Why Online Dating Sucks & the Need to Unplug
You owe it to yourself to get a life
Let’s face it: online dating — love it or hate it — isn’t what it used to be. I have come to this realization over the past few years — as I watched the platforms degenerate from fun, promising, and hopeful, to utterly wasteful, humiliating, and despondent. The trajectory of the demise can be traced back at least as far as the metastasization of the swipe-platforms- like Tinder, and their general mainstreaming into the online dating arena.
At best, a prevailing cynicism and snarkiness has taken hold of the dating community— sucked out what little joy that once could be distilled, and turned that on its head into miserable, life invalidating experiences. Swipe-platforms — first Tinder and then Bumble — and a smattering of hook-up sites have sullied any notion of integrity, comportment, or delight to be taken in a process that should be treated with finesse and delicacy, and made it a gutter-sport.
“Take it from someone who cut his teeth in early 1990’s chat rooms, and mastered the early platforms — The Onion Personals, now OK Cupid — the Golden Age of Dating Apps has come and gone.
Romancing was never meant to be like this — lacking the human, present elements that are intrinsic to any mutual attraction, and replacing them with out-of-body, impersonal ‘social’ transactions that leave us unsatisfied and demoralized. For that reason, the online platforms are over — it’s just that people haven’t gotten the memo.
“Remember when we thought speed-dating was superficial, crass, unworthy of our vote? Heck, speed-dating is urbane as compared to online comportment — at least in speed dating you are getting exactly what you see.
I got lazy, just like everyone else. I forgot the normal way to meet people. It was too easy to set up dates online. Why should I quit? I thought I was thriving until I became more circumspect, realizing that the relationships I was in all were handicapped by the unnatural and dubious way we came together. Before long, I found I could no longer be drawn to another this way, unless it should be a piece of remarkable good fortune — about 5,000:1.
I like to see, hear, smell, taste in person the one whom I might decide to be with in a relationship. The screen profiles aren’t doing it for me anymore — if they ever really did. I don’t care how hard it seems IRL, and besides, the platforms just don’t have the quality goods, at least their members are not putting that forward. Not that all members are losers — there is exactly the same winner/loser ratio as IRL. By my watch that is 40:1
Few, if any men ever actually read women’s profiles — which is nothing new — however — thanks to the swipe-platforms — women who traditionally set store by what they read in a profile, as opposed to looks, don’t read men’s profiles either. That means people only go by the photos they like. In this way, the only common ground found online dating is that (most) platform members are single. Given that, the expected rate of compatibility of these single must be molecular.
Surprisingly enough, online dating relationships have greater longevity than those founded in IRL
“In truth, I find perhaps one in fifteen-hundred profiles both interesting and appealing. IRL has a far higher return of investment, is far more legitimate and natural to me than the plastic surrogate dating platforms.
The monetization and commoditization of human flesh as a service is always suspect as being demoralizing and objectifying. Despite that, there are more members than ever on the dating sites — all of them people who have given up on meeting IRL, i.e., under normal circumstances. Remember those days? Me neither.
“I’ve said it many times “Online dating is a rubbish way to meet people. Just what do you expect from these transactions.
It is just this exponential mainstreaming of the platforms that will usher their demise. Just as Facebook’s bogus appeal has finally subsided and surrendered to snarky cynicism and debacle, so will the dating platforms. But before that happens, people need to get a life. I keep hearing — and have whined myself — that if it weren’t for the platforms, I would hardly date at all. The reasons for that are a bit complex.
When I am out in public, or social settings, I notice that people seldom interact in the way they used to with one another, if at all. That’s because social media — including the dating apps — have distracted them away from this natural process. If someone wants to date, they do so online, where virtual transactions simply don’t carry the same legitimacy and import as they do IRL.
It’s OK to date online, but not at the expense of becoming completely aloof in public to people who might interest you. But the swipe-away ghosting mentality makes rejection seem easier to take, virtual as it were, as nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Most of these online transactions are also null and void until they should materialize IRL. Online, you don’t catch a person’s vibe, mannerisms, gestures, the way they move through the world, notice you, all of the nuances and subtleties that are trademark and elemental to the mating process. All you get is an image — that very well may be a bot. Why would one persist full well knowing these limitations?
The future of men and women’s’ relationships will not be in virtual reality, but IRL experiences. We’re all losers if we don’t wake up and quit. But it’s no good if only you and I quit — everybody has to. Otherwise, there will never be enough people to form a robust constituency of singles-looking IRL.
As things stand now, IRL dates are virtually all concocted from the dating sites, which means that you’re not going to make eye contact, wink, or smile at anyone because no one expects that anymore.
Poorly crafted profiles on crass dating platforms is not a lot to go on, and it’s far less than IRL — even if everyone is ignoring each other, as they do now. This is true even for the losers I speak of. No doubt many winners come across as losers online owing to a poorly crafted profile.
The argument that if one did not date online, one would not date at all, is an elliptical one: the symptom of a paucity of eligible singles IRL is itself the cause. In other words, if single people quit using the platforms, they’d have to go back to meeting IRL, and all would go back to the old ways, making the ground fertile again for love and meaningful relationships. If all singles did that there would be a whole lot more joy for them.
