Has the Internet Killed Romance?
I’ll admit to being fairly naive about men. I’ve been off the market for 34 years and I’m a little rusty when it comes to dating, but I have single friends who regale me with the highs and lows of their online dating adventures.
What I know of dating dates back to the stone age, or at least the Rolling Stone age, when guys actually put forth the effort to “woo” a girl. They bought you flowers and dinner. They opened doors for you and sex wasn’t the only thing on their mind. Well, maybe it was, but they hid it somewhat. If you liked a girl, you dated her and through that process you learned about one another. It was called a “relationship” and I fear it’s something of a lost art.
With the increased popularity of dating sites like Match and eHarmony, one might assume the relationship construct is alive and well. But google the subject and you’ll find a myriad of articles from authorities who beg to differ.
7 Research-Based Reasons Internet Dating Doesn’t Work
It seems that the only thing online dating sites offer is an increasingly larger pool of questionable candidates.
My single friends have seen it all. They’ve encountered scams where men claimed to be exiled princes from foreign nations in desperate need of a wire transfer. Married men perpetually on the verge of divorce. One friend was duped into believing her online relationship was a general in the US Army, only to discover through an accidental skype call that the man was a complete fraud. The lesson being; there may be plenty of fish in the sea, but most of them are pretty fishy.
For those non-committal types, opting strictly for a “hookup” there are apps like Tinder, Blendr or Qeep. These apps offer users the ability to flip through hundreds of photos of potential partners within a certain radius of the user’s location. These should be called Who’s Horny Near Me? or LoHo: Locate Your Neighborhood Ho.
These sites seem to pander to the internet generation’s need for immediate gratification, rampant attention deficit, inability to commit and just plain laziness. I can’t help wondering if the easy access and anonymity of the internets are responsible for the demise of the traditional relationship.
My single friend, Kris, recently shared a sadly typical online dating story. A man she’d just met on a dating site boldly, and with zero provocation, asked for naked pictures of her and offered the same in return. Keep in mind they’d never met and had no previous connection.
While I was insulted on Kris’s behalf, she seemed nonplussed, explaining that messages like this pop up all the time and she simply ignores them. What bothered me was that she has to see these messages in the first place. The communication itself seemed like an affront.
This man was hiding behind the internet, like a cowardly creeper, asking something he’d never dream of asking in person. Would he have the nerve to tap my friend on shoulder in Starbucks and say, “Excuse me Miss, but could you drop your drawers so I can get a good look at your Pikachu?” No, he would not! Mainly because he’d be knocked on his ass quicker than Billy Bush can flip Trump a Tic Tac. But men like this are able to accost women behind the mask of the internet with zero consequences.
What’s even more upsetting is the thought that this guy’s approach might actually work with some women. It’s a numbers game. If the sleazoid hits up enough ladies, he’s bound to run across some poor gal with low-self esteem who’s is going to pony-up because she thinks she’ll gain some form of validation from it.
Even worse, was the idea of this scumbucket praying on young girls. Girls not as experienced as my friend Kris, who might get conned into going along with this creeper because they think it’s what’s expected.
I’m not slut-shaming here, don’t get me wrong. What transpires between consenting adults is their business. I’m aware that couples send sexy selfies to each other, kind of a modern version of the love letter. Who needs poems by Dickinson when you can simply snap your snatch and send it whizzing through the nets? If that’s your bag, have at it. I’m not judging.
In this brave new cyber world perhaps this is the next evolution of apps like Tinder. Maybe the creeper who approached my friend Kris was simply ahead of his time. Why waste precious time and money on dinner or coffee when you can get straight to business? Send me your photos and If I like what I see, maybe we can hook-up. But if the dude’s got a shifty-looking schlong or the girl’s vageen doesn’t look pristine, then maybe there’s nothing left to discuss. Why get to know a man’s politics if he’s a freakshow in the bedroom? If this is the direction the internet is taking us, I weep for the future.
And if you were to assume that single folks, like my friend Kris, are the only targets of illicit messages you’d be wrong.
A week after Kris was approached by the panty peeker, I myself, received a private messaged from a man through a social media site. He didn’t request naked pictures or suggest anything lurid. He asked a simple question, “How are you?” It was an innocuous message with a familiar, casual tone. I assumed we knew one another.
When I asked him how we’d met or if we had mutual friends, he ignored the question. I asked again, and once again he avoided my question. Now my radar was up. He finally admitted that we did not know one another at all, he just liked my picture.
Here we go, I thought. He’s a creeper with some pervy request. But the pervy request I’d anticipated never came. Instead, he told me he was looking for his soulmate and when he saw my photo it spoke to his soul.
What the hell. Seriously?
If my photo speaks to souls then they are in serious trouble, because my picture has goofball written all over it! While my younger, single self might have swooned, the older, more jaded version smelled bullshit.
I wondered if this sad-eyed man in the picture was perpetrating a scam. Was he going to ask me to deposit money into an offshore account or claim to be distressed royalty in need of financial help?
The answer was “no.” This man didn’t seem to want a thing from me. He simply wanted to talk, to connect to someone. A far cry from the sleazy message my friend had received from her sketchball. This wasn’t a request for a panty drop at all.
The man explained that he was a widower, raising his young son alone. He told me he’d been terribly lonely since his wife died and wanted to find love again. He seemed earnest in his search for a relationship. Maybe he wasn’t a creeper, maybe he was just a misguided Joe, thinking he could find real love on the internets.
Tact was needed, something I’m often in short supply of. I dug deep and told him how sorry I was to hear of his loss. I agreed with him that finding a soulmate is indeed a worthy pursuit. I knew of this first hand because I’d been happily married to my soulmate for over 30 years. I wished him well on his journey to find love, said goodbye and hit send. Maybe he was on the level, I’d never know for sure.
But my heart went out to this sad-eyed stranger on the internet. I wanted to tell him to get off his computer and go find a flesh and blood woman in the real world. The internet could never foster the intimacy he needed. It could only provide a hollow imitation of the relationship he so desperately sought.
A keyboard cannot replace a lover’s touch. He needed someone who could hold his hand and walk in the park with him. A stepmother for his young son. He needed a real three-dimensional girl. His emergency contact. His plus one. His partner in crime. His best friend. His sweetheart. His Yoko. His significant other. His companion. His beloved. His person.
We all need that one individual who’s uniquely our own. That person who’ll never let us down. The one who knows us and all of our faults and loves us just the same. They know our heart and would take a bullet for us because they know we’d do the same for them. That’s called a relationship. A good one, a lasting one, takes time and effort to cultivate, but is so worth it.
Undeniably the internet has given us great gifts. Infinitely expanding our horizons by providing access to the entire world from the palm of our hand. But these gifts have come at a cost. By bringing the world close, the internet has also created distance between us.
Instead of meeting friends in person, we update our status on Facebook, we tweet our opinions, we use Snapchat and Instagram to share our intimate moments with the world.
As for romance… eloquent declarations of love and loquacious midnight conversations once expressed in the arms of a lover have now been replaced by the panty drop and selfie snap. We text and tweet when we should hold and caress.
I’m lucky enough to have found my Mr. Right in person. We met at a college film studies class. Despite a rainy night that made my borrowed cashmere sweater smell like cat sick and whipped my hair into a frizzy heap, my husband found me attractive. We didn’t need to send naked pictures or edited glam shots. It was just us, up close and real, crazy hair and all.
The relationship isn’t really dead, it’s simply evolving to suit the tech revolution. And during any revolution there’s bound to be casualties, I can only hope that true romance isn’t one of them.
