It’s
Sunday, 9am. I get in the tube and look around. “Cristians make better lovers”, I read. Seriously?
I count 5 adverts of dating sites in the
carriage and all I can think about is that someone somewhere is making a lot of
money.
Dating
sites are just La Celestina of the 21st century. Those of you who are familiar with this 16th
century book might actually understand what I mean. To sum up the story, Calisto fell in love
with Melibea, but she rejected him, so he decided to ask for Celestina’s help,
who was an old witch. She manages to
make Melibea fall in love with Calisto and by the end of the book, he
accidentally falls and dies while trying to jump the fence of Melibea’s
house. After seeing this, Melibea decides
to kill herself.
Celestina
is who brings Calisto and Melibea together, with the help of a
conjuration. Just like that, dating
sites help bring people together and help them hide what they don’t want other
people to know.
There are
so many different dating sites nowadays... yet everyone I know who uses one, uses
Tinder. I have heard all about how
amazing it is and all the reassuring things they have, like telling you the
common friends you have with that person on facebook. Is this really reassuring though? I mean,
come on, we all have friends on facebook whom we might have met once, those we
never speak to, who we randomly met ages ago at a party some friend of a friend
invited us to. You’re a friend of that weirdo and Tinder says we are the
perfect match? No thanks!
I must
confess I am not a fan of dating sites. I’ve
never tried them but I’m just one of those people who doesn’t feel comfortable
saying to the world “hey you, look at me, I’m looking for a man!” all over the
internet without caring about all the weirdos out there. I don’t really trust those things, I just keep
thinking to myself: You’re going out for a coffee/dinner/a drink with someone
you’ve never met? Really? What if he is a serial killer?
The thing
is, despite all these people I know using dating sites, whenever I asked them
if they ever had a good date, all of them said no.
I have a
friend who has been using it for a while now and who really tried to get me to
try it. I asked him if he had been on dates and he said yes, but when I asked
him why he was still single he said all the girls were weird. Another friend of mine was supposed to meet
this guy she met on the same site. When
he told her where to meet, he made a really racist joke about (surprise
surprise) her religion. He obviously didn’t know it, but how can you make such
jokes when you really don’t know the other person? It’s just the effect of sitting behind a
computer to interact with others, it makes people think they can do anything
and they will be cool. Well, it doesn’t
work like that.
Don’t get
me wrong, dating sites might work for some, it just doesn’t do it for me. Call me old fashioned but I’d very much
rather be introduced to someone else by a real friend, face to face, without
masks or conjurations.
· D ·
