In a world of fast paced schedules, ubiquitous stimuli, and a shrinking social structure, what’s a girl to do to find love in modern times?!
It seems the pantheon of dating activities never ceases. We had speed dating, we had match-makers, and now… Online dating, Oh what fresh hell is this?
I just don’t get online dating. Or am I just doing it wrong? Ok, I admit it, we all should just admit it; online dating kinda sucks! I have the Bumble app. It’s a dating app that puts women in the driver’s seat. Connections are only made if both people swipe right, but even when a match is made, the woman has to initiate the conversation. The creators of the app think it’s the cure for stopping the gargantuan amount of dick pics ladies get sent on a daily basis.
I’m only slightly surprised by how many men swipe right on me. I’m pretty cute and funny, and I can cook. That’s the good part. The bad part? No one seems to be able to hold a proper conversation past two sentences. How will I know if I should bother to put on pants, shave my legs, and leave my comfy home to meet a guy if the conversation fails after the obligatory “what part of LA do you live in?” and “what do you do for a living?”
“Lets just be honest. I’m a shit-head in these ways, and you’re a shit-head in those ways… does or does not the sex and a 50/50 shot at a halfway stable life together warrant my putting up with your shit?”
I feel like online dating is marketed like you’re shopping for your soulmate online— much like one would shop for products on Amazon. The fact there are no reviews from “previous customers” so I can read up on a guy before I make an investment of my time and energy makes me uncomfortable. I feel I should have the right to counter his, “I have a law degree and a nine foot penis” with a, “Yeah? What about your control problems, mommy issues, and you’re inability to commit to anything past a beer selection?”
Online dating sites and apps force us to be a bit shallow. We need to make a decision on someone based on 3 or 4 photos and a tiny paragraph in which they must describe themselves in a way that doesn’t repel the masses. This is no small feat. Those things suck to have to fill out. That’s another issue with online dating. You have to go through all the bullshit of taking tests, filling out profiles, and coming up with tag lines. It’s so much easier for me to tell if someone is lying right off the bat in person, like God intended.
Everyone is pressured to look cool which leads to profile embellishment and an awful lot of hyperbole. Honestly, there is no, I mean NO truth in advertising on these sites. We NEED real labels like … “Average lover,” “you’ll always come second to his mother,” “I live to fuck other people over and laugh about it with my neanderthal friends,” “picture may vary from actual product,” “nothing about me is true or real but you will waste years of your life with me before you figure that out,” “I’m a vegan and want to terraform another person’s diet so I’m not eating this shit alone.” And my personal favorite, “I’m hot and looking for a really great credit score to ruin.”
Lets just be honest. I’m a shit-head in these ways, and you’re a shit-head in those ways… does or does not the sex and a 50/50 shot at a halfway stable life together warrant my putting up with your shit?
Online dating shows that people in our society have lost trust in their ability to suss out good people on their own. This is due to severe social isolation, spurred by the preference for the supposed social safety of the internet. We trust a prefabricated questionnaire to separate those who will be good for us, as opposed to trusting in ourselves to know this.
It also shows that we’re emotionally lazy and don’t actually want to do the work of finding someone via actual face time. If you ever get past the salutations and actually get into a conversation with someone, there’s the week or two weeks of awkward messages, and then the actual meeting, and let’s face it; if and when it does happen, it’s rare that prince charming is actually a prince or is all that damned charming.
It’s amazing how fast JFK, Jr. turns into Melvin Von Lazyeye once reality sets in and you actually see the bastard. If you happen to be very lucky and he’s as studly as his picture makes out, I applaud your luck. Otherwise it’s all about whether or not you can get over the disappointment. Then and only then do we find out if there’s even a snowball’s chance in hell of this actually going anywhere.
I just don’t get the point. I want to. I really do. Millions of people are finding true love or so they say. Lots of people are finding love and getting married. My sister met her husband online. But I wonder if the divorce rate has actually gone down? A quick google search of “divorce rate and online dating” will pull up a myriad of articles that suggest that I am right! ”
A study in 2013 of more than 4,000 couples found that relationships were far more stable if couples met in traditional ways, such as introductions by friends or through work, hobbies, or socializing. Couples who meet online are also less likely to get married and generally have a poorer relationship quality that those who met offline.”
And there’s an equal amount of research that suggests that I am wrong. “A study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded by eHarmony, examined the marital status and satisfaction of 19,131 people who tied the knot between 2005 and 2012. They found that people were MORE likely to stay together nowadays if they met online.”
Fuck you Google. That shit does not help me at all.
Baffled, I enlisted the help of my friend Ana, who swears that online dating is the best thing ever. I asked her to help me figure this shit out. Ana and I met for lunch, hanging out in a cabana in a roof top pool over looking LA. She let me pick her brain and then fixed up my profile.
Ana is 100% for online dating. She met Ryan in early 2013 and had been online dating since September 2012. This was before Bumble. She said Match.com is THE place to find a serious relationship and that she spent 5 days a week for 6 months going on bad dates before she met Ryan.
She kept at it because she was really looking for love. She highly recommends using the paid sites because the quality of people is better. She says only serious people pay to be on there. She paid just $120 for 6 months to find the love of her life. She also said it’s “hard to meet a quality person in real life,” because you only end up dating friends of friends or people in your professional circle and are only exposing yourself to a small percentage of the dating population.
Ana and Ryan never would have crossed paths because they are in totally different fields. When I asked Ana if she felt Ryan was her soulmate, she said she is not sure she believes in a soulmate. That there is just one person meant for you. However, she does know that she and Ryan are a good fit, compliment each other really well, and they are happy and want to be together forever. They don’t have everything in common per se and there are small differences, but they have conversations that last forever.
Ana told me about another friend of her’s that is a musician who only dates musicians. She tried to help that friend as well by telling her she was limiting herself by narrowing her dating pool down to the tiniest pool of people on the planet. Real life circles are “too tiny unless you are a crazy social butterfly. You really are limited in the number of people you are exposed too.” She said the likelihood of meeting your great love “at the market because you both reached for the same mango and locked eyes,” is very unlikely to happen.
Ana’s advice to me and anyone who wants to be successful at online dating is the following:
- Keep your profile paragraphs short. No one wants to read your whole life story.
- Don’t write off people based on one message. Not everyone can express themselves as well via message as they might be able to once you meet them. You may be missing out on a lot of great guys by only dating people in your field. Mr/Mrs Right might not have anything to do with your profession but could be the most supportive person in your corner while you pursue what you love.
- Filter out people not looking for relationships.
I think Ana had several valid points, especially about the size of the dating “talent pool” being small. So I let her tweak my profile, do my swiping for me, and even pick guys outside of my race, which I’d honestly never done before. (That’s a whole other article.)
We widened the age range to 25 – 50. We chose investment bankers, real estate agents, personal trainers, pharmaceutical reps, and even an actor or two. I was surprised by the number of men that had swiped right for me who I never would have thought would. That wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Ana’s help.
And the results of Ana’s tweaking of my profile? No change. I talked to my guy friend Sam about this and he offered up his take on the situation and demanded I quote it precisely. So me and all the women of the world would know:
“Men don’t want to talk to you online! There. I said it. Men are visual creatures and by and large don’t like to do anymore tedious bullshit than absolutely necessary. While a woman may get off on long exchanges covering all your hopes, dreams and goals for the fuckin’ future, all he wants to do is meet you. That’s where his decision making process is finalized. He doesn’t give a hoot in hell about getting to know your online self. He saw you, he’s attracted to you, he wants to meet you. He’ll get to know you there, without tedium or dreamy lines of hokey bullshit that really all amounts to small talk anyway”.
I guess I have a lot of bad dates in my near future. To be continued…
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Jessi Jordan is a dog lover, cat lover, cheeseburger & pizza lover, optimistic multi-potentialite originally from New York City spending her LA days as a Freelance Writer/Photographer/Content Creator waiting to hear from Adele that she is ready to duet with her. She is constantly trying to cure her obsession with run-on sentences.
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