Dating in the Digital Age
By Erin Ann McBride
and Juli Hiatt Caldwell
In the years prior to my sixteenth birthday I thought I knew exactly what dating was going to be like. I would meet a nice guy, he would have clean hair, he would ask me for my phone number, and then approximately 2.5 days later (a number gleaned from multiple magazines with articles on the subject) he would call me and ask me for a date for Friday night. Then I would politely accept, and then hang up the phone, do a happy dance, and ask my mother for her credit card so I could go buy a new outfit.
Sadly, this has never actually happened in my life. And I’m not just talking about the credit card either. Instead, my dating life has involved emails, text messages, instant messages (IM’s), blogs, and websites. And in spite of the best efforts of my Young Women leaders and multiple glossy magazines, no one ever taught me about how to handle a 10 p.m. “txt msg” that reads” “u busy?” into my social life.
Personally, I think all of these newfound forms of instant gratification equal over-communication. Everyone expects an immediate response from you, no matter where you are. Add a few dates and a little flirting into that mix, and you have nothing that resembles the dating my parents did a few decades ago.
The First Evil — Blogs
Maybe blogging isn’t the most prevalent evil in dating, but it will be soon enough. It’s affecting enough people as it is. A blog, for those of you still living in 2002, is a “web log.” Essentially it is an online journal, where true emotional exhibitionists can air all their internal thoughts for the world to see.
Whether it be a blog, live journal, or MySpace, they are all evil. They start out innocent enough — just a vocalization of thoughts and dreams. Maybe a photojournalistic view of your life, and a few friends and family members check in on it occasionally. But then you join a blog ring, and complete strangers start looking at your blog, and they keep coming back and viewing it every day. And suddenly you feel this need to perform and keep the masses entertained.
You have to vent every thought that comes in to your head, or your readers will get bored and go away, and then who will read your private thoughts?? Nobody, that is who! So you find new graphics, load new pictures, and then, when you meet someone interesting, and you tell them about that great trip to Greece you took, you give them your blog address so they can look at the pictures of you sunning yourself on the Riviera. Your crush gladly writes down your addy, and says goodbye. You are feeling confident that once he sees you are a great world traveler and witty writer, he’ll ask you out.
And that is when it hits you. Approximately four days ago you vented about him on your blog. You wrote several paragraphs about your crush and how he looked great in a green shirt, but you love his blue one more, and how you wish he’d ask you out. And suddenly, you think you are going to die. You have just incriminated yourself beyond belief.
You rush home, edit your old posts, making sure all references to him are deleted, and quickly download and install a statcounter. What is a statcounter? It’s a little device that lets you know how many people have viewed your cyber real estate, and where they came from. And then for the next five days you compulsively check your stats to see if anyone in his town has checked your blog. It’s nerve-wracking, and quite frankly, stalking, but hey, that is dating in the digital age.
The Second and Third Evils — IM’s and Emails
There are no excuses for not knowing what an IM is in the year 2006. It is short for Instant Messaging, and everyone should have it. It is how friends sit at their desks at work and talk to other friends sitting at computer screens around the world, not really working at all. In fact, I consider IM’s to be the greatest work aversion tool ever created, with youtube.com as the second greatest. But I digress.
With the advent of the IM it is now completely possible to have in-depth conversations with someone whose face you have never seen, or haven’t seen in forever. You can be witty and charming as fast as you can type, and never know the sound of the other person’s voice. You also have the ability to stalk your latest crush without him ever knowing. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are the roots of this evil, and some people have accounts with all three services. After all, all three services provide a different tool that is highly necessary to the meeting and mating of mankind.
For instance, Yahoo and MSN both require that someone grants you permission before you can add them to your friends list. But AOL does not! And so the stalking begins. You casually snoop around and ask some friends, or you just blatantly rip their email address off of a group list, and add them to your personal list. And now you can see every time your beloved signs off or on, and they will never have to know how many hours a day you sit and stare at that magic little window and look at the favorite name. It’s magic, really.
Until it turns evil, which is right about the point where you wonder if the object of your affections is stalking you. What if he knows your IM name and is watching every time you turn the computer off and on? For instance, a guy (or girl, as the case may be) you aren’t so interested in, but doesn’t seem to be taking the hint, has just sent you an email and asked you out for an upcoming evening. You decide, without even really having to think about it, to avoid this email for several days, and then write the person back when it is too late to accept the invitation, and tell them you haven’t checked your email for days! (Of course, when the person wises up and starts calling your cell phone, you just fail to answer it every time his name pops up on the caller ID, and then claim that your voice mail was acting up again. You know — play dumb.) This only works if you are certain there is no chance the person doesn’t know your IM address. Because if he does know it, you can’t fake anything.
And then there is the whole email thing and dating. You send an email, you say something witty. And then nothing. Did he check his email? Did it go to his junk mail file? Is he (gasp) ignoring me? Maybe I should see if he has an instant messenger account and stalk him? Or worse yet, you see he’s online, but he hasn’t said hi to you all day. Is it too forward to ping him first? You sent an email yesterday, how long do you have to wait for him to respond before you ping next? How do you know when you are being cyber-ignored, or just waiting for someone to return to his desk?
I could go on and on about all of the problems with over-communicating once you actually get in a relationship, but there just isn’t enough time or paper in the world for that topic.
And don’t even get me started on what sort of damage can be done with a Blackberry or Treo… The ability to write and respond to an email with your thumbs while driving, was never meant to be apart of the courtship process. It’s just plain evil.
The Last Evil (That I Will Mention Here Today) — Dating Websites
The authors of this esteemed column can count at least six different LDS oriented dating websites, of which the same few thousand people are on all of the sites. (Rather defeating the purpose, don’t you think?) We have a few hundred problems with these sites. We’ll start with the profiles and the lack of communication on them. Do you know how many people go to the trouble of paying $10 a month, but won’t post a picture, and under “personal information” write “Send me an email and ask me a question.” Um, sure? I don’t know anything about you or what you look like, but I think I’ll waste some of my online time asking you a question? Um, no. And then all of the same problems with instant messages, emails, etc apply to these stinking websites.
And then sometimes you try to be all coy on these sites, not wanting to come off as too forward. So you just look at a profile, knowing that the person on the other end can see you have checked them out. You wait till they have viewed your profile in return. After all, it’s clearly going to be true love, and as soon as they see your profile they will know this as well. So you just view them and wait for them to come to you. If they fail to respond on the first viewing, you coyly check them out again — they’ll get the hint. Yeah right. Whatever. We’re not even touching that one.
>Now we feel it necessary to share with you at least one funny true story today. A good friend (reallym it wasn’t Erin this time) recently began talking to a fellow she met online. They exchanged a few emails, IM’s, etc., before revealing their last names. Being internet and safety savvy girl she is, she went straight to Google to find some dirt on her new friend. She found the few details she expected — he worked where he said he did, lived in the right town, etc. But the first hit she found on him, you know, the top hit, the one with the most views, was on a national news website, detailing his felony arrest. Somehow he failed to mention that defining detail in his profile and IM’s! (And no, she never talked to him again.)
Dating is just not what we were told it would be when we turned sixteen and got our license to date. I’m still waiting for the handbook on whether or not to accept a date proposed via text messaging. Sure, text messaging is fun for some flirting here and there, particularly when you are really bored. But again, all the same problems with IM’s and emails apply to texting! How long do you have to wait after a date to send a text? Can you send an email, IM, and text in the same day? Do you type out the full word or use the rather juvenile texting shorthand? Smiley face graphics? Capitalize your sentences? There are too many options!
Well, until that handbook comes out…
Happy d8ing! ;-)
