Love is hard in 2014.
Before I go any further, I would just like to say, that no, I am not a bitter, loveless 34-year-old (I kinda am); I am a hardened, love seeker (super bored with the dating scene) who has yet to find the right person (holding out for a rich professional who’s into open relationships).
The above isn’t entirely true. Even though I am reaching an age where my odds of finding someone diminish faster than my third Old Style at a Cubs game, I’m still mildly hopeful. I still want to believe that there is, in fact, someone out there for me. Which is why, despite all the common sense I possess (not much), I gave online dating a shot.
The holidays are a kick to the gut for single people. We must endure countless questions from family over the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays. Tired of these countless inquisitions, I sought to find out why dating in 2014 was so hard. And my conclusion is this: the internet.
Oh, the internet… The place where we can find a restaurant that delivers to your area while watching a video about the epidemic of botched butt implants in Brazil and scrolling through pictures of your high school ex-girlfriend’s children.
Yes, the mother f-ing internet continues to show so much promise for our world.
If you want to learn about what the Hadron Collider does (I still don’t really get it), or who starred with River Phoenix in the 1985 movie Explorers (Ethan Hawke), or the last three Comeback Players of the Year in the NBA (you don’t really care), you can do a quick little Google search and find nine million results in less than one-and-a-half seconds. And while not all of those results will get you what you’re looking for, a lot of them will.
So, naturally, for my research, I Googled love.
The early results were as expected. They included the Merriam-Webster definition, Love: A Beatles Show in Las Vegas, Bonnie Raitt’s lyrics to “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” and the Queen of England’s 2013 Christmas speech.
Then the real winners showed up.
“Married to a Doll: Why One Man Advocates Synthetic…” I didn’t click on it.
“The 25 Greatest Movies About Love,” an article in Vanity Fair, was kind of good. And, if you do your own Google search, be aware of this spoiler alert: Scorcese’s The Age of Innocence made the top of the list.
But my personal favorite was posted by someone named Chanel whose Twitter handle is @Love. Her profile description was priceless: “The latest from Chanel (@Love). My circle is an elite force of scholars, intellectuals, strippers, future doctors, lawyers, and people with good dick & coochie.”
Nothing was better than @Love, but there were a couple of cool sites like Loveblisters.com, Fartlovers, and a fan group for a Southside baseball team. If a Google search couldn’t point me in the right direction, how could I find love on E-Harmony or Match.com?
“Try Tinder,” a friend said. “It’s great.”
“Have you met anybody?” I asked.
“Like, in person?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, not actually, yet, but I’ve only been on there for a month.”
Tinder, the app that lets you browse people in your neighborhood who are also looking for love, or some facsimile thereof, is a great idea on principle, but in actual execution, I have to say, it’s mostly horseshit.
You start off by linking it up with your Facebook profile. Next you pick some photos that you think will best represent you on the World Wide Web. Then, you write a catchy phrase about yourself so the people who see your profile will get a ‘sense’ of who you are. I tried a million things in order to show that I am intelligent, witty, and not a creeper, but no matter what I tried (“Looking for love in all the wrong places” was my favorite), but I couldn’t decide so I left it blank. I hoped that my travel photos from Prague and California and that shot of me eating an Italian Beef from Portillos would make me seem mysterious.
Next, you start looking for a match. You set your search to how far you are willing to look in terms of miles, the age range of the person and whether or not you want a male or a female. Once you’re done with that, pictures of people who within that criteria show up on your phone. If you think that the person is attractive or appealing in some way, then you swipe to the right with your finger. If you aren’t interested, you swipe to the left. Thousands of photos showed up on my phone.
There were some awesome photos of people in Maccu Piccu, swimmimg with dolphins, selfies in the bathroom at a bar, selfies in the bathroom at home, selfies in the bathroom on an airplane. So many selfies. There were photos of people with their relatives. Some people didn’t even bother taking down the photos of them tongue-kissing someone, photos that were clearly spam, photos of women who were doing this for the attention. There were photos of women who were seemingly normal in their first photo, but by their last photo were dressed as a Juggalo (a member of the Insane Clown Posse fan club).
For pure people-watching, it might be the best cross-section of America you can get on the Internet. If you have two hours to kill and can’t come up with anything at all to do, well, c’est magnifique! If you’re on your ninth beer and like to drink at home, have a tenth and keep swiping, my friend.
But did I actually find love? Not so much.
But, I was determined and after finding a match, I went on a date. And it was painful.
Let me explain painful. We virtually met on Tinder, started chatting using the site’s chat apparatus, then switched to texting from there. The texting was benign enough. Likes and dislikes. The weather. Some witty banter. Then, she suddenly invited me to her house that day.
I had plans, but found out she lived not too far from where my plans would take place, and we agreed, since she “didn’t really want to go out,” that I would go over to her house, where we would have a glass of wine and see if there was any chemistry.
I left my party and showed up at her place. What I found was a person who, in no way, shape or form, resembled her profile. She was five-foot-one (her profile said she was five-foot-eight), shaped like a fire hydrant (should have known when all the photos were from the shoulders and up), and wore a sweat suit (I wore a real tie, real pants, and a real shirt).
Conclusion: Internet dating draws the laziest people on the planet.
I immediately thought of a game-plan on how to get out of there. I didn’t have the heart to just turn and run. I didn’t have the heart to question why she would so falsely represent herself online. In the end, I decided that an act of nature was my only way out.
After some mundane conversation about how she was thinking about buying a new car and a couple glasses of wine, I clutched my stomach.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just a random stomach pain. I’ll be okay.”
“Would you like another glass of wine?”
I immediately went for my stomach again.
“Ahhh. What was that?” I moaned, while feigning (quite well I might add) some severe stomach cramping.
“Are you okay?”
I stood up, “No, this is awful. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have to go.”
I went for the door.
“You can use my bathroom,” she said.
“I wouldn’t dream of making you hear the sounds I am about to make,” I said, and walked out the door.
Online dating is the devil.
It allows people to be scandalous or salacious behind the protective screen of their phone or laptop. It’s window shopping for the people who have always wondered about a one-night stand but were too afraid to act on their perversions and secret desires.
Online, we can hide everything. We can put a picture from our junior year in college or that picture from after we did that cleanse/workout routine for a month but before we fell off the wagon into 3 gallons of iced cream and Gummy Bears. We can say we’re looking for love, or we just want someone to come home to after work, or we’re just looking for someone to share Saturday night.
But the truth is that most of us can be duplicitous about our true selves, keep certain things secret, put concealer over a zit, fail to mention that warrant in Texas or the orthopedic shoes that cover up the claw foot. We can’t hide things face to face for too long. And those imperfections are what make us who we are. Owning those imperfections is what makes us real.
Online, you can hide everything.
Unfortunately, that’s not the worst part of online dating. The worst part is the fact that it provides the speediest option in the quest for instant and fleeting gratification. If one person doesn’t work, there are probably five hundred more people within five miles looking for exactly what you are looking for. If you think that the person who winked at you is cute, but doesn’t have a two-car garage or some other nonsense, then the next person who winks at you might be closer to your taste. And if that person is gluten-free and you aren’t, well the person after him might be into rom-coms and fro-yo.
The grass is permanently greener.
The real shame might be that this kind of ‘interview’ process never really allows a person to live in the moment. Plus, we learn from meeting different kinds of people. So, if we’re only meeting people who are into the same things as us, how do we grow?
Compared to real life, online dating takes absolutely no courage. I mean, think of the courage it takes to initiate a conversation with the person next to you at the bar? Or, to ask the woman at the coffee shop what she’s reading? There’s a sense of accomplishment when you smile at a woman on the train and say your stop is two stops after your actual stop–just so you can get her number. Those moments are what remind us that we are human.
I may sound bitter, I may sound jaded, I may even come across as a quitter who couldn’t even get online dating right. But I’m not. I am just an old bastard who finds solace in reality.
If you find someone who also happens to be into sunsets and Rhianna videos and you end up reaching the relationship Promised Land, then God bless ya.
For me, I guess finding love online just kinda bites. Which is, sadly, also the name of a service I found when I Googled love.
(Insert sad trumpet noise here.)
Matt Martin is a writer, actor/producer, a graduate of the Second City Conservatory program in Chicago, owns a bachelors degree and is currently working on a MFA from Columbia College Chicago. He’s been published in Hair Trigger, Trilling, Mad Licks, and Fictionary. Matt also blogs at Chicago Sports Hub, for Chicago Now. Although he’ll be able to collect a city pension in 25 years, he would rather be making a living in the arts.