The Honolulu Star Advertiser (the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii!) recently published an article titled "Working for love: Online dating is starting to feel like a second job". This article focuses on several people who are devoting more time and effort to online dating than the layperson like myself might expect. The article is inspired by a study by John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago professor of psychology. Cacioppo found that between 2005 and 2012, more than 34 percent of married couples met online, outstripping work and friend introductions (a combined 26 percent).
The first subject, Alejandro Peña, is a 24-year-old who works as a business analyst for a tech company and uses at least six separate dating apps up to 13 hours a week. Peña averages two to three dates a week, but has gone on as many as five. Peña's approach has become so methodical, the article suggests, that he has trouble keeping track of the women he's dating.
But while Peña finds his approach enjoyable, others tire of the effort that they put into online dating. 41-year-old Jonathan Zwickel says. "I want to believe I’m being proactive in my dating life... [but] I know in my heart of hearts that’s BS." Alternately drawn to and repulsed by online dating, Zwickel goes through phases of using apps and then deleting them, referring to some encounters as "contrived and forced and uncomfortable."
Frankie Rentas, 33, points out that online, it’s easier to reject potential partners before meeting them. "Because of that," he explains, "I have to be very careful with what I am putting out there and how I represent myself." This ties into some ideas we learned in class, namely that in computer-mediated relationships, chemistry appears richer and may develop faster, since both users have a more selective self-presentation than they would face-to-face. Similarities are magnified, and differences are easily ignored.
Eric Klinenberg, a New York University professor of sociology, says, "The interface we use for dating is the same interface we use for work. So many people spend their workdays sitting in front of a screen... that when they come home at night and find themselves in front of an online dating screen... they are just repeating the drudgery." Klinenberg refers to both processes as containing "mind-numbingly dull data entry and analysis."
I'm not totally sold on the premise that dating online is becoming a second job. Or, at least, that it is any more of a job than face-to-face dating. As the article points out, face-to-face speed dating is comparable to a fast job interview, which is probably more unappealing for most than an online conversation. Furthermore, online dating can be less expensive than face-to-face dating, where dinners, drinks and/or movies can put your wallet on a diet. People like Peña may be too entrenched in their computer-oriented jobs and their intense online dating strategies (6+ dating apps, seriously?) to really know the difference between work and fun. I align more with someone like Zwickel, who finds online dating sometimes appealing and other times sad.
To me, dating should be more fun than work, and I haven't reached the point where it is the opposite. Online dating is still open to some unpredictability, which can, as we discussed, be dangerous. But with this unpredictability leaving excitement to be found, I'm not convinced that online dating is becoming work.
No comments:
Post a Comment