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More Reasons not to Date…
Posted by Raven on August 22nd, 2005
Another reason not to *date* anyone, ever. I must be really out of the modern loop. Does this really happen? Is this the way of it now? Let’s see….when you have a date with someone you also have a checklist, no, a litmus test of whether the person you’re considering to date is worthy of your attention.
1) The 20 thousand questions date
2) The background check
3) ?? WHAT NEXT?? Medical record review?
4) Mandatory E-Harmony type compatiblility testing?
If so, go the hell away. Don’t come back. Leave me alone.
Typing fingers have replaced sweaty palms. Computer chimes substitute for awkward silences. And Internet supersleuths who want to know what they’re getting into are phasing out the blind date.
“You can get online to research a person and find out who they are before meeting them,” says Bridget Koza of Colonia, N.J. “It’s never really a blind date anymore.”Using the Web to research people before making contact is becoming the norm for many teens and twenty-somethings. They want to see everything from a potential date’s picture to his or her credit history. Love might be many things, but with the Web, blind doesn’t have to be one of them.
The day I find out this crap is happening, is the day I start dropping names off my AIM Buddy List. It’s one thing to be curious about someone’s past and present…but it’s quite another to use this information to judge the future.
Blind date? I guess there really is such a thing, me being the non-expert in such things. If it involves meeting people you’ve been friends with online but never seen in person, yeah, that would be a blind date. My idea of blind means having never *SEEN* the person, not this crap about knowing everything you really have no business knowing prior to the date.
“Technological improvements made possible another way of imagining human relationships,” says Sorin Matei, a communications assistant professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. “Before, dating was the product of fate, luck and the quest for romance.”
Now, “some would-be daters want to imagine a world where you take the fate and luck aspects out and put in some sort of rationality.”
This would turn me off so much. To want to take away the fate and luck and quest for romance must mean the “would be dater” is hard up and boring. And selfish. I say these people will always be “would be’s”…and they deserve to be so.
“There are all kinds of services that allow anyone to do on-the-spot background searches,” Matei says. “The amount of information you can get on someone is just scary. These things have become so accessible and so cheap you can do lots of research.”
Web sites including Google, online social networks such as Thefacebook.com and online background searches allow people to check others out without having to leave their chairs.
Cheap and accessible isn’t the word. How about lazy? How about closing yourself into that box by eliminating people who just might be the one for you? A lot of information can be harvested about a person via all these background checks and all…but a lot isn’t. Like who the person really is; what their dreams and hopes are; how much fun someone is (or isn’t…)- just the simple things about another person that might make you crazy about them…this stuff cannot be reseached online.
That’s not necessarily a good thing, says Kathleen McNerney of Cincinnati. She says it’s “creepy” to know little details about a person before a first date. “Our culture is always seeking control, and we want to be in control of the situation,” she says. “We don’t want to trust someone blindly.”
And some old fundamentals still apply. “At the end of the day, what matters in dating is how well people get along and whether they’re attracted to one another,” says Chris Hughes, a Harvard student and co-creator of Thefacebook, originally a tool designed at Harvard to digitize the old-fashioned yearbook and provide interesting facts to allow the freshman class to get to know one another. “Technology can provide preliminary information, but it won’t transform the dating scene.”
McNerney agrees.
“Regular dating won’t disappear, and after a while I think people will revert back to it,” she says. “Technology can become alienating after a while, and people will want to sit down for a meal instead of at their computer screen.”
The whole idea of dating makes me want to go hide up in the mountains and never come out. But being a people person who really doesn’t relish the thought of being alone the rest of my life…I have to come out from hiding and see what’s out there. I’ll be damned if this is what I have to look forward to. All this technology will just add to my desire to alienate myself even more.
It’s weird that you can meet so many people with that computer screen, yet the thought of these people using this technology to “research” my life really turns me off. Why can’t people just ask each other the questions to get this info? If there is something more to the relationship than just a bland friendship, the answers will come.
August 22nd, 2005 at 7:59 am
It’s not just you, I assure you. There’s so much more than can be learned in a 5-minute conversation than can ever be had “researching” online.
August 22nd, 2005 at 8:50 am
I agree with you 100%. As someone who has tradionally met people through real life social networks and tried the iternet dating scene, the real thing is a hell of a lot better!
Case in point – friends along with myself have tried match – and guess what? We all have interesting stories about the strange people we have met and some hook ups and potential long term things, but no one has ever found that “love connection, chuck”.
August 22nd, 2005 at 9:56 am
“HI! My name’s Wave, and yes, that’s my real picture. Handsome aren’t I? I like all kinds of music, I’m hilarious and cool, and I love to spend money on women I just met. I don’t care what you look like, as long as you have a good soul and laugh at my inane jokes. We can do whatever you like, and I won’t expect to sleep with you, although of course I’ll be thinking about what that would be like immediately if you’re at all good looking. I also like cats and puppies, unless you don’t.”
August 22nd, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Wavemaker, that just made my day…Fantastico!
August 22nd, 2005 at 3:51 pm
It’s Ogre!
Where is MY steely toed bra?? Between you and Kender, I keep losing it. Dammit bring it to me, I need it for some pole dancing tonight.
LOL
*THUD*
:twisted:
August 22nd, 2005 at 4:02 pm
HI! My name is Raven. I’m a bitch and proud of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with this dating bullshit. It’s all a game that I’m not interested in playing.
And thats for real. No way will I go along with this shit. What is wrong with people?? Has everyone gone NUTS?
No wonder there are so many lonely and desparate people…I’ve decided I’m better off being alone-much as it sucks it’s way freakin better than this baloney.
August 22nd, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Raven, keep some faith in humanity. It can’t be that bad. :wink:
At worst, get in a good shag, at best, enjoy being single – as much as that might suck.
August 22nd, 2005 at 8:48 pm
(((“steel toed bra??????”))):shock:
August 22nd, 2005 at 8:55 pm
yes Wavemaker, steely toed bras. It’s a long story. Funny as hell too. Ogre can explain, or maybe Kender, if they come around. :mrgreen:
August 22nd, 2005 at 10:01 pm
Hhhmmm…..the steely toed bra tale eh?
Well, I remember it something like this…….(wavy fade shot here)
Raven sitting on her trusted steed, Ogre, idly wondering how to stop the muck from slain moonbats from soaking through her little silken, and very tight bodice was over heard by Kender.
Kender walked over, noshing on a moonbat ear chip, (breaded, fried and garlicked to hell, it’s the only way they taste good), and suggested that perhaps the best way to keep the M’Bat sludge off was to have a steel bra made….of course, as they were standing outside of a blacksmiths shop, and being over heard by said blacksmith Raven was immediately, and lewdly offered a “free fitting”, (“Of course ya understand girl that I must use my hands to get a feel for how big this bra would need to be)….
Raven immediately smacked the blacksmith and “convinced him that it would be in teh best interest to his future progeny and current love life if he just went ahead and made it by sight, for free.
(BTW, Larry the blacksmith consequently stopped being a blacksmith shortly there after and opened a mattress store, where “freeeeee” is still his catch phrase)
Larry the blacksmith, being a few bricks shy of a six pack didn’t really know how to make a steel piece for a bra so he did the next best thing….he used the steel inserts from a pair of workboots.
Luckily they were LARGE workboots, (Ogre is STILL barefoot) and Raven is very happy to have the protection from moonbat smile and protect her….uuummm….”Great Tracts of Land”.
Unfortunately Raven is usually quite busy with other things, (sammichs and beer) and her bra needs cleaning…..which Kender is happy to do for her…..luckily Kender knows the secret to cleaning bras of all sorts…..Ogre of course tries occassionally to get his inserts back, but is usually so busy sniffing Ravens bra that he never gets anywhere past a wistful smile when he does get his hands on it.
August 22nd, 2005 at 10:17 pm
Is THAT where my boots went? Geez. You’d think there was enough metal in the size 13′s to make more than just one of those things.
And I wasn’t trying to get them back I was…uh… grabbing them to… well… I guess I was trying to get them back…
August 22nd, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Never take for granted being able to control your own life and make the decisions that shape it without the influences of misdirected intentions from someone you would expect support from. If you’re lucky enough to get that control back you won’t be able to put yourself in a position that might jeopardize losing it again.I think trying to find Miss Right through a computer service only serves the purpose of supprting someone elses livlihood.Just a gimick oriented business designed to make money for someone else.Wish I thought of it first!
I guess I beleive in fate.What will be will be.There will always be opprotunities to take advantage of but untill then, appreciate and enjoy being able to do what suits you and yours
August 23rd, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Gawd only knows, t’aint a daytin’ site known ta man that could provoid propah customah su-viss to such a woman as to compel a smithy to paht with his footweah, free fittin’ or nawt.
August 23rd, 2005 at 9:58 pm
(And Kendah, that was propah well done, man!)