Grindr is making me wonder; how do people fall in love online? (not necessarily on grindr but via forums less suited to the casual encounter). Because it happens doesn't it, people meet online and go a certain amount of time exchanging messages, which can lead to romantic feeling for a person without having even met said-person, until such a time when both parties agree to meet. What is the basis of this romantic feeling? What's generating attraction here, and are such cases so distinct from the manner in which people develop an attraction in 'real-time'?
I'm asking because I'm experiencing a vague fondness for guys I'm chatting with, but there's also a reluctance in that fondness from my awareness of it being a glamour of some kind. Because really, I have captioned static images to relate to, and that's it. I'm responding to a loosely structured fantasy of a person, rather than that person him or her-self.
I know the problematic vapidity of 'chat' has been hot-topic since the nineties, more so recently with social-media's escalating omniscience, the same qualms returning as popular cautionary tales.
For example MTV's Cat-Fish, in which filmmakerJoel Schumacher expands his feature-length 'documentary' of the same name into a series.
Cat-Fish the film sees Schumacher chronicle a burgeoning online romance that blooms predictably enough (by Hollywood standards, despite it's hand-cam delivery style), without the interests actually meeting. When they do finally meet its apparent one of them is not who they've said they are, having deftly woven a fictional persona with pathological gusto. What was presumed to be honest self-representation was in fact a fabricated lure.
This isn't overly groundbreaking. Warnings about chat rooms to children and teenagers abound, the aphoristic threat of pedophiles and other sexual predators hiding hungrily behind Veronica's Secret stills (with drooling Cheshire-cat grins one imagines) is one we know too well.
However, the deceit in Cat-Fish is more nuanced. After teetering on a match-point between thriller and drama, the doco takes a high-road, commenting on hegemonic ideals of beauty/success while exhibiting the weird alternative of one loner. That alternative is to immerse in a fantasy wholly supported (arguably induced) by social-media's narcissistic insularity.
The incentive to present an avatar (a genre crossover wholly informing social-media in the strangest ways) tailored to remedy ones shortcomings, is a different incentive from rote games of sexual persuasion and subterfuge. The gratification is one of inclusion for someone who, for whatever reason, perceives themselves on the margin. A wish-fulfilment requiring a minimum of effort.
Interestingly, the film's series expansion does away with the tone of caution, instead lauding online dating for its ability to bring people together. Each episode tells of an online couple estranged either by distance or circumstance whose attraction overcomes these obstacles, declaring love's power as nobly facilitated by the online forums through which they met. Social media no longer distorts (or invents) attraction, but is advocated as a neutral lens.
Which is fucking preposterous.
In summary, if you're packing a chode don't sell it as a whopper.
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