Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Prince Charming is Riding on the Information Superhighway in a Lexus

To be in the 2000's means that you now are on the Internet, own a cell phone, Instant message, email, text message and quite possibly have tried Internet dating. It is not bad enough that we are almost completely digital in our communication now, but we have moved the fine art of human interaction and dumbed it down to online dating. You can now dehumanize yourself to only your first name and an online profile of personality traits that are matched for you by, what? That's right folks, a computer supposedly taking into account 29 different facets of you. Online dating is supposed to be better, at least on this one particular site because it matches a person from the inside out. Ok. Sure. Right. I have no problem with giving anything the old college try, but I have studied ecology and evolution and you can't get past human nature. Men will always be men and women will always be women no matter how compatible the computer says they are. There is a reason you have to provide a picture at some point in the matching and communication process. We are all visual creatures and chemistry plays a factor for both sexes and whether anyone wants to dispute this or not, men tend to be more visual than women.

So, here is my online dating complaint. You can spin this however you want to spin this, but someone has to tell the truth. There is no such thing as falling in love mechanically from the inside out. I hate to be the killer of romance here, but humans are just plain shallow creatures by nature. ALL OF US!!! This crap about communicating or not communicating for logical reasons is just plain nonsense. Real love is not logical. It is downright messy and passionate and full of surprises. It hits you out of nowhere one day like a speeding train with no brakes and you have no idea what just happened. The person who you never thought of as Ms. Wonderful or Mr Right is standing in front of you in a whole new light. Love is unpredictable and spontaneous. It is anything, but planned and guided and mechanical.

Online dating? Relationships started with no human contact? As a society, I think we have so masterfully found a way to remove emotion from the most emotional part of our lives and at the same time convince ourselves that this is better, more efficient and less threatening. How sad is it that we are moving more towards the digital and less towards the emotional and personal?

2 comments:

-bRad said...

Perhaps you should look at it from a different perspective....

I don't see online dating places much differently from going to a bar and checking people out.

You get a visual, you talk, you see if there is chemistry. If not, you get a drink thrown in your face and move on to the next vict...er poor unlucky soul.....maybe it's just me.

That's really not much differnt than the whole online thing. You get a visual, you communicate and see if there in any compatiblity. If not, you file a restraining order and move on.

David said...

it's very sad