Saved By Online Dating, Cont'd

Great thread! Online dating, while I haven’t always relied on it, has for me been a net positive. Of the four serious relationships I’ve had in my life, two of them have been initiated online in some form. (One person I met on OKCupid and dated for nearly a year; the other was a friend of a friend who I had originally been “introduced” to on Facebook and whom I later ended up dating for three years after we found ourselves living in the same city.) The two initiated offline were typical younger person romances: high school and college, forced together by proximity with all the success that generally entails.

Online dating has had two major benefits for me:

First, it has allowed me to met people on my terms. I’m friendly, talkative and outgoing, but I don’t open up that readily and therefore having the ability to pre-screen dates for some level of comfort and compatibility before I subject them to my Scandinavian-by-way-of-New-England manners and the obvious series of long pause-filled conversations that will ensue. In other words, I can appear aloof and standoffish if I don’t know you well. I don’t do first dates well (though I’m told I’m a fantastic second date) and I get along better with people who I already have some sort of comfort level with, which is why I often end up dating friends of friends. Online dating allows me to build rapport BEFORE the date and therefore not seem so damn boring.

Second, the first phase of my career had me moving around, a lot—like 20 addresses in eight years. If it weren't for craigslist, OKCupid, Tinder and the like, I would have spent a significant portion of that time lonely, horny, and just plain bored.

Online dating can be depressing and disappointing, but overall I’d say the experience has allowed me to open up to and connect with far more people than I would have if left to my wits. I’m happy for it and plan to keep it a part of my social strategy until I meet that special someone.

I have been called a Luddite many times in my life, but I consider myself a cultural savior for my stances. Online dating, in my opinion, mocks our very humanity and creates misanthropes, incapable of social interactions.

I made this opinion some time ago, when I was stuck in the hospital for a month after undergoing multiple procedures on my lung. For the first three weeks, I was confined to the floor my room was on. However, my doctor was generous, noticing my cabin fever, and allowed me to travel throughout the hospital for the last week. Mind you, I had not taken a proper shower in weeks, but due to the existential crises I had undergone in that time, I surmised I would not dither when I saw an attractive woman (one who was unoccupied, of course).

With a tube in my chest, trailing under my sweater, hospital socks with boat shoes, and soccer shorts, I approached one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen as she ate lunch with two of her girlfriends. My stench was palpable, my hair greasy, but no matter. Long story short, I hit it off with all three; we had a blast. I exchanged numbers with the girl and went on a few dates.

In conclusion, I want my generation, the Millennial generation, to realize we are not all that different. We are all insecure in some fashion, but we all want to interact with each other; we all want connections. If we didn’t, we wouldn't be making online dating profiles, would we?

So, when you are sitting at the coffee shop this afternoon, by yourself, and you see someone else, why not approach them, introduce yourself, and talk to each other? It doesn’t have to end with an exchange of phone numbers or a promise of future encounters. Don’t be like me, where it takes a life threatening moment to realize that staying to yourself is rather boring.

Keep me anonymous, please. And thanks for the Notes section!

Just as an aside, I take issue with reader whose email followed mine. I find it offensive and othering that people who are for whatever reason effortlessly social (or, as we used to call them, glib) are somehow better or more deserving of relationships and that those of us who use some form of mediation are less than. Online dating is merely a digital variant of a singles scene that’s existed at least as long as traditional routes to marriage have been in decline. You might even argue that having a service that relies on an algorithm that puts people together in some way is in essence only little different from a matchmaker. Would that reader have been running around Anatevka pissing and moaning that none of Tevye’s daughters have earned it? (actually...)

The tendency to look down one’s nose at people who use online dating and color it with that broad-brush argument that digital mediation is killing the art of conversation would be offensive if it weren't so, you know, wrong. It’s a specious and fundamentally conservative argument that seeks to preserve the social primacy of the extroverted.