A Pre-emptive Epitaph for the Online Dating Platforms
the only game in town are over. Is outer-space the final frontier?
In pop culture, well-worn trends necessarily die a long and agonizing death, owing to the inability of the masses to get the (timely) message that a thing has run its course. They go out with a whimper. What’s more, the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill, and virtual-dating, is sure to leave a massive hangover. This makes for a lot of wasted energies and investments of time, money, and faith, life, into things that no longer return any profit or joy, if ever they did — to wit, the online (virtual) dating platforms.
“Let’s call the virtual-dating platforms the ‘VD’ platforms. I’m rather fond of that alliteration.
I do believe that the onset of the swipe platforms Tinder and Bumble marked the time when the platforms began signaling imminent demise. For myself, the joining of Facebook with the platforms also inspired their death knell: I didn’t belong to Facebook. Several of them made Facebook membership a prerequisite. That development inspired in me utter disgust for the platforms: they were lame enough already. To superimpose Facebook over them them as unenticing as taking your grandmother along on your dates.
The swiping platforms were a death-knell for the more traditional profile page UXs, like Match and OK Cupid. You’re supposed to read profiles on those sites. The swipes cut to the chase under the premise that first-impressions are everything. Most of us do make presumptions about uncompatibility based on a photo, which might preclude reading the profile page with the photo.
‘But we all have reservations about judging by looks alone. Some are no good at it and others are masterful. Even the best of thin-slicers has his moments.
Soon enough, I became utterly jaded, my faith in humanity and beauty blasted and devastated. Perhaps the writing was on the wall, even in happier times, but I somehow missed it. No, not really. I stuck around like a bad penny on just one or two sites because they were the only game in town. Because in town, people don’t say “good morning,” smile, make furtive glances, wink, whistle, or even acknowledge each other’s existence anymore unless it should be framed by a digital media device.
‘don’t even ‘look’— you’ll have a mob of #metoo ers to reckon with.
All of the above are off the table, outdated, even mistaken for borderline sexual predation. That means there’s a mass shutdown of flirtation or any other social interaction going on IRL that only a monk would celebrate. This marginalization of civility is what inspires single people to give up the hope of ever meeting someone in the flesh, and in response make a Faustian bargain with a VD service. Ironically, with all the millions of single dating profiles to consider, there are far less opportunities online than IRL, and of far better quality.
Long ago I had a tacit suspicion that VD was for losers — a basket of deplorables masquerading as happy and interesting people, full of life and vigor. In some ten-years of online dating, nothing has happened to persuade me otherwise. In fact, I feel the situation has deteriorated. The few women I have dated over the past few years were a distillation of tens of thousands of throw-away profiles that held no appeal, or made me reel in disgust. I took pleasure in telling them“you’re one in ten-thousand.”
“a whole lot of people have simply fell by the wayside, the detritus of the IRL v. virtual-dating unfought war
VD options — once very narrow — now are an endless morass of low-brow, meat-marketing, hypocritical, objectifying, demoralizing VD apps stuffed with fake profiles designed to supplant any natural tendency or motivation to meet people in real life. But the days when the apps used to offer some tiny ray of sunshine are over. Inevitably, the platforms merely provide the foreground for men to endlessly circulate unsolicited pictures of their genitals to hapless women who made the mistake to enrol in VD, but saw or had no other options.
Women recoil from such interactions and as a coping measure hide their public profiles from view — window shopping in secret, without ever really intending on making a purchase. That means, by and large, the better looking profiles are kept hidden from view, and only the tossers remain. For others, a mass failure to launch. At the end of the day, there’s no more meeting of the minds online than there is in the ghost world of everyday life.
“On Bumble, I’m fascinated by the number of interests I get with no follow through. Are they just kicking the tires, ditsy, or even malicious?
My experience growing up is wholly antithetical to the present state of social disconnect, ghosting and ignoring. I used to look at women strangers passing by. I might see a pretty face or in extremely rare instances — an intelligent or interesting one. I might even make eye contact. All of those nuances, of course, are outdated modes of conduct. No one ever looks at anyone else when the social media device is beckoning, and it is whining 24/7 for people’s attentions. Alas, I no longer bother looking for a pretty or interesting face passing by — I cast my eyes to the ground — there are more interesting patterns in the dirty sidewalk than the empty spectres stumbling by the wayside.
It wasn’t always thus. In the early 2000’s, the satire publication The Onion held one of the earliest (and best) spaces for VD. It was called Nerve Personals. It later became OK Cupid, and then was absorbed by Match. Back then, only a trickle of members trolled VD platforms. OKC was a modest, funky, snarky, offbeat outlet as compared to dowdy old Match — still the Old Maid of the meat-platforms. People actually were able or willing to convey clearly their personality in a way that could border on charming.
Back then, VD platforms were still novel — even provincial by today’s Big-Dating Data standards. People rarely admitted to meeting on them. They held a promise and wonder that is utterly non-existent today. I was able to date as many women as I liked, albeit not always the ones I wanted. Despite that, I had a bedding ratio of approximately 15% (see my spreadsheets in post below).
Back to the Onion Personals, cum OK Cupid. OKC was especially interesting because it had a cool interface or dasher, and a blogspace module for any members wishing to post. This blogspace was effectively a hotly contested population contest, but it left room for people to create. In this space, I created a lot of post-divorce angst that was frankly barely readable. But I also posted some fine work.
“Too much innuendo. Too many hangups. Why waste time like that?
The bloggers were an incestuous lot who often partied together — and each blogger knew far too much of one another’s business. This turned ugly for me when the woman I was dating began stalking my dates and posted a character assassination that included every secret I ever shared with her. If she could have, she would have posted a video of my circumcision procedure at birth.
As the years went by, more and more joined the platforms either out of curiosity, desperation, or poor-judgment. It was no longer embarrassing to say you were a member. The platforms Walmartized, and multiplied into the present jumble of scumware that we now are forced to either navigate, or eschew and join a nunnery or monastery. As they multiplied they did not become fruitful, rather they mainstreamed and homogenized to the point of banal loathsomeness. At last, I despise them as I would my worst enemy.
I now loosely subscribe to two platforms. I check them only when a woman vouchsafes an interest — a like, a right swipe, because I am unwilling to waste time looking at women who will neither appeal to nor interest me. But even the likes and right-swipes aren’t so much a show of interest as they are a constant jerk of the chain. The hours I wasted each day when I first joined ten-years ago have waned to a mere ten minutes per week, or none at all. I often forget about them completely.
Part of the reason is that as soon as I log in to a platform, a black-cloud always seems to appear, and I begin to feel depressed, and resentful. The platforms ipso-facto make me feel badly.
The other reality is, and I have quoted it many times in this space: “most people are stupid and ugly” — O. WIlde. For VD, that translates to there simply not being enough quality merchandise on the rack. Anything that looks, sounds, smells like quality or talent is subject to a thorough gauntleting and testosterone laced feeding frenzy accompanied by a tsunami of dick pics that would even make a serial rapist cringe. As one of the Star Wars Force alien crewmen said about the Death Star: “(we) can’t compete with that kind of firepower.”
I heard Prince say about ten-years ago saying the Internet was “over.” It was over, in the sense he meant it. And VD is over in the way I mean it: as we used to say it’s “played,” like a sucka! — and people there get played like suckas. What would he say about VD? I know what he would say to the developers. I quote from his 1999, album the song “DMSR” “y’all can take a bite-a my purple rock — .” Besides, he was too busy posing for Hustler. In the Ice Age of VD, porn never sounded so redeeming!
Speaking of outer-space, I think I will eventually retire there. There may be more potential dates out there than here on this weathered old rock. I would jump at the opportunity, except I would fear running into Elon Musk. Outer-space isn’t big enough for the two of us. Perhaps there I will discover some life form that holds more appeal than what life has offered.
