The Algorithm Method

I don't know about you, but I am done with feelings. There are just too many of them. Sadness, anxiety, loneliness, rage, fear, despair, all the regular ones, plus... that one with the smiling, I forget what it's called. I've seen chimpanzees do it on TV I think. Fucking unnerving.

There's just to much going on for me to process all the input in the world and have a feeling--sometimes way more than just the one, a whole fucking syndrome of them--about all of it. You know, you get told over and over and over again from zero to 18 years old to avoid peer pressure and then, if you're not bothered enough about, I don't know, seeing a dog get run over or a baby stroller on fire, now all of a sudden your non-conformity is a problem. Everyone always jumps right to "sociopath." Nobody gets the benefit of the doubt any more. Maybe it's just that I've finally got the dosage right.

We're barely two weeks in to 2015 and it's already been an fucking terrible year. I won't bore you with a lot of details, but I'm having lots of discussions about paying insurance deductibles already for more than one type of insurance. Nobody's got the cancer or the HIV or anything, we'll all be fine eventually, but man... Our annus isn't bleeding or anything, but it sure has been itchy.

Whenever I need a bit of soothing numbness, I do what most people do, I turn to the internet. But you know, there's only so much an unending loop of videos of llamas fighting can do. What we have to do is learn to use the internet in the way it was intended to be used when it was invented by the Department of Defense in the 1960s: as a masturbatory aid. You know, to frustrate and defeat the communists. And then after that, we can use it according to its secondary intention: as a tool for the conveyance of information. You can see it as a self-surveilling system we all opt in to--collecting, collating and parsing the data we willingly offer which will one day* be used to direct our consumption, life experience and yes, feelings--all in exchange for trivia and the barest cultural ephemera. It doesn't seem like a lot, but think about how you feel every time WebMD helps you rule out syphilis. Seems like pretty close to a fair swap.

I'm feeling too much anyway, like I said, so I've decided to farm some of it out to the internet. Luckily this week I found this list of totally science-tific and universally applicable questions that will prompt you and a partner to fall in love. No more negotiating mutual goals and interests or fumbling around with the courage you don't have to dare expose the vulnerable, raw homunculus cowering in your armored core that is required for the slow crescendo toward genuine human intimacy. No! Just answer these 36 questions and bing-bam-boom, fuckin' soulmates. It might not be what you think you want, but it may very well be what you need. Because if there's any one complaint I have about the current state of interpersonal sociality in 2015 America it's that it's not mediated enough by lists of things on the internet.

Full disclosure: I think these are meant for people very early in the courtship process, somewhere between the "pretty-sure-s/he's-not-a-sexual-predator" phase and the "first-pregnancy-scare" phase. I tried this with my girlfriend of plural years, where we already know stuff about each other on a deeply penetrative level, like not just how to find all the tattoos but also the list of reasons why we started to regret/resent them and exactly how much candle wax is too much candle wax, etc. So we didn't get the full benefit of outsourcing our feelings. This was not for lack of trying.

The questions are broken up into three sets of 12 each. These people know their audience is not going to get through anything listed as 13 or more things without drifting into games of Freecell or Tumblrs about Kardashian asses or something. So well done already.

Most of the questions are pretty horseshit standard like "What would constitute a 'perfect' day?"** but some get the squinty side-eye for looking suspiciously like work. Like "Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible." Remembering and speaking? I've done internet lists before and this is not how they work. It's supposed to be a bunch of images with pithy single-line captions ramrodding some flimsy-ass commonality on a group of both unremarkable and unrelated things, punctuated for effect every once in a while by GIFs of Tina Fey doing eye-rolls or cats appearing to act in ways uncannily like human people.

I'm not sure about this anymore. I mean, one of the questions is "How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?" First of all, boner killer. Second, if I tell someone how I really feel about Mama, there are only two options. 1) They run away screaming or 2) They don't run away screaming. In the first instance, they're obviously gone. In the second, I've never been more bone-chillingly terrified in my life. If a woman can take in that much darkness and not be put off, we've all got legitimate reasons to be afraid. I'm talking about all of us, as a human family.

Or maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe she's just finally gotten the dosages right.

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*Way sooner than you think. Like actually sometime in August 1998. Probably a Thursday.

**Several opiate-aided naps interrupted only to binge eat Mounds bars.