communication technologies and dating.

* hi. “dating” is a loaded word but i didn’t want the title of this post to be longer than a title should be. the word “dating” for the purposes of this post encapsulates the flirting and courtship that precedes the “in a relationship”/ “engaged”/ “married” status. yup, i just used facebook terminology to qualify stages of relationship.

communication technologies shape and facilitate the way in which we interact with each other. it could be argued that technologies are developed based on human behaviour and wouldn’t catch on unless people liked to communicate in certain ways more than others. there’s also the argument that humans adapt their communication around the status quo for which the technology sets the precedent. it may be a bit of both, but either way, the tools with which we communicate impact the effectiveness, duration and outcome of dating.

for most people in western society in their 20′s, dating begins via facebook or text after meeting someone in-person or online. banter begins and sometimes continues for a while before meeting in-person for the first time or meeting again in-person on a date. arguably, dating has become a lot easier and much more efficient in terms of time versus interaction level. the levels of interaction between people have gone up a ton. but has the quality of dating and the quality of these interactions decreased as a result?

think about it – you don’t have to call or meet up in person to flirt or get to know more about the other person. and you can be texting other people at the same time. not having to call people? huge time saver. back when you needed to pick up a phone and call someone and have a private conversation, you needed to like, plan that in advance. now “courtship” can take place pretty much anywhere, not to mention being able to consider responses and answer accordingly versus on a call.

phone call:

girl: “hello?”

guy: “hey! it’s ______ from saturday night at _______!”

girl: “…uh, hey! how’s it going?”

guy: “good, good. just hittin’ up a little g.t.l. you know, keepin’ it real.”

girl: “um, cool.”

guy: “yea, so i was thinking, wanna meet up later for some drinks?”

girl: “sorry… were you the guy in the blue shirt or the beater?”

guy: “…beater.”

girl: “right… um, i have to work late tonight.”

guy: “oh, that sucks. well, what about tomorrow night?”

girl: “yeah… i’m kinda busy all this week… and then i’m leaving the country…”

guy: “k, well shoot me a text when you get back.”

girl: “yea… will do.”

text convo:

555-677-8888: hey hottie!

555-655-3344: who is this?

555-677-8888: it’s ______ from saturday night at _______!

555-655-3344: wearing the blue shirt or beater?

555-677-8888: beater.

*end of convo*

typing is much more efficent. and much less awkward. or is it? it’s been proven we communicate differently when we’re not face-to-face with a person or even on the phone. when courtship takes place largely via text or facebook and the time comes to meet up in person… it can awkward. there’s a realization that a dating relationship exists on one medium that doesn’t necessarily translate to real life. or there becomes two streams of the relationship because the in-person one is different from the texty/facebook one. i mean, people type stuff they wouldn’t have the gusto to say.

in my research on this topic, i came across a study from 2003/2004. i was going to abandon it as it’s old, but the findings are really interesting between people who prefer talking on their cell phone versus texting. since the evolution of technology and penetration of smartphones with the younger generations, texting has become way easier and user-friendly. so since 2004, people either became less talky and more texty due to technological advances or technology advanced because people realized they liked being texty more than talky. anyway, in 2003 the sample was split 50/50 between the talkers and texters. arguably, since more people are now texty, it’s pretty interesting to see what that means about the shift in human interactions and underlying motivations.

most startling is the finding that texters reported having deeper relationships with those they texted most versus talkers despite there being no difference in the amount of time they had known the person. this seems to be a result of the frequency at which texters maintain their conversations – texters texted their contacts far more frequently than talkers talked to theirs. texters have contacts with which they engage in regular, maybe even perpetual, contact. texters reported that the medium added something extra to their existing relationships with friends and family, but also helped develop new relationships where they committed more time and effort to the process of text composition, writing things they may not have felt comfortable saying face-to- face. the scary part? texters skewed more lonely and anxious than talkers. in short, we’re all lonely, anxious people that feel closer to people we barely know because we can interact with them so frequently and carefully consider our responses and artfully conduct our banter. false sense of relationship? or an easier, less awkward way to date?

in any case, most human beings will likely meet up in person one day for the first date and the relationship that has formed via text or social network won’t be on the same level as the one that forms in person. that’s kinda sad. i guess this happened back in the day when people would write love letters back and forth for years. the difference being that presumably there would have been a face-to-face relationship that preceded the love letter writing. back then, you didn’t run the risk of drunk letter sending (well, maybe) or autocorrect messing with your game. and the back and forth took a while – postal service versus instant.

moral of the story? i guess communicating via text or chat or message shouldn’t replace actual dates – you know, like meeting the person face-to-face and engaging in some kind of activity. dates should probably occur before sexting. if you get along great over text but feel the urge to run away when in-person, chances are things won’t last. i don’t think there’s a rule book, but we should all make sure our text relationships mix with some good healthy face time. hey, we could even throw a call in here and there.

i’d love to hear thoughts on this.

k *

 

karma, the secret, and sliding doors.

* hi. recently someone asked, “do you believe in karma?” to a group of people and most quickly answered, “no”. i hesitated, partly because i had forgotten the lesson in grade 12 world religion class where we learned the in-depth definition, and partly because the simplified notion of “what comes around goes around” is something in which i totally believe. i suppose there’s a lot of magical connotation around the belief, but at it’s most simple and distilled form, karma encourages people to do good and be good to others and in turn, the universe will impose good things back. to contextualize the conversation that sparked the question, “do you believe in karma?”, we were discussing a person who had, for lack of a better phrase, screwed over everyone close to he/she. we wondered if he/she would continue to coast easily through a privileged life. well, i think that shitty people eventually find themselves in shitty circumstances at some point. but if this is determined by free will (if you believe human beings have the agency to choose their own destiny) or determinism (everything from the origin of the planet has a set course driven by predetermined cause and effect relationships) is interesting.

the nuances of this idea are not new and certainly disputed. there are so many variations, and depending on which side you’re on, it really impacts the way in which you live your life. for example, the popular book and movie ‘the secret‘, which is based on the law of attraction – if you think positively and output positive frequencies, positive energy, events and circumstances will come back your way. there are a million stories of people who swear this way of living and thinking works, and that if you truly put positive energy behind something you want, it will happen.

now, i hate to be the person who sits on the fence, but i’m going to. there is truth to the law of attraction as it relates to getting things you want (assuming you believe in free will over determinism, which if you buy into ‘the secret’, you most definitely do). like a kid who wants a bike. every day he tells his parents, “i want a bike.” every friday when he gets his allowance, he says, “thanks mom and dad! i’m saving it for a bike!” even though he doesn’t like broccoli, he eats it and says, “i’ll eat the broccoli so i’m strong enough to ride my bike!” the parents finally get tired of the kid talking about the bike and since the little guy was so darn committed, they buy him a bike. boom. law of attraction.

where ‘the secret’ falls down, at least 2 clear examples i can see, is 1) limitations of physical human ability and 2) relationships. regarding the first, you might decide you want to be a world champion figure skater when you’re 40 years old. if you’ve never skated before or you just suck at skating, no matter how much positive energy you throw out there, you’re probably not going to realize your goal. regarding the second, you can’t force another person to fall in love with you. arguably, if you’re positive enough, the person you want to love you back will do so based on the law of attraction. this works if he/she were a feasible match for you in the first place – if you’re throwing a bunch of positive energy and hormones his/her way, he/she will probably be more receptive to you than if you were shy and avoided him/her. but if a person doesn’t like you back, no amount of positive thinking is going to change that.

i guess, like with karma, i don’t believe there’s some higher power governing whether we’re good or bad or positive or negative, like in the movie, ‘the adjustment bureau‘. i do, however, believe in cause and effect. the 1998 movie, ‘sliding doors‘ starring gwyneth paltrow illustrates this best – the dichotomy between free will and determinism and cause/effect vs. karma/the secret. the movie splits into 2 parallel universes and shows the outcome of each; the first in which she catches her train, and the second in which she misses it. although the people and objects are on the same course around her, she interacts with them differently in both scenarios, affecting the outcome of the subsequent circumstances. some might feel when they miss a train or are late to work that it is their fault, and it is. but the moments and circumstances that precede and follow an event are all part of a larger chain reaction.

so, determinism. very controversial. personally, i don’t think free will and determinism have to be opposing beliefs, but let me explain the difference schools of thought first. free will is our ability as humans to make choices, well, freely. conscious or unconscious, we make choices all the time, but how predetermined our choices are or will be in the future is a touchy subject. as such, there’s 4 main variations:

1) causal determinism – future events are facilitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. if you buy this idea, then you believe that if some person (or god or whatever) had all knowledge of past and present, the future would be 100% predictable down to the last detail.

2) logical determinism – past, present and future propositions are either deemed true or false. i didn’t take logic in university, so how this works goes right over my head, but i think it means every problem posed in the universe is either solvable or unsolvable, flawed or unflawed, and how that translates to real life, i’m not really sure.

3) theological determinism – there’s a god that decides the future of all human beings using some kind of omniscience. this idea is taught across the hindu, jain, buddhist and sikh religions.

4) biological determinism - all behaviours, beliefs, and desires are fixed by our genetic/biochemical make-up, which is affected by genes and environment.

since i’m not about the religious angle (not to mention ‘the adjustment bureau’ was pretty far-fetched) or the logical angle as my mathematical abilities are dismal, i’m more in the causal/biological camp. some people don’t like the thought that the future could be predicted. to that, i argue that no one will ever have all knowledge of past and present events and laws of nature for the entire universe all at once. thus, no one would be able to predict the future. in theory they could. but no one will. i’m ok with that.

if a person’s behaviours, beliefs and desires are mean-spirited, other people will probably end up not liking that person and will be less likely to help him or her out on his or her path through life. this path is a result of a chain of reactions that preceded it and the person is a result of another chain. all these chains mix and mingle and interact and change and if we think about it too much we would go crazy. i used to plan and then get disappointed when things didn’t work out as planned. i find i’m much happier if i allow things to be spontaneous. this way, you are never disappointed, but always surprised. i like surprises.

i think the best way to think about all of these thoughts and theories is we all have dreams and ambitions – some more than others – and they are the result of who we are genetically, which is a result of things that preceded us. we pursue some because we want them more than others. some things work out because they were meant to. some things work out because they weren’t meant to. and if we can find comfort in the fact that the things we wanted that never came to be just weren’t meant to, despite what we feel were our best efforts, then at least we can find peace with our past and avoid anxiety about our future.

what do you believe?

k *