine art to the subtext of a text message.
Have you ever noticed how often people overuse punctuation, Emojis, and other expressions in completely innocuous messages that normally shouldn’t require such a display?
For instance, if you received the following text from a person you were dating in response to a message you sent them asking about meeting up later that read:
Ok.
Would you interpret the subtext the same way as in a message that read:
Ok!!! :-) ❤
The majority of people accustomed to modern text communication etiquette would interpret the first message as passive-aggressive, and as if something were “wrong”, while the second version of the message would be seen as the appropriate and expected response from an individual holding that place in our life at that moment. The words in both versions of the message convey the same acknowledgment of information, but the first lacks all subtext and emotion one might normally convey in person. Hence the need for the exaggerated expression.
As the author Marc Barnes eloquently puts it in an article he cleverly named “Kierkegaard Against your Emojis” when speaking about the need we all feel to add Emojis to text messages:
These are not expressions of actual felt emotions. People do not feel the need to truly smile when they rent out a smiley-face from Samsung, or weep when they select Apple’s version of a sad face. Texted “hugs and kisses” promise neither past, present, nor future enactments of the symbol. These expressions are bandages used to cover the wound of depersonalized communication — signifiers that say “I am not against you” or, to be literal, “Please read the preceding/following as an invitation to communion despite its lack of personal presence.” The panicked feeling that a text is incomplete without these bandages is simply an intuition that digital communication strips communication of style.
When one deals in a communication medium inherently incapable of conveying the complexities of human emotion, and is only adaptable by “renting” pre-approved expressions, is it any wonder there are so many misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and wasted hours trying to connect with and understand the person on the other end? It’s even more worrisome that the tendency now is for so many people to rely solely on this form of communication to get to know someone, and have relegated the in-person or phone conversation to the historical trash bin of communication methods.
Insta-relationships / Insta-personalities
There is a specialized pseudo-science involved when it comes to communicating with a romantic interest online. We spend hours scrolling through the person’s photos, strategically choosing which ones to ❤️, and which ones to, perhaps, ❤️ another day. After all, one can’t be too careful with dolling out digital affection. It is the currency of contemporary affirmation culture. There are protocols to follow. Regulations. Strict rules of engagement. Spend it too sparingly, and risk going unnoticed (and consequentially forgotten). Spend it too liberally, and one may find themselves on the awkward end of a one-sided digital relationship. Or worse, blocked. The digital equivalent of death.
I had my own such digital crush recently — well, partly digital. It was after a recent trip to the U.K. where I was introduced to a very charming, handsome chap through a mutual friend. We had lunch and coffee, and that was that. I was so intrigued by our short casual encounter that my curiosity got the better of me and I began the online treasure hunt to learn more. Next thing I knew, I was up until the wee hours of the morning examining the contents of his Instagram, terrified to interact with even one of his posts for fear of revealing my still private feelings.
But how much of the digital representation of a person we crush after represents the real person? For example, someone who is in reality shy and soft-spoken, might have an Instagram persona that gives the exact opposite impression, thus allowing them to fulfill an idolized personality in the digital realm.
The digital barrier between people allows for a level of control unlike in-person interaction. Without any of the risks or vulnerabilities involved when actually being open with a person in the flesh, the insta-personality can form an infinite amount of insta-relationships. Both parties have the impression they are connecting and sharing themselves, but what they are really sharing are carefully crafted personas — digital representations of themselves. These carefully formed and curated identities impress upon others only that which they desire to. Everything is carefully controlled.
These insta-personalities also have the effect of imbuing on the viewer a desire to form some kind of connection. However, it is a desire based on a fantasy. Consequentially, we start to form our own imagined fantasy identity to fit in with the one we encounter. You see a picture of him at an event, smartly dressed, and you imagine yourself with him, equally dapper, your styles clicking just like any seemingly successful couple would. You see him on a beach in some exotic locale and imagine yourself next to him on the blanket. You see him posing for a silly picture as he gets ready for a night out, and you imagine yourself on the other side of the camera.
Before these platforms, our crushes, and the intensity with which we thought of and imagined our lives with them, we’re relegated merely to the bandwidth of our own capacity for creativity. If we were lucky, we had a yearbook photo to work from, and perhaps a few literal Kodak moments. Now, depending on the age of the crush and their involvement in social media, we can have an account of their entire lives circa 2004 (when Facebook was invented), to the present day.
Longing for analog.
The fact that there is now an acronym to summarize knowing someone or doing something in-real-life (IRL) indicates that our lives and interactions with others have become mediated by technology in such a way as to make the real world and real interaction a novelty item worthy of it’s own lingo.
We live in the private world of our minds. Navigating insecurities, and measuring our confidence against the feedback we receive from the world around us.
These tendencies to examine and evaluate ourselves in relation to others, both in romantic and platonic ways, has always been a reality. But now, the influences of our environment on these areas have increased to such a degree that we are in a perpetual state of self-measuring every time we open our phone’s screen. The power to compare and contrast ourselves against other’s successes has never been greater.
Are we moving into a world where people continually interact with others through some form of digital medium, until eventually we don’t even look up from our devices to interact with the people around us? Or will reach reach a breaking point as a society and realize all we’re missing by relying on screens and technology to guide us through the most basic of human experiences?
Digital interaction is a magic trick that makes us believe we are connecting. True connection is messy, in-your-face, complicated, but also glorious, euphoric, and truly amazing when you think about it.
Look up. Go out. Experience the world and people.
Embrace the analog beauty of truly living.
