15 Sep 2016

Back in the olden days, dating required effort. Folks needed to at least leave the house, if not scrub up, approach strangers and lay down some engaging banter as well. It was hectic. However we have the internet now, and there are myriad apps and websites that do a lot of the work for us.

We all know about them; even if you’re attached, old or sceptical, you know there’s an explosion of dating apps available, like RSVP, eHarmony and OkCupid.  Not everyone looks on them favourably though—we all have that one friend or rello who’s inclined to proclaim ‘Online dating?? Ewww, that’s for weirdos and creeps.’

But that same friend or rello will probably sneak away to log in to Bumble or Grindr too, because online flirting and dating is now commonplace.

According to the most recent edition of that doyen of dating statistics, the RSVP-commissioned ‘Date of the Nation Report,’ 12 per cent of Australians met their most recent date through an online dating platform.

Apparently such platforms are now the second most common way single Aussies met their most recent date, behind introductions via friends and family, but ahead of work, university or school, and pubs or bars. You’re more likely to be the odd one out if you’re not using online methods to find a date.

The various sites and apps operate differently, but are all relatively easy to use. Take Tinder, for instance, one of the most popular and easy-to-use applications of all. Swiping your way through the profiles of nearby Tinder users is a cakewalk, so much so that some treat it more like a game than a resource for establishing a relationship.

It takes but a second to bring up the profile of someone who’s put the time, effort and emotional investment into creating an online form of themselves, potentially in the hope of improving the rest of their life…and it takes a mere second to cast their efforts aside with a casual swipe of your finger. Some users are investing their everything in a search for love, others use the app for overnight hook-ups, for banter, or to have a sticky at randoms’ profiles.

So while online dating is becoming more socially acceptable, is that necessarily a good thing?

Possibly not, if it’s considered that aside from exposing some love-seekers to such callousness, in letting online dating tools do a lot of the leg-work, anyone who uses them is surrendering life experience too. Sure they give us new experiences that play out in a different way, but some of the most intense human emotions can be lacking from these, like the breathless nervousness on approaching an eye-catcher, or the thrill at making that cutie smile.

That goes missing in a world where everything is so simple that if tonight’s date doesn’t work out you can be on your phone and arranging for another hook-up or 10 before your current date has even stormed out the door. It takes so little time and effort to address a bout of singleness that doing so may come to be nothing more than a fun, transaction-based game to pass the time when we’re bored.

As technology and digital developments make flirting and dating easier it’s possible they’ll commodify these experiences and render them little more than other bland, easy things to do amongst our online shopping and restaurant reviewing.

The challenges, failures, imperfections and gambles that meeting new people present us with and that form part of a full, interesting life, may come to be smoothed over by apps that take over things for us.

If we lean back into the cushiony ease of Tinder in taking care of the experiences that shape us (and that give us such great drinking stories), then we risk letting Tinder and its gang rob us of a set of exciting, nerve-wracking experiences that make us feel alive.

Having said that, Tinder and its ilk aren’t all bad. Getting to know new people online simply represents a progression in the way we meet people, borne of the changed spaces in which we tend to spend time.

And there are a lot of good things about internet dating—not least it expands our set of choices and lets us access more information before making decisions. Besides, at the end of the day technology hasn’t advanced that far (yet) that we no longer have to meet people in the flesh at all—online platforms are just a tool that help us tee up real-life meetings that we’ve judged may be worth having.

So maybe we just need to work at ensuring a bit of balance. Try other ways of dating too, and other ways of flirting. Go nuts on Tinder if you like. Just make sure you at least occasionally do some work yourself—approach someone in the realness of a sticky-floored nightspot and wow them with a one-liner, start a face-to-face conversation with that foxy barista, tap that cute colleague on the shoulder and ask if they would contemplate playing tennis with you on the weekend.

Don’t ignore the digital world, just be sure and try the real world too. It can be harder to obtain the pay-off you want, but that’s what makes the pay-off so sweet.