In the era of online dating, is romance losing itself to instant virtual gratification that just isn’t real
Sometimes, I wonder if I was born a generation too early. I mean, I never had the pleasures that kids can be afforded today. It was a pretty much frolic-in-the-mud life for us back then. I remember my first school prom mostly as a horrible nightmare but it’s still there, in memory — logged away to never be revisited but nevertheless an indelible part of my existence. And when the moment comes where my entire life flashes before my eyes, I am sure a few seconds’ worth of reel will be about me standing frozen, trying to walk up to the girl I liked to invite her for my birthday, or another instance when I wanted to ask a girl for a dance. And then there is the worst time of them all, when I did ask a girl for a dance, she agreed and I didn’t know what to do next.
Kids today, on the other hand, seem a lot more confident. They seem to know what they want and whatever it is, they want it now. And thanks to mobile phones and online dating portals, they are in control of it all. I have never used social media to meet people, at least not successfully, or not the kind I have kept in touch with, but I know it is a powerful tool. Apps have made meeting new people their business and business is clearly good.
One can download an app, start swiping away with faith and curiosity without questioning the process, and just like the “wax on wax off” lesson, very soon you will be rewarded with company. In case you missed that Karate Kid reference, I am probably mistakenly writing for a different chrono-demographic.
But where is the joy in it? Those palpitations that every teenage boy felt trying to walk those final few steps that separated him from his object of affection. And then, when the throat had gone drier than a Saharan summer, to muster up a voice to not only emulate sound but to attempt a somewhat meaningful conversation, the kind that would be engaging and impressive and yet sincere and simple.
How does one matched swipe recreate the same fire that we built up from a mere spark? Does an app guarantee that you will chat endlessly for hours about all things that you know are nonsense and yet so important momentarily, before you even get to meet for a movie?
More than a puritan or classicist, I sound like a monk with virtues stronger than roots, but that’s not it. I am all for decadence and the pursuit of the pleasure principle, but I find it all too rushed and direct. So abrupt is courtship online that it makes the whole “wham bam and thank you ma’am” notion seem like a bygone era of gentlemanly and civil conduct.
Maybe I have to grow up, or go dumb down, whichever is needed to understand the current psyche — one that works on connectivity without the need for presence, communication without any exchanges. It’s almost too paradoxical to be real.
And yet it is what is prevalent. Maybe I need to get in on the action. And instead of teaching the young, I need to learn to adapt to how it all works now. The new generation is self-sufficient, we have nothing left to bequeath unto them. And that is perhaps the saddest way that romance will die. At least now I can bury my book of pick-up lines without any regrets — it didn’t work too well back in the day either.
— The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine
