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A scenario (that resembles a Dockers commercial):
You are on the subway. Across from you is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. (And obviously, in this scenario, you’re a straight man or a lesbian. If you’re something else, just substitute man for woman, he for she, etc. If you substitute goat for woman, then you’re on the wrong website. And ironically, you’re probably only here because you googled goat woman bestiality, which wouldn’t have landed you on my site without the presence of this completely unnecessary parenthetical statement.)
But back to the beautiful woman. She has blue eyes and light brown hair and her only blemish is a little scar on her chin, which really isn’t even a blemish – it’s more of a cute dimple – but none of that is very important. What’s important is that you’re very attracted to this woman and you keep glancing at her, and she’s not making eye contact with you, but you suspect that every time you look away, she’s looking at you. By the way, she’s not a prostitute.
This game of cat and mouse – or actually, not cat and mouse because the cat would want to eat the mouse, so really it’s closer to a game of cat and cat, and both cats are shy – continues until the train is about to stop, and the woman rises from her seat. You look up. Your eyes meet. Sparks fly (from the breaking wheels on the tracks, but also from your eyes and from her eyes, but not literally because neither of you are X-Men).
“Hi,” you say.
“Hi,” she says.
“Is this your stop?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not mine.” (You’re an idiot. First of all, it’s obvious that this isn’t your stop because you haven’t stood up. Second of all, why couldn’t it be your stop? All you have to do is exit here and pretend to walk purposefully somewhere, which would allow you to continue your conversation with this woman. But you didn’t think quickly enough, so the door is closing on your time with this woman, even as the train’s doors open, which means that: Third of all, you shouldn’t waste valuable breath saying “It’s not mine.”)
You scramble to recover: “So I guess we’ll never see each other again, huh?”
“Yes,” she says.
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes.”
She smiles and takes a step toward the door, but stops. “Listen,” she says. “I take this train every day at the same time so maybe we can see each other again.”
“I’d like that.”
She is out of the train now, and the doors are closing, but she turns and says, “Nice pants.”
No. I’m kidding. What really happens is you say, “Wait. What’s your name?”
And she says her name.
And you say, “Nice to meet you. I’m Tebucky.”
(Oh, I also forgot to tell you that you’re Tebucky Jones, a former safety for the New England Patriots, which also means that you’re not a lesbian. I should have mentioned this earlier.)
Needless to say, you will show up the next day to continue your flirtation with the woman unless you don’t want to appear too eager (probably a good idea), in which case you will wait 72 hours. There is no question that you will do this.
So what is the question?
The question is:
Do you stalk the woman on Facebook, or do you not stalk her?
But I’m calling a time out right away because I think stalking is the wrong word. What you’re really doing is studying. If you rented a long-range zoom lens for your digital camera, took black-and-white pictures of the girl leaving a Starbucks, developed these pictures in your own dark room (which doesn’t make any sense because you’re using a digital camera), tacked the pictures to your wall, applied lipstick and mascara to her two-dimensional visage, then wrote in your journal, “TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY,” followed by a Bible quote, that would be stalking.
But when you stalk, or study, someone on Facebook, you’re just absorbing information that he or she has (usually) voluntarily submitted to the archives of digital public information. And there’s typically more out there than what exists on Facebook. There’s MySpace, google, and any other page that’s been set up to meticulously detail the height, position, and major of tall blond undergraduate volleyball players.
An analogy:
Let’s say you have a job interview in one week with a large pharmaceutical company. Wouldn’t it make sense to research this company before the interview so that you’re as prepared as possible? You should know what kind of drugs they make, what kind of side effects they inflict, and whether or not they like to inject mice with AIDS for fun (if they do, it might not be a good company to work for because who knows when they’ll turn their attention from mice to men, or when they’ll inject the mice with Human Growth Hormone and AIDS, which could turn the mice into man-sized killer STD machines).
So why not research a date the same way you’d research a job interview? Theoretically there should be nothing wrong with this practice, but the problem is, you probably won’t admit that you studied this girl on the internet, which means that you’ll have to be somewhat dishonest when you “learn” what her favorite movies are, or when you “find out” that she has a sister who has braces and can’t wait to see her at Thanksgiving. And you will know things that she doesn’t even bring up – like how she looks better with her hair up, or how she was apparently hooking up with a guy who hasn’t been tagged in any of her pictures since the messy “Spring Break ’06” photo album.
Or if you do confess to studying her, you will seem overzealous, like you’ve gathered as much information as possible (without taking those long-range surveillance photos), and yeah, that feels like stalking.
But who doesn’t study? If you meet a girl when you’re drunk, it’s important to see if you had tequila goggles on; it’s important to see if she’s interested in meeting “other fascists;” it’s important to see if she’s listed SKINNING SMALL ANIMALS as one of her interests; and it’s critically important to make sure she doesn’t enjoy the comedy of Dane Cook.
Online profiles act as a filter for potential dating partners.
But sometimes they’re misleading. For example, you might think you know everything about a girl, but what doesn’t come across is her charming wit or her uncontrollable facial tic. Or just look at my Facebook profile. There are five ways it’s misleading:
1. The pictures don’t do me justice. I’m actually a great-looking guy. Or at least decent-looking. Maybe adequate-looking. Whatever. I’m not photogenic.
2. That picture of me touching Crofoot’s leg? That’s a joke. I wasn’t actually touching his leg.
3. My favorite movies do not all star Josh Hartnett.
4. Although I am interested in funneling beers, high-fiving my friends, crushing beer cans on my forehead, tennis, making out, and bench press, those aren’t my onlyinterests. I also enjoy beer helmets, fist-pounding my friends, ripping beer cans open with my teeth, badminton, getting to second base, and decline bench press. Oh, and reading.
So you can’t judge a book by its cover when that book is a person and the cover is a 2-dimensional web page that might be full of lies or unflattering photographs.
People often observe that it’s awkward to officially become someone’s “friend” on facebook – after all you wouldn’t go up to someone in real life, shake their hand, and say, “Okay, we’re definitely friends now,” – but it’s even more awkward to officially enter into a “relationship” on Facebook. Do both parties have to agree to the relationship, and is it awkward if someone does it first and the other one doesn’t follow? And then if the relationship starts to unravel, at what point do you go back to being single or looking for “whatever.” And then when the relationship is really on the rocks and your newsfeed informs you that she’s been tagged in a picture with some other guy, do you put your whole head through a wall or just your face?
Maybe we’re living in an age of Too Much Information, or “TMI” as Michael would say on The Office. Remember that phrase from 1999? You would use it anytime someone told you that they had had diarrhea all day and it was leaking into their underwear. “Too Much Information” accurately summarizes this new form of dating. I long for the old days, the nineties, when the only way too get to know someone was to interact with them in real life.
There was none of this meeting a girl on a subway, going home, studying her on Facebook, and then drawing charcoal sketches of you and her making out on a picnic blanket. But that’ exactly what I do.
Yo. TMI.
Sorry.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
