Online Dating Waste of Time???
Groucho Marx once famously quipped "I don’t care to belong to a club that would have me as a member." I sort of feel the same way about online dating sites. There has got to be a better way to meet people. Sadly, mental telepathy does not work. Unless you know what I was just thinking, in which case, e-mail me.
I’ve recently begun researching popular dating sites from which some are better. Not because I need a date. No! I don’t need a date. I’m up to my ears in hot lady action.
No, this research is for you, for all of you. It’s a testament to my generosity of spirit I waded through these interweb love sewers in order to impart some sort of wisdom. Here’s the wisdom: dating sites are terrible.
Possibly, if I was in prison, an Alaskan crab fisherman or a morbidly obese shut-in so humongous I had to wash myself with a ShamWow stapled to a broom handle, I could see the value in such sites. But I’m not isolated, nor confined to a forklift.
I don’t need a middleman brokering a get together between the potential woman of my dreams and my own abilities to self-sabotage and humiliate myself. I can do this without an intermediary. The Frisky: Have to go online to get a date?
This might or might not be a totally uninformed opinion. The extent of my research began and ended with me signing up for OK Cupid, and failing to finish my profile.
I couldn’t even bring myself to pick a pseudonym, which just seemed like the first of many lies required to meet anyone. Do I call myself OptimusGandalf and admit from the get-go that I’m an alpha nerd? Do I overshare a little too much and pick EdgarAllanEeyore? Or do I just admit to being a snarky, pretentious creep and go for HumbertHumbert?
I tried to fill out the profile, but instead, it just filled me with a quiet rage. The self-summary section was baffling. It pushed me into an existential identity crisis. Who am I? Or more importantly, who am I when it comes to who I want someone else to think I am, so they will contact me, go out with me, and eventually kiss me?
Am I a sensitive guy, or a romantic, or sarcastic? Maybe I’m all three. I love long walks, going to see live indie bands, and whatever. I made sure to pepper everything with winking non-sequiturs and casual attempts at pop profundity.
Then there was the section where I define myself by the books, movies, and music I listen to. My music list was a near impenetrable list of overly eclectic bands that reflect my excellent taste, punctuated by "and Genesis." My movies were all ’80s flicks, foreign films, and David Lynch.
By the time I got to books, and wrote "Pynchon," I was in a full-fledged state of self-loathing. The Frisky: Five online dating types to avoid
I can deal with the risks of love. The threat of heartbreak is what makes finding that one person who sparks your fuse so precious. But I have to be honest, the online dating thing freaked me out. It touched a nerve, and I’m flummoxed as to why.
The only conclusion I could come up with was that, maybe, we deserved them. Perhaps online dating sites accurately reflect a generation of singles so entitled to instant happiness and acceptance, we flock to digital artifices that both feed and coddle our egos. A play land of false romantic promises and deferred risk. A huge solipsistic waste of time.
Source : edition.cnn.com
(By : John DeVore)
