Jeannie Greeley's first use of internet meet-ups
by Bob on January 19, 2007
I recently read this article in Boston's Stuff@Night magazine ( http://stuffatnight.com/ ) in the January 16th, 2007 issue.
It's an article on Jeannie Greeley's first experiences meeting people online using amongst other devices, MySpace.
It is interesting. And there are some profound implications.
Here is the article title and link. And part of the article below.
Of course, the title heading is a great pun on the Beatles song.
* * * * *
<you say you want a resolution?>
in the online dating revolution, face-to-face communication is the first casualty
BY JEANNIE GREELEY
http://web.archive.org/web/20070118142426/http://stuffatnight.com/rd0405/sexploits/
...
in the online dating revolution, face-to-face communication is the first casualty
BY JEANNIE GREELEY
I'm scared about the future of dating. Terrified, even. I've felt this way for several years as I've watched the Internet dating "revolution" pass me by, still resorting to that old-fashioned way of meeting people by actually speaking to them.
But when I saw the recent Time cover touting "You" as the Person of the Year, I cringed. Yes: every lonely loser, every geeky introvert, every sexual predator out there was awarded Time's Person of the Year award, added to the ranks of Gandhi, Hitler, and JFK. Why? According to Time, it's because we've lassoed media power out of the hands of the moguls. Because we've democratized the world of technology by making videos of ourselves dancing in our underwear. Because we've become more interconnected and collaborative — "on a scale never seen before." To support its choice, the magazine goes on to profile people like "Leila," a 20-year-old video blogger struggling with depression who chronicles her crush on a 7-Eleven employee. "The feeling of togetherness is unbeatable," says Leila. "It's a beautiful thing."
Depressed, spending countless hours staring at a computer screen, crushing out on probably the only human being you interact with in a day, the guy who hands you the change for your Slurpee. What a beautiful thing.
Me, I'm going to buck this trend of so-called togetherness for as long as I can. I have a photofree, bare-bones MySpace profile that I threw together so I could write to an ex and demand that she remove my photos from her MySpace page. Within minutes of creating my profile, I found myself cyber-stalking my exes and otherwise doing what amounted to absolutely nothing. So I logged off. But I've somehow accumulated a handful of "friends," which prompted other readers/online stalkers to write, including one who asked if I am the "writier [sic] in Stuff@night. You don't have a picture and only 7 friends, so my question is … well, do you?" Do I what, exactly? Have friends? Take photos?
I sometimes wonder if my dating life has suffered as a result of my technophobia. I'd like to believe not. Since the inception of MySpace in July 2003, I've seriously dated about a dozen people. I met them in bars, at parties, during interviews for stories (big professional no-no), on the street, in bars, through colleagues, in bars. No, I'm not advocating alcoholism, but how about a little personal interaction? Would Florida congressman Mark Foley really have approached a young man at a party and asked him if his dick was hard? Probably not. But he felt perfectly fine doing so from behind the Almighty Monitor. Take the average instant-messaging session of two people getting to know one another, print it out, and have them recite it on their first date. Chances are they'll be squirming, unable to rectify their online personalities with their real selves.
Sure, online social networks are great for professional and creative networking. And for those too old to have active social lives or valid drivers' licenses, it might just be their only hope of meeting people. But they're not the ones driving this revolution. It's us — the teens, 20-, and 30-somethings limber enough to go out dancing, attractive enough to spot each other across crowded rooms, perhaps even bold enough to strike up a conversation with a stranger. And the revolution is only getting younger. My nine-year-old nephew is a member of Club Penguin, an online network for children that notes that the two most popular online activities for kids are gaming and chatting. Chatting? At nine, I played kick the can and occasionally still wet the bed.
I can only imagine what the dating world will look like 10 years from now, when my nephew will likely be at the height of his matchmaking pursuit. A chip will be implanted somewhere in his forearm and in the forearms of every active dater out there. Within it will lie all his demographic information, likes, dislikes, favorite tunes, psychological issues, etc. Whenever the chip determines that it has crossed the path of a compatible chip, the two bodies will then be transported to a central location, where the chips will register whether there is a physical attraction between them. No words will be spoken. The parties will either split, or their chips will calculate a time of convenience for the two to get together and . . . and? And do what? By that point, effective face-to-face communication will have all but dried up. Sarcasm will be a thing of the past, without humor indicators in the form of emoticons and LOL!.
In fact, my little science-fiction nightmare isn't too far-fetched. According to reports from the Internet Dating Conference, held in Florida in 2006, matchmaking executives theorized that 10 years from now, "we will be carrying Star Trek devices with speech recognition capabilities that will allow searches for nearby dates anytime, anywhere." I don't even know what that means. But certainly it sounds a lot more contrived, programmed, and configured than relationships should be.
In 10 or 20 or 30 years, when your grandkids ask you how you met your spouse, you'll captivate them with the riveting tale. "Well, I first found Grandpa by expanding my mileage parameters to within 50 miles of home. Then I broadened the age range I was interested in. Then up came his digital photo. He looked a little pixelated at first, but he really got me with all those witty emoticons!"
"My own grandparents' story is a bit different. My grandfather's first sight of my grandmother was of her picking pears in a tree. "I used to go up with a bucket and a rope and lower them down to my mother," says Nana. "And your grandfather walked by with my cousin. That's when I first saw him." (Nice pears, my grandfather pretends to have thought when embellishing the tale.) The two were later officially introduced at a family party celebrating the end of World War II. They've been married for 59 years.
The times, yes, they are a-changing. I find it sad. But even sadder is the fact that Time used one of its most influential covers to pander to a demographic it completely fails to reach — to feel, one might say, "connected" to this audience, even though it really knows nothing about it. Sound familiar? And how funny that its cover is graced with a cheap mirror that shows just how warped our collective self-image can become when all we do is communicate with each other on a computer screen. @
Email the author:
Jeannie Greeley: jeannieg@comcast.net.