by Jen Woodlee
So you met a really cute guy at the bar, and you’re looking to get to know him better. You immediately sign on to Facebook, and you start stalking the heck out of him until you make a decision of whether or not you want to take it to the next level, asking to be his friend. You’ll wait a couple of days before chatting with him, online of course, and then after several more days you’ll call him on the number you found on his Facebook wall. That’s the way this dating thing works right? Wrong.
In our selfishness, we believe that people want to know about us, so we chronicle our lives through pictures, notes, statuses, and favorites on Facebook for the world, and potential daters, to rummage through. While you’re stalking hot boy’s profile, pictures, family members, and friends you can be quite sure that he’s doing the same thing to you. Right now he’s looking at that picture of you and your friends dancing on the bar at Gatsby’s; then he’s double checking what he saw on your religious beliefs section. Good luck explaining that.
The problem is that if someone looked at my profile right now, they’d think I drink a lot and I have really hot friends. Both of which are true, but people wouldn’t use either of those things to describe me. As with hot boy, the fact that you see LOTR quotes and something about his rash being cured probably doesn’t mean what you think it means (but I would definitely ask him about the rash.) Unfortunately, based on the information and the context the information is read in, potential daters would get the completely wrong idea of both of us.
I have a friend who doesn’t have a Facebook—shocking right? He’s not any more good looking than your average man, and aside from the fact he could charm the nuts from a squirrel, he gets more dates than any other guy I know. When given the choice between a mystery novel and a book to which you already know the ending, most people would choose the chance to solve a mystery.
The point of dating is to get to know a person of interest. Dating provides us with the forum to ask questions, have fun, and enjoy the company of another person that you could potentially form a relationship with, but the dilemma that we’ve been faced with (get it Facebook!) is that the mystery of the first date has been completely revealed by our obsession with stalking our prey beforehand. Let’s take a page out of my friend’s Facebook, or lack thereof, and let dating happen without the use of social networking. Mysterys are fun, and trust me, you’ll never guess the ending.