Why bother with shame in dating?
A common sentiment expressed in ads I see on CL is the idea that we should, of course, be embarrassed to be looking for love/sex/whatever there. "I won't tell my friends where we met if you don't," or "If you're surprised to find yourself here, click my ad!"
This approach may well work for people who feel this way, but I can't really imagine doing something that I'm so embarrassed about, so these ads always make me laugh. Do people really still think that meeting online is weird? Or is it meeting through personal ads that's a big secret? I can't quite figure it out, but, then, I hang out with a lot of people who spend loads of time online, so doing a lot of socializing through electronic media just makes sense to me. One of these days, no doubt, we'll all be browsing personal ads from our handheld PDA/phone/whatever while walking from the subway to our office.
So, those ads that seem somewhat furtive, or that play on the secretive, shameful side of the whole scene strike out for me. Why bother doing something that you don't feel deep down? And if you feel it deep down, it's probably worth getting over feeling shame about it. Of course, we all know I'm a shameless... uh, well, you can pick your epithet, really. But the point remains: It's fun to be secretive, sometimes, but I've never been one to get off on shame, and it certainly strikes me as an odd way to try to make a connection with someone.
Is this a Catholic thing?
Comments
I think it definitely is a Catholic thing. Ya know how they say its something in the water, well, those folks keep a tub of it at the door. Anyway, don't know if you have onDemand but there's a documentary on there right now called "Slut" that I found intriguing. Think you'd dig it.
Posted by: Kayla | March 12, 2006 7:37 PM
I think personals have a stigma that comes from newspaper/magazine personals, where space was limited and people had to pay by the character. That meant they really were just following recipes, looking for matches by age, race, height, weight, sex, orientation, and a few easily abbreviated details. Doing it that way seems (perhaps rightly, but I never tried it) to dehumanize the process of meeting potential dates/mates, so it got a reputation as being for the desperate.
Many Internet personals sites actually give you a better sense of someone than meeting them in some more traditional contexts, like bars, would. And with social networking and blogging, it seems like the old stigma could be turned on its head: "What, you're so desperate you have to meet people in bars? You can't find a date on the Internet?"
But social attitudes don't turn on a dime with logic. This one is generational. The Internet broke into the mainstream in 1993-1995, so I suspect the first generation where a solid majority find meeting dates on the Internet normal and unremarkable are the ones who were entering their early teens at about that time, and are now just getting into the mid 20s.
Posted by: Cos | March 13, 2006 7:15 PM