Movies and reality are worlds apart just like expecting a date online and actually finding one. The misery of online dating and singlehood that affects the women of New York is the soul of this article.
“Sex and the city“ was released 20 years ago, and seeing Carrie Bradshaw find love so beautifully in New York, many came to the city hoping to find their Mr. Big while sipping a Cosmo. Unfortunately, this was only a fantasy for many. In a city of approximately 9 million people, 53% are women, and of all the men, 19-20% identify as gay. The remaining men are either married, in a relationship, or seeking a non- exclusive alliance. Hence, the probability of finding an eligible bachelor is as skim as 1%. “Beyoncé, the single ladies here are still searching for someone to ‘put a ring on’”.
Singlehood has been a crisis for the women in the city since forever. As a solution, dating apps in New York gave some relief. During the boom years, they were a welcomed change. However, once the bullish phase ended, the hopes of singles crashed like Wall Street did in 1929. How come this technological innovation that offered so many options in terms of potential dates with the so-called best dating apps in New York failed to solve its purpose? The answer lies in its very advantage, EXCESSIVELY MULTIPLE OPTIONS. The theory of Paradox of Choices states that having more options is a misery and having less is a blessing. Hence, uncountable options became the root cause of the singles’ misery in the city.
Another good reason why dating apps couldn’t administer redressal to its users is because online dating is a lawless territory. This means that in absence of any set ground rules, people easily ghost people after months of conversations the moment they find something better. There isn’t an end to text conversations with no real groundwork for a proper date. As the wise say, everything is fair in love and war, dating online, which was meant to find us love, ended up being a brutal warzone.
A study shows that meeting someone online instantly adds certain pressure and expectations that one might not have, when meeting someone offline. This is due to the fact that when people meet each other in real world, without any virtual connections, they have to be spontaneous which brings out their true selves. However, people sugarcoat themselves online to unimaginable extent, which raises unrealistic expectations, in fact there are dating coaches that charge exorbitant amount of money just to teach people how to date online. All this sugarcoating and manipulations made dating online similar to chasing a mirage of a perfect relationship, which results in perpetual singlehood.
Love, as I remember was accepting a person with their beauty as well as flaws. It was never about chasing perfection but finding the moment of love in its imperfection. However, today love has become a game of marketing that involves selling a perfect image online and interviewing those images under the guise of dates. Contentment seems to be miles away, and happiness is somewhere on Jupiter. Maybe revolutionizing dating wasn’t as good an idea as it was perceived to be. No wonder our grandma and grandpa look so amazingly cute together, because they didn’t fall in the pit of online dating, thankfully. Perhaps, sitting in cafes and libraries alone would give the women of New York the turning point they so desperately in their lives? Maybe.
