Beelining

Is online dating infested with bots and spam and sponcon and progress traps designed to spin human loneliness into sexy, sexy lucre for a super fuckable monopoly? Well yeah, duh. Is that a good enough reason to boycott or hide from or eschew the whole experience in order to make a noodle-armed statement against the global conglomeration of resources, thoughts and human bodies in the hands of the few via the exploitation of the basic needs of the many? Well, it's that or try to pick up chicks in the International Foods aisle at the Ralphs, so, you know, sign me up for literally all of them, please and thank you.

So I'm looking, in the normal process of progress/non-progress, start/false-start, connection/dissection/erection/infection, though that last sequence is definitely a worst-case scenario. People being giant, squishy bags of wet guts supplying oxygen and various sugars to a brain and endocrine system cranking out a dizzying series of irreconcilable personality variables, way more of it is disappointing than otherwise.

It's hard not to be hopeful at this point, frustratingly. I've been divorced for 11 years, meaning I have more than enough information to know that, as empty as stretches can be, you go from completely alone to talking with someone you might end up meeting in the space of one bleep of a push notification. That's an academic position though, obviously. The emotional reality may be darker moment-to-moment, but the only other option is to calcify the fleeting, liquid despair and become a full-on Internet Man. I've never had the energy to police twitter so I could scream ALL CAPS misogyny at women who dare to talk about, like, sports or gaming, so thankfully I've dodged that particular punji stick pit.

All that in mind, it's very strange to live in a liminal space just before you've met the person you're going to spend your Next Big Relationship with. I'm here with some YouTube video on in the background watching some English guy play Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and tap-tap-tapping on this geriatric MacBook Pro and yet still... someone is going to find this attractive? It seems weird. Who knows what she's doing right now? If my past types are any indication, it's probably some combination of writing lesson plans, preparing a salad, collecting eggs from her backyard chicken(s) and/or swiping left on some self-proclaimed alpha dickface whose profile is all pictures of him holding dead fish.

And against all mathematical probability, the allure of the overeducated, fashion-indifferent, self-conscious, overthinking introvert with an aggressively nondescript haircut will really fire up her deep, evolutionary drive to pair herself with a specimen of minimal acceptability. Everyone's got a wheelhouse.