“No”
“How long has it been since he sent that text?”
“Two minutes”
We as a human species, need to get a grip. What ever happened to old-fashioned romance? Love letters, flowers and a romantic meal - they’re on their way out. The reason: Technology.
Children of baby boomers, born into a world of machines and gadgets – it would appear the Gen Ys are blessed. With our lives gradually turned around by technology and the godsend that is the Internet, our generation has the world at its fingertips, or thumbs. Perhaps this is true, and we are blessed. Yet underneath that sugarcoated blanket of technology, is a curse that’s been overlooked.
We are cursed when looking for love…
Some would call love the greatest feeling on earth, finding your soul mate and becoming intertwined as one for the rest of your lives. I know this because I am inundated with this message every single day. Endless films (He’s just not that into you being the leader), television shows (SATC) and media articles force us to believe that we have one person out there for us, aka The Soul Mate. Just one. Pretty unfair considering the level of online and global dating websites available to us, don’t you think?
He's just no that into you, CNN article: 100 coffees dates to find 'the one', Charlotte and Harry - from Sex and the City
The curse is all too apparent when viewing the courtship process.
Situation A: Baby Boomer Generation – Set in a bar/club 1960s-80s
They meet, they dance, they like each other.
Due to lower global levels of international alcohol trade, intoxication symptoms remain dignified. They arrange to meet in a given place at a given time. Or go home with one another, person and situation depending. If they like each other, they will make every conscious effort to meet. They can’t cancel – they have no phone, perhaps a landline, which their mother may answer. They just meet up or they don’t. Gradually they court, arranging the next date at the end of the current one. The gap between meetings is enough to spark off thought processes of gradual infatuation, easing each other into a relationship. Slowly but surely they figure out if they like one another and the relationship gradually progresses or ends.
Situation B: Gen Y – Set in a bar/club 2000s
They meet, they dance, they like each other.
Due to international trade in alcohol advancement and countless advertisements: the chosen bar widely stocks a tempting and irresistible array of beverages thus making our couple a little worse for wear. They kiss and swap numbers. Now begins the courtship – this can happen instantaneously, they may even start texting across the club or in the taxi on the way home, dignity at the texter’s mercy. The morning after the texts continue, now accompanied with fuzzy memories of the others face, unless the presence of a digital camera occurred and thus allowing instant recall. Texts then become scrutinised for punctuation, spelling, grammar and of course: wit.
Flirting by text is entirely different to flirting in a bar. You can’t use your good looks, dress sense or the ability to buy the other a drink to win them over; you have to charm through the buttons on your phone. If I ever receive a text that read:
“Hi, woz gr8 2 mEt u lst nyt, wot u up2 l8r??”
I wouldn’t even bother texting back. Clearly this idiot was the result of too much imported beer and not worth seeing again. We won’t get along as they can barely string a sentence together. However, it might be the case that this method of texting works for them – who knows, I have never bothered finding out. This could have been ‘the one’. Gone, tossed aside, purely for the reason they’re using a different texting language. Each text is carefully constructed, usually with the help of an accomplice to assure each message gives off ‘the right air of mystery’. Ce la vis?
Even when the courtship through text is in full swing, the whole thing may stop quite suddenly. One member may get distracted; this could be because they’re visiting their grandma, saving orphans or because they simply can’t be bothered. A correspondent writes:
'Technology has really killed old style courtship, it just makes it all so fast, everything can change with the mis-interpretation of messages on mobiles in a nano second.
I know a guy who if I did not respond immediately thought it was all off, he just thought that because he was free to text I was too, it's all too messy'
Social Networking Sites: A Whirlpool of Doom for Gen Y...
Don’t get me wrong... I love them. I use them all the time but when it comes to meeting ‘the one’ or even someone to date – they are down right dangerous. Example: - we meet someone and they ask us to become their ‘friend’ in cyber space. This opens up the cyber world of their profile and allows us to see endless photos of the other – a behavioural characteristic commonly termed: ‘the stalk’. Through these photos and by reading posts from others, we can determine if our lifestyle will mirror that of theirs. Shallow it may seem, judging another human totally on what image they portray with us online, but it happens. And we’re all guilty of it. Facebook alone has over four hundred million users worldwide, with over half accessing their profiles every day; I would predict half if not more are submerging in a good stalk-session. On most profiles you can see individuals and their friends, and in some cases, their families. What background they’ve had, their family home, even their dress sense. It’s all up there for us to form an opinion, either dampening or heightening feelings of lust for the other person. Baby boomers will have just taken the person on face value, met them and gradually learnt their characteristics, perhaps finding themselves in-too-deep to cast them aside by the time they realise they have fallen for a hillbilly. Now, it’s all about marketing yourself: work, friends and love included. Not only can you view a potential partner but also a past partner (depending on how the relationship ended). According to Facebook, people spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
Through the social networking sites, adverts for dating agencies sit alongside images of your lust after beau. ‘Still single?’ ‘Looking for the one?’ ‘Alone?’ Well, maybe not the last one but you get the gist. It’s all pressure.
Even if you aren’t friends with this person in cyber space, a friend might be or they may have one of those rare profiles where anyone can view them, known as an ‘open profile’ – these are pure gold when one is in ‘stalk mode’.
But the question remains, how do we rectify this problem? Do we cut back on all technology or are we the lost generation, leaving the mastering of the dating technological world to our successors? Surely this will be a smaller generation due to lack of successful partnership in the Generation Y. Or, do we submerge ourselves in the how-to self-help literature out there? Do we join these online dating agencies and hope that somehow, we can desperately master the art of catching our significant other? Do we sit and stalk our friends’ weddings and happily married lives or do we enter a frightening realm of staging our own wedding, just so we can publish photos on our profiles? Slightly dramatic perhaps, but lets face it, someone, somewhere will carry out this act. Lets just hope they have an open profile for us all to view it on.
The Art of Texting - Available from Amazon RRP $11.69 - God Help Us All.
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