#NerdsUnite: Facebook + Dating
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 11:30AM<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Jen. She's a graphic designer by day and a serial monogamist by night that lives across the pond in the UK. She's currently in a relationship of 8 years, and her dating record prior had been puddle jumps from 3 months here ... to 3 months there. These are her thoughts on life, love, and all things nerd. Hit it Jen!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jen Randall
So Facebook is brilliant for some things:
- Making yourself feel better about your life when you’re having a low day and being gleeful when you realise those who had so many prospects for a good life are in fact 10 times worse off than yourself
- Checking out that girl from high school who had a baby that “only a mother could love” and being thankful for your awesome genes
- Seeing if karma has sought its revenge on your ex yet because he’s going to die a slow and painful death from syphilis someday (hopefully soon)
- Stalkers (gaining some and turning in to one)
- Looking at your best friends holiday photos and trying not to be jealous
- Seeing if your ex has moved on yet desperately hoping that he hasn’t and he’s miserable and lonely
- Chatting with random people who you really couldn’t care less about but you’re far too polite to say so
- Social experiments (let’s face it, we all do these without even realising)
- Making yourself appear popular, when really, if we’re honest, you’re probably not
- Keeping up to date on the day-to-day lives of your 600+ closest friends with whom you haven’t had a conversation with since you left school
- Etc etc
Yet it has to be the worst thing ever invented for relationships and dating. For a generation of addictive personalities (I’m mainly referring to myself here) and over-analyzers (wait...do I over-analyze!?) Facebook is killing our confidence and self belief by ‘researching’ current / prospective girlfriends and boyfriends.
Facebook + Dating
Gone are the days where you can get to know someone slowly and only drip-feed them the information that you want them to know about you.
“Oh god, what if he finds out that I once tried to blackmail Obama with naked photos from my holiday in Switzerland in 1999 and my brother’s best friend’s cousin managed to semi-successful photoshop him in”.
The internet and mobile phones give 24hour access to the people we are dating. It’s easy to become obsessed with when that next Facebook message or wall post alert is going to arrive in your inbox...and really, whilst we’re waiting for it why not Google his/her name and see what we find.
Facebook basically ruins the surprises. It’s like the entire first 6 months of a relationship don’t even exist anymore and heck let’s move in together after 2 months because I know everything about you from your Facebook profile, surely you’re not that good an actor to be able to hide the fact you’re a serial killer, I mean, it’s been 2 months....I’d know by now!
Gone are the days that someone can cancel a date on you and you’ll believe the reason they give.
“But he was logged in to Facebook and I got vibes that he was chatting to 307 girls at once, what a douche”.
I get accusations of being on Facebook when I am meant to be doing something for someone or meant to be somewhere else continuously. The reality is though that I, like millions of other people in the world, leave my Facebook logged in for almost 24 hours a day on my phone. You know, because I might miss that urgent update in my feed about how the ex-girlfriend of this crazy dude I dated when I was about 16 is about to give birth to his second child ANY MINUTE and the police have stopped him being at the birth and ohmygod I cannot miss this!!
Worse than all of the above, you can no longer tell your friends you’re going to marry a guy after the first date because there is no doubt that one of your friends will post the news on Facebook and he will no doubt be a friend of a friend of a friend and he will find out you’re a psychopath and you’ve only kissed once.
Reader Comments