Jesper Lodin reports back from the battlements of online dating in this week’s Culture Column.
So hey! I recently got into online dating. Maybe that’s old hat to everyone else (probably) but until last summer, I wasn’t convinced that any of those sites were a better use of your time than making soap or something. Well, what made me change my mind was when my sister, of all people, started going on about all the idiotic messages from dorks (and some equally asinine ones from hotter guys, who somehow got them digital doe eyes in return instead of ye olde creep-shaming) she was getting on this dating app she’d downloaded.
Since her technological uptake is usually so darn slowpoke, with browser tabs set to reach her around the time the Amish space program gets off the ground, this was quite the interesting development. Could it be that normal people had started venturing to these sites, and not just a legion of snarky otakus? Intrigued, I filed away this new information mentally, under the heading of ”Huh”.
A little background might be in order here. See, I’m at a point in my life where a lot of the guys I grew up with are getting married to the first or second woman who returned their texts, and though they sure seem as happy as my dog gets when you reluctantly allow her to eat the goop that accumulates in her eyes (affectionately referred to as her ”eye candy”), that doesn’t sit all that well with me.
For my part, I’ve been pretty hell-bent on not only enjoying my youth, but also casting as wide a net as possible, so as to have at least more options than a North Korean voting booth when the time to settle down comes. It struck me that online dating might be a valuable supplement to simply waiting to get yanked off the dance floor and put in the child safety seat of a romantic relationship, which is how it usually goes with me and every single dude I know.
(Before we go any further, can I just officially disown the picture of me here? Not that I have a jawline like an Imperial Star Destroyer or anything, but it’s usually not as bad as all that, and it doesn’t exactly lend credibility to anything I have to say about relations with the opposite sex. I mean, not to e-brag or anything, but I usually don’t resemble a sycophantic beet)
Well, fast-forward past six months of hazily remembered lectures on things I will most likely have to re-learn in seven minutes on my iPhone in the bathroom at my first post-graduation job. One dreadfully hungover Sunday, I finally decided I would try my hand at, ahem, peddling my penile wares online, and went ahead and made an account on the largest dating site in Sweden, Badoo, über-shady Russian venture capitalist business practices and all.
Now, a few months down the road, I’ve acquitted myself quite well. Sure, a lot of it comes down to your looks (women are notoriously picky online, with the OkCupid blog reporting that women as a group find 80% of men to be ”worse looking than average”). Still, if you’ve any semblance of written game (as in charm. Not Doki Doki Panic), you’re miles ahead of the bumbling masses, and a sufficiently witty verbal broadside is often enough to make inroads with most women worth dating anyway.
But Jesus H. Christ, where does all this male desperation stem from? Sure, you’d expect some sexual traffic congestion around the top-rated women, but the dudes there are laying constant, unrelenting siege to everyone. I’m fairly certain at this point in time that if I were to simply change the gender setting to ”female” on my profile, I could be getting married to a 37-year-old balding dentist this time tomorrow. Same goes for most of my houseplants, and probably a smiley face drawn in an ashtray.
Whether there’s an evolutionary basis for this behavioral difference or whether it’s all just socially constructed, I’m not going to kick that particular hornet’s nest, but it sure is pretty tragic either way. Not for my own prospects, I do alright for myself, but because there’s evidently some pretty basic human needs not being met for that subset of the male population… Oh, there’s certainly a lot of loneliness among women as well, but the male inability to deal with it just screams at you at the top of its lungs whenever you visit websites like that.
For my part, I think I’m going to stop laughing quite so heartily at the next Borat-esque rambling digital love letter that gets passed around my social circle… Those men, clueless as they might be, have spread their romantic dreams underneath someone’s feet. I hope that people find it in themselves to tread lightly.
