The
One. An everlasting promise of finding the perfect Other that fortifies relationships into an unbreakable bond. Without its notion, we wouldn't have known pseudonyms like Big, or heard songs like "Bound 2", a 4 minute track dedicated to newly mother-to-be Kim Kardashian West. In fact, the One is but made up of two; two hopeful singles who believe that they were born into this world on a quest for marriage, deeply connected sex, and riding in coital position on a dirt bike.
Today, though, the definition might've skewed from the classics, and yet furthered online. Otherwise, how else do we explain the apps whose existence trolls our hope for a match that can only be made in URL? (Ashley Madison anyone?) In the face of technology, we know better that the One is out there, except, he or she is on an algorithm, making snap judgements about our profile pages.
Feeling insecure? Here, an early essay that highlights how love's experienced then, and now.
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| A basic couple in matchy plaid from Gap. |
In Old English, love was, though, still is, ascribing to a beloved
noun. It is connotative of a friendliness that weaves the word with a feeling
of warmth, affection, and joy, to say nothing of its added expression
by the 15th century, when love became a verb, as in, to make love, to have sex
(Love, n.d.). Granted, the word love has been around longer than
generations before my own, like infinitesimal beings dotting the planet with
our right to feel it, act upon it, and behave as we are in it. We are such
hopeful people when it comes to love that to think of a world without one would
be a catastrophe. Like our unsolicited issues of Cosmopolitan or our churches,
sex columnists and clergymen would all but run out of a job in one fell swoop
if love never exists for a day. Love is grand, in brief, and simplistically, “a
strong feeling of affection”(Love, 2015). However, compared with history, which
has compounded love's earliest of meanings into a wide-varying list of phrases,
such as "love letters", being a "love fool, or to "love thy
neighbour", modern love has witnessed an overhaul in its definition. To
say that love is unchanged is false, regardless of the wise men that have made
its notion lapidary. While it is still a feeling derivative of joy, today, love
is defined today by technology, expressed as a swipe on apps, and synonymous to
engaging in casual debauchery, whereby loving your neighbor is as literal
making him your bedfellow, hooked up from an app that measures his or her
online radius.
It all started with Facebook. Like with any meeting place by happenstance,
the cliché of its idiomatic phrase, "love at first sight" has moved
its venture. Having dated once on the Internet, instead of finding love by the
cinematic tropes of bookstore corners and coffee shops, my ex-partner and I
took off after befriending each other on the social media channel. We dated
briefly online, exchanged flirtatious virtual letters by dropping them off into
each other’s inboxes, and declared our statuses- thanks to Facebook’s
innovative (and invasive) labeling function, “single”, “married”, or “in a
relationship”- before moving on like any real-world couple. Love, in brief, was
not bound by physical places. Gone were the days of brushing shoulders and
locking each other’s gazes in public spaces; today, you lock down on each other's
Facebook profiles and update your marital status, pronto.
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| A tired web of romance's three-way-trap. |
However, unlike the epics, as with Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and
Cleopatra, and Tristan and Isolde, who share a common tragedy, modern love ends
with the tragedy of iPhone apps. If the mishap then were to be in the
unparalleled expectations of love, apps today would have to be the bar that
keeps lowering our standards. Post-Facebook, when apps that took over our
mobile phones seem to work in tandem with the buzzing Internet age, acting upon
love, or simply, asking a person out on a date, is predetermined by its lazy
swipe. For example, in one game-changing dating app, Tinder, users specifically
log on as single hopefuls looking for love. The app has boasted that, within
seconds and a measured radius, a prospective partner is just a swipe away: If
you like what you see, you take a right swipe; and if you don’t, you move left.
Should you get a match, you are too, prompted to “keep playing”; thus, to keep
your options open has already been decided for you (Brodwin, 2015). Further
complicating this notion of love by captitalising it into a lucrative business,
Time writer, Samantha Grossman (2015), reported that users could now link
another of their photo-sharing profile, Instagram, into their Tinder pages, so
that they may progressively “attract a quality mate”. They include
almost-nudes, surreptitious pictures of inanimate objects, wholesome traveling
photos, or even a Lamborghini. Tried and true, I took on the dating app, once,
after carefully selecting my avatar. Unlike Facebook, where offline dating is
still considered traditional if you used it as a platform to kick-start your
relationship, Tinder is the future that skids love into the gutters. While the
average human being forms an impression in five seconds, I could trim mine to
two, and then one, after deep sighs heaved at how profiles barreling down the
home screen do not appeal immediately. What is to be made of a profile image is
often judged too quickly by thumbnails, swipes after swipes. The sweet gesture
of love today is not a measure to decide if there is any chemistry between two
hopefuls, but a way to debate if one user profile is more worthy of your time
beside the next. This is reductive to the early notion of love, that its
romantic feelings could be groomed with time. Unlikely to be formed by the
spontaneity apps have boasted with the advent of matchmaking sites, time is a
luxury modern love cannot afford. In other words, love has become the fuel to
our ire of instant gratification. We are, while foolhardy suckers for love,
becoming more flustered at faster results and faster broadband speed that would
only decline our chances of finding any love at all.
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| "We love Love!" |
Most recently with apps, I have been reading into love as an
excuse for something else. By the stretch of my imagination, I have never
thought of love to be purely physical. Throw in erotic fiction Fifty Shades of
Grey and one would call bluff on love. “Love is really just sex!” as my
eighteen-year-old cousin adequately summed it, one day. He thought that the
erotic saga, written by EL James, was reflective of our times. To him,
sexuality is a discourse we need not shy away from, as an expression to make
love to someone whom we desire. To me, sexuality is more than just to love
freely, but also a rendezvous with our dating apps. As with the term, “the love
that dare not speak its name” (Love, 2015), alluding to the homosexual trial of
author Oscar Wilde in the eighteenth century, love’s offence is not in its
name, today; rather, it is in its usernames that people hide behind on dating
apps that exploit guilt-free sex. Like any “couple”, I have seen friends marry
up nicely with one another on these apps, meet up for dinners like a date, and
oft-travel abroad together. If there were a catch, it would be that dating apps
have made monogamy a hidebound idea. As with those who sleep around freely,
parties could see anyone else they fancied, throughout the open relationship.
There were no ground rules, as love was free, and in the main of love’s name,
it was equivalent to risqué behavior. In contrast to Tinder, these “dating”
apps belie, because wholesome headshots are replaced with salacious
photos of one, taunting to be privately messaged off the grid of its
interface. Though, some profile messages still read “Looking for LTR (Long Term
Relationship)” they are but baiting when users ask later if one would like to
“make love”. Has love, thus, been blurred so deeply that it is
indistinguishable from casual, wanton sex, to say nothing of how openly
accessible these apps are to anyone?
Today, love makes as much sense as the evolving state of the
Internet and its applications. We are still using it, learning to advance it,
and hoping to improve lives with it. Yet, that love could be found, forged, and
fallen out of on its platform is defined by all the instances evidenced in my
encounters: Love is a meeting place where romance ought to blossom, and it
helps with an internet connection; however, it is also a filtering tool where
we can carefully sieve out those we suspect of never loving; alas, it is an
excuse for exploiting one’s sexuality. As befuddling, romantic, and enigmatic
as love was in its early definition, love has leaped on with technology. Like
its modern age, are we not still figuring it out what it truly means to
ourselves?
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| Bound 2. |
