When you truly break it down, there are two types of people in the world: those who want to be in love, and those who say they don't. The optimists and the cynics. To be the former is to retain some sanguine sense of place in our orbit, and to spend a lifetime under the impression that inside exists a void yearning to be filled. To be the latter is to be an inconsolable pragmatist, one whose entire identity is defined by an exceptionalism that only disguises the same perceived void had by the optimists. So, in a sense, while humanity is characterized by this binary, it's also unified by it.
I always aligned myself firmly with the cynics. I thought romance and coupledom to be a sort of societal repression of the animalistic drive had by each and every one of us. I thought, after witnessing volatile relationships and unsatisfying marriages, that monogamy was a farce. So I came to New York for college bitterly cynical, regarding my coupled friends with listless condescension, as if they were missing out on my sexual revolution. Eventually, my a priori convictions had to be balanced with those conjured up from experience. Experience is funny, for we expect it to reiterate our prideful opinions, yet it frequently exposes sprawling fields of gray area.
Today, I find myself somewhere in the middle, a disenchanted participant in a distinctly modern culture characterized by iPhone screens, sexual relativism and "ever-lasting" romanticized ideals. It's an oddly soluble mixture, in which we're satiated by the face on a screen, yet haunted by an impermanence perpetuated by that very one-click culture.
This brings my friends and I to a familiar scene, one that defines the zeitgeist in so many ways: we are sprawled across the Twin XL bed with red wine-stained sheets, rifling through the parade of nameless folk on our phone screens as rivulets of sweat make their way down our foreheads. Swipe left, swipe right. Respond, ignore. A match, a rejection. A coffee date, a one-night stand. We sit, and scroll, in silence, a kind of embraced yet angst-ridden reconciliation. Oftentimes our dating-app encounters are relegated entirely to our phones - there is to be no physical consummation, just an exchange of quippy flirtations that seem to, for the time being, quell our hunger. In the words of a friend, "when you match with someone great, it feels like you've won the battle before it's even started."
Other times, there is to be nothing but physical consummation. No name to put to a face; simply numbness and ecstasy, physical closeness and emotional detachment.
"Where you at?"
"13th and B."
"Oh, cool. I'm close. Can you host?"
"Sure can. Let me hop a shower. Come here in ten."
Just like that, with the ease and informality of a high five, you can have sex with a stranger. It's generally innocuous and it works like a charm. And while the intentions on these phone apps are varied - some are looking for sex while others scour for their white-knight - the results remains the same. We'll be back on Tinder, Hinge, Grindr, insert application of choice tomorrow, because the way it satisfies our millennial desire for ease and instant gratification is unmatched.
So, if we're transfixed by the hopeful illusion that we've won the "battle", what exactly is this battle we've waged?
For starters, it's an internal one, between the propensities of every normal, recalcitrant millennial to go against the horse-and-buggy romance engendered by rom-coms, and the actual desires of said millennials. Between what we claim to want and what we actually want. If our parents are the products of the baby boom, we are the products of the divorce boom, and it has imbued us with skepticism about the feasibility of traditional relationships. The way that subversive kids do, we push back against the norm because it is just that, the norm, what we've been trained to aspire to. For us, such obedience to convention is worse than eternal singledom. Our attachment to the world of cyber-dating is not surprising - it gives us what we think we need, plus the added convenience of an iPhone. Yet, although we may not realize it, it is antithetical to another thing we might need: real, genuine human connection.
In talking with other millennials, I discovered that the idyllic notions of love, and its concomitant feelings - anxiety, euphoria, fear, and misery - aren't going anywhere. The idea of romance as a union between two fateful lovers remains as prevalent as ever. One put it this way: "I still lay in bed at night and think about that, like, great, epic love. There's nothing like two people who are meant for each other, like Carrie and Big. So clearly I want that. But I don't really pursue it because we have such a noncommittal, easy method literally at our hands."
What this depicts is an ever-increasing chasm between our subconscious and our putative desires. There's a pervasive belief that we've ushered in an era of progressive new paradigms, yet our imagined rebellion against the norm exists merely in cyber-space. So while we think we've taken back the power via the omnipotent veils of Tinder and Hinge, that glistening facade behind which we feel brave and unstoppable, it seems that swiping left and right is merely coverture for the traditions we are ashamed to pursue. Our goals remain the same, in that we still, as we always did, crave that storybook, monogamous, fairytale, yet the ways in which we try to achieve them, behind a five-inch phone screen that reduces everything to a cursory glance, would suggest the extinction of that very fairytale.
So, does the fairytale survive, or are we slowly twisting a knife in its stomach, a knife embodied by sex-crazed Tinder meet-ups and a revolving door of pseudo-romance?
I'm not moralistic, nor could I claim to abstain from the aforementioned culture of nameless hook-ups, but I do believe it to be fascinating, a remarkably apropos system for a generation predicated on getting things the second we want them. From a practical standpoint, it seems silly to wait around at a bar sipping on your rum and coke while viable suitors pass you left and right. Why risk a shot to our precious egos when an expansive inventory of those same suitors exists in our pocket, whomever your mobile provider may be. It's easy, often flattering, and can frequently dovetail into easy, low-stakes sex. What problematizes matters is that, in talking to daily users of dating-apps, their needs aren't being met. The high is ephemeral, as is the orgasm, and many millennials leave reiterating that rage-inciting idea: "we all want love".
Having only been in embarrassingly one-sided romances before, I can say that the physical reciprocation offered by dating apps is a welcome respite from our emotional tribulations. I'm am fond of this sort of bodily liberalism. It's freeing and empowering. I have even sent my friends articles entitled Polyamory: The New Sexual Revolution in my quest to champion anything and everything anti-tradition; my cynicism saw its embodiment in my promiscuity. And while I still feel some people should loosen up a bit, dabbling in the art of no-strings-attached hookups did less to quench a carnal thirst than it did show me that, despite the utter blasphemy of this notion, it is okay to want more. It simply got boring.
How on earth could we be bored? It's a word you frequently hear from Generation Y as a descriptor for today's dating culture. We shouldn't be bored - never have we experienced such visibility, a smorgasbord of men and women at our technological disposal - yet in an age where a sexual or romantic encounter is ostensibly easier to come by, the fireworks have been put out, the horses legs too tired to draw the carriage. It is no coincidence that a culture that renders us immovable, staring at a face on a screen rather than a face in real life, has precipitated this boredom, halted our mobility. It is impersonal and flattering, fun and impermanent, and all of this is fine until we come to a crashing head with the fact that a battle waged on our phones can only be so fruitful.
That is not to say I'll be deleting my apps anytime soon. Their existence is carefully curated amongst other basic human needs, an impermanent substitute for convention. And maybe we're not ready to revert to convention. These apps have a purpose, and insofar as we don't delude ourselves into thinking that they serve one they do not, we need not moralize their place in 21st century dating culture. The truly beautiful thing about this technological veil, though, is that it unites us, the optimists and the cynics, around a universal desire: to feel good about ourselves.