I was considering writing a big summary/wrap-up of my experiences, but then I saw Joe Berkowitz and Joanna Neborsky’s article in The Awl called “My Super Power Is Being Alone Forever” and oh my goodness I cannot imagine a better 1,700 word summary than the one they gave. I’m sure it must’ve been one heck of a painstaking writing process because to wrap everything they did into one coherent (ish) article – and to do it as hilariously and beautifully as they did – is super impressive.
Below I highlight some quotes and add my perspective.
***
The Blemish of Singleness
When you’ve been single for longer than a pregnancy term, the people who love you start to get concerned. They begin to wonder whether you’ll ever impregnate anyone.
I begin to wonder about that myself.
It does feel like there is a real gap-in-resume problem if you’ve been single for too long, especially if you’re getting old like me.
This factor may be a stronger motivator to get involved with online dating than we care to admit, but it’s not like we need the motivation. I am convinced that the problem dating sites are (badly) trying to solve is the biggest one we cats in developed countries face.
---
Marketplace of Undesirables
These websites constitute some sort of Matrix of Loneliness, connecting romantic undesirables and allowing them to mingle badly.
It’s true that there are romantic undesirables aplenty, but there are also a surprising number of romantic desirables. As the authors write later, “Everyone has a friend who is so charismatic, brilliant or good-looking that the idea of him or her trolling OKCupid is mind-boggling. I am haunted by those friends.”
I can attest that the caliber of some of these women is mind-boggling. At least in my area, the “quality” of the women is certainly not the problem.
---
The Kingdom of Anonymity
With infinite choice comes infinite opportunities to judge. The more options that exist, the pickier you become. Scrolling through profile after profile, I am transformed into an imperial king, surveying his goodly townsfolk from a balcony on high. Those with minor perceived flaws are summarily dismissed (“Next!”) because surely someone closer to the Hellenic ideal is just around the corner. Anyone cute might be cast aside for the smallest breach of taste: a penchant for saying things like “I love life and I love to laugh” or self-identifying as “witty." Yet even when I genuinely find myself attracted to someone, I'll still react with skepticism. What’s the catch? What dark and terrible secret causes her to resort to this thing I am also doing? After scanning closely for red flags and finally deigning her regally worthy, I dispatch a message. But then the truth reveals itself: the king is not her type and also he is not really a king.
Personally, I’ve never felt as spectacularly anonymous as I have as an online dater, united with everyone else on the site in that we all have a reason to be there.
That first quote is the best characterization of online dating that I’ve read.
Re: the second quote, I wouldn’t say that I felt spectacularly anonymous since in my area the selection of active users was not overwhelming. Plus, with everyone trying with all their might to put on their best Look-At-Me-I’m-Different face, I didn’t get the sense that all “options” were the same, except in their attempt to be different. Which I suppose is the most disturbing kind of sameness.
I certainly have never felt quite so much like a co-op display in a Barnes & Noble, as the authors put it. I felt plunged into an overtly commoditizing mating market, but a weird one where people are reluctant to admit they are looking for romance instead of just “new friends.”
---
Judging Based on Covers
Dating profiles reveal more about how you see yourself than how you really are, and more about how you want to be seen than how you will be.
Exactly. Here is the rest of the brilliant paragraph that led up to that sentence:
Putting together a dating profile means performing a self-autopsy and reassembling the pieces into Sexy Robocop. You save what’s worth salvaging and shield the damaged parts with reinforced metal. You strive to find the middle ground between showing you have nothing to hide, and just showing off. You carefully curate your interests as if they were co-op displays in a Barnes & Noble, reveling in the understated complexity of liking both Nicki Minaj and My Bloody Valentine. Your picture gallery broadcasts a series of defensive messages: “See? Other females aren’t afraid of me.” “See? I go to museums sometimes and mimic sculpture-poses because Culture.” “See? I’ve been to a Halloween party so obviously I don’t spend much time alone, crying to The Cure’s Disintegration LP and drinking wine from a can.”
Even if the incentives to be showy and falsely attractive magically disappeared, there is still a real problem of self-knowledge. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. It’d be interesting to see a dating site where friends/family were required to build the profile for the dater. Then again, I’m not sure that’d give us a more accurate picture than a self-summary because I’m sure that my grandma, for example, would’ve been not un-misleading with her “such a sweet boy” commentary.
And perhaps more importantly, we don’t know what we want in a partner or in a relationship as well as we think we do. At least I don’t. (I apologize for the royal we’s.) So even in a magical world where 400 word online profiles perfectly represent the person, we’ve (ahem, I’ve) still got problems.
---
Taking it (Un)Seriously
The only way for me to do this without ending up in an existential tailspin is to not take it too seriously. … If I never get my hopes up, nobody can accuse me of being too invested in the outcome. That way, when we actually do end up liking each other, it will feel more like something that just sort of happened—rather than the result of actively engaging in an organized simulacrum of human mating rituals. "Whoops, I seem to have tripped over my laptop and subsequently bumped into you on the Internet!”
I don’t think this is unique to online dating. This is the classic conundrum of romance: Finding a balance between taking the bumping-into-someone / let’s-just-have-fun-with-it approach vs. actually being invested in the outcome and actually letting yourself get interested in a girl. Go too far with the latter and you’re bound to lose mental stability, and too far with the former and then what’s really the point? Detached amusement? If you manage to emotionally detach yourself, then congratulations, your pride is safe!, but I regret to inform you that you are now a spectator in your own life.
The trouble with online dating is knowing when it makes sense to start being interested in a girl. Does it make any sense to fall in Like with a girl based only on the attributes presented in her profile and the brief messages you’ve exchanged? Almost certainly not. But can it happen anyway? Embarrassingly, yes.
But then there are the added complications of transitioning from knowing someone’s online persona to knowing their in-person persona, of having/expecting a “Spark” with someone you’ve just met, of trusting them when you know none of the same people, and all the while staying within social conventions that are, at best, nebulous.
---
Knowing What You Want
The disappointment of not being chosen, however, is almost preferable to the Fellini-style ennui of manufacturing chemistry with someone whose interests map well to yours while every moment becoming less certain whether that’s what you even want.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing – probably some of both, but mostly bad – but it seems that the biggest effect online dating has had on me is making me feel 90% less confident that I know what I want, not just in a woman or in a relationship, but in general. I am already a pretty opinions-weakly-held type of guy, so to push me more in that direction risks eventually turning me into one big amorphous blob of directionlessness.
---
The Uncomfortable Feeling of Having Met Online
I can rationalize about Internet dating for days. I can think up reasons for why the way my grandparents met is outmoded. But I don’t want any woman to think she was my last resort, and I don’t want to imagine that I was hers. When we say, “I’m so glad we found each other,” I don’t want it to refer to the way we had to find each other like hidden files in a hard-drive search.
The more that romance feels like an Amazon shopping experience, the more difficult it will be to remember that I am with a capital-P Person and not an exchangeable commodity. (Related post from April.)
###
Do I regret doing online dating? Has it been a failure?
To be determined, I’d say, but I think the answer to both is probably not.
It’s not terribly unlikely that a romance will come out of this, but even if it doesn’t, I suspect I’ll at least have a couple of new friends.
I feel pretty sure that I don’t want to do it again, but then again, if I stay single for five or six pregnancy terms, then I might feel compelled to hop back on eHarmony and start interviewing wife candidates.
