Since the conception of the Internet, which has exchanged ideas for decades at this point, the way people can meet each other has changed drastically. Humans can log on and talk to people across the world, and eventually they might become close enough that they could be in a relationship. Everyone uses the Internet. There are those who meet people to date virtually first, and many use the Internet to get to know one another better.
First off, I’d like to add this paragraph about websites that were made with the sole purpose of being used to find somebody to date. Websites like Match.com, OKCupid, and even JDate (for you menschs out there,) are used by a good percentage of Internet users looking for their soul mates. Really, nobody should be meeting people online. First off, it was nicknamed the “international superhighway” by yuppies in the early 90’s. How many girls do you really meet on the highway? Secondly, who knows who is on the other end of the wire? Say John Titor signs onto his OKCupid account and gets a message from DharmaBabe1138. Her profile picture makes him feel funny, so he asks “her” out to coffee. They meet up, and “she” ends up being a biker from Stoughton. This is a scary situation, and it happens all the time. Yes, bikers from Stoughton lure men out to coffee. All. The. Time.
Anyway, let’s just get to the reason I’m writing this week’s column. Facebook has conquered all of our lives. There is no escape, and there is no end in sight. For some reason, we’re all basing our lives around this website, created by a student at Harvard last decade. In classrooms around the campus, students are no longer listening to their professors. Instead, they’re on Farmville, looking at pictures, or just chatting with their friends. This constant source of communication is seriously messing with the way we interact. No longer do we need to leave our houses to have a “good time” with our “buddies.”
This affects personal relationships too. Even before Facebook, with MySpace, users could list their current relationship statuses on their profiles. With these profiles on social networking sites, you can learn a lot about a person, or what they want you to know about them. You could find a girl who likes wine, the beach, and Star Wars, and just think, “sweet!” You could talk to them over Facebook, or you could do the human thing and actually try to meet her in person. This is what you should do. I am tired of meeting people who are in relationships and spend most of their time “together” on Facebook.
Some people do meet each other in the real world, and if they start dating, they’ll put themselves in a relationship on their Facebook profiles. This is horrible. You don’t need to announce this to the world, people. Once you do this, as people who have done this before have quickly learned, your friends will destroy your profiles with comments such as “Oh my god! I cannot believe it,’”or “NO WAY WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN EVEN THOUGH I DON’T REALLY KNOW YOU THAT WELL AND DON’T ACTUALLY TALK TO YOU OUTSIDE OF THE VIRTUAL WORLD.” The only thing worse than this is when the two people break their relationship off. Oh god.
If there was one word of advice I could give to help better a relationship, it’s to keep it off-line and in real life.
Ethan Long has been in four relationships, according to Facebook. These were with two guys, a girl, and a pizza place. They were all fake.
