The Greatest Thing About Online Dating Might Just Be Its Worst
Back in the 2000s, when I was a hormone-raging, sexually curious teenager, there was simply no other way for me to meet any potential dates: I was strictly limited to the friends and schoolmates I know.
At that time, I had no idea who might be gay, or at least curious like me. I had a few crushes and eye-candies here and there in school, but that’s it. I could only look from a distance and play with the fantasy in my head. My love life was as you would imagine, very uneventful.
But everything changed when personal computers and the internet invaded our homes. That’s when I discovered a gay online forum which allowed users to create their own custom profile with photos and personal information. Besides interacting on the multitude of discussion pages, users could also communicate with each other via personal messages a.k.a pm. There were also other features like ‘add friend,’ ‘send a heart,’ ‘send a kiss,’ ‘send a spank’ and such. Everything was pretty interactive.
Joining this forum had opened my eyes to an active gay community that I never knew existed. Soon enough, I was talking to people, receiving messages and sending them out too. When I received a ‘kiss,’ a ‘spank’ or a pm, I would get so excited and happy about it. It was the first time in my life that I was getting attention from other men. And of course, I had gone on several dates with different people.
Fast forward to today, the 2010s, things have certainly evolved. Now not only do we have more websites and companies providing services and opportunities for singles, straight or gay, to find one another, we have such easy access to these love/sex-finding facilitators with the quick taps of our smartphones that most of us carry with us everywhere like our life depends on it. Well yes, our love life literally depends on it.
But what exactly have all these advances in technology led us to? An easier time finding love? A better route to happiness? I afraid not. But one thing that we do get:
In fact, a whole lot of choices. And the more the merrier, right? Well, some say that it may be far more than necessary for one to find a proper life partner.
Well, if hypothetically, out of the 100 potentials that you meet in real life, at least 10 of them would be a good match for you, or even if it’s half of that number, it’s still quite some choices for you to consider.
Of course, this is just a hypothetical situation I’m describing. We all know that life doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t just generously present you with all the options all at once and then let you choose.
For anyone who have been in the dating world, they’d understand that even in love, there are seasons — high times when you get more attention that you wish for, and dry times when you get nothing at all for an extended period.
But now with online dating, you are open to a whole new world. Instead of the 100 potentials that you will (hypothetically) meet in your lifetime, you have at least 10 times more. There are literally tens of thousands of profiles from all over the world that you have access to.
For instance, if let’s say on average you scroll pass like 20 profiles on your dating app per day. In 2–3 months, you would have already gone through a thousand different faces. And I suppose you would have talked to at least 1% of them? Which is about 10 people.
That’s about the number of options that most people 20 years ago would have for their entire lifetime. And you have just seen them all in a few months!
After a while, you will realise that with online dating, the possibility is endless. There will always be someone out there waiting for you. Someone who wants to go out with you. Someone who wants to sex you up.
Even if you don’t have that chiseled face and model-like figure, even if you’re not exactly conforming to social norms of what’s beautiful, what’s masculine, what’s feminine, you can be sure that there is always a ‘market’ for you.
The chance of meeting that somebody who will appreciate you just the way you are is there, so long as you take the effort to put yourself out there.
Entering the world of online dating, you’re no longer restricted to a particular social circle or limited to a certain geographical space. You can chat up someone who’s living in another town or even another country. If you get ignored, you simply move on to the next person of interest. Breaking up? Rebound has never been easier in this day and age. Social media has made it almost effortless for you to know another friend of a friend of a friend. And for all you know, a comment on someone’s picture on Instagram could turn into something unexpected.
With such high level of connectivity and the seemingly unlimited number of potential dates that it presents to you, it feels like you have the ultimate power to pick and choose what’s best for you. And even if things do not work out, you can quite easily move on to the other choices you already have at hand, or explore any new options that have yet been discovered.
But having said all that, I also think that it can get increasingly difficult to determine when it’s time to stop looking. This is especially true for those of you who have already found somebody.
How do I know if this is it? How do I know if this person right here is the one I should settle down with?
I think this is what many of us have to deal everyday: the Fear of Missing Out. We are afraid that there’s someone better out there, just waiting for us to be single again so that they can catch us. We are afraid that our current option isn’t the best option that can make us the happiest.
Because we are the generation who are told that we deserve the best and only that. We are told to fight for our dreams and passions and ambitions and whatever we hope for. We are a generation of hedonistic idealists and narcissistic perfectionists.
With so much available to us, it should be difficult to feel discontent, yet the irony is that the plethora of choices that we have today make our head spin, give us a harder time when we make a judgment, and put us in a constant state of anxiety where we will never know if we are doing our best or having the best that we should and must have.
Advice for people who are currently in the dating scene:
You can save yourself some trouble by first setting some rules for yourself. This way, you wouldn’t be wasting time on everybody. Though out of the blue, someone might just come along and make an exception out of him or herself.
Face-to-face meeting is always better than unless endless chats on Whatsapp. But before that, be sure to google the shit out of the other person and check out their entire history.
And my other rule: If they’re not someone that you would be OK to add as friend on Facebook, don’t sleep with them.
And for those who have already found someone off the dating scene:
Love is a choice and you have to make the effort to choose it every single day, regardless of what other choices you may have waiting for you out there.
