Dating apps are a scourge on our society. This isn’t going quite where you might think it is. Snap judgments about another’s self-worth degrade us all.
I was talking with a married acquaintance today. He was married during COVID, met his spouse on a niche dating app for a “shallow” dating market. He’d already been disillusioned by dating apps. It’s not hard to see why. As humans, we have a bias for negativity. We remember the negative. We emphasize the negative. We are triggered by the negative.
And it’s no wonder. Ignoring something good for proto-humans was fine. But ignoring something bad for proto-humans? Well, there was always a chance that could be instant death.
The thing is, as Penn Jillette says, of the roughly seven billion people on the earth today, there are seven billion good people, and the truly evil people are a rounding error. The good people, they’re everywhere. On dating apps, on most forms of social media, and certainly on the news, we are invited to make negative judgements. Or, to hold up the 1% of the 1% of beauty, intelligence, or attention-getting as “the norm”.
This is actually why I am in love with Twitter (and Twitter-like systems such as Discord). For weeks, I was “a tiny face in a circle” to someone as they got to know me in depth. The whole experience brought back a quote I first encountered this quote on a rerun of the PBS children’s television program “Wishbone.” (The one where the dog re-enacts famous pieces of literature.)
It was a quote from Mark Twain: “There’s no such thing as an uninteresting life, such a thing is an impossibility. Beneath the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy.”
Each of our lives is such a unique blend of experiences, emotions, and relationships. It create a tapestry of personal stories that make up the fabric of our lives. Mark Twain reminds us that beneath the surface, everyone has their own battles, joys, and sorrows.
Some part of me has intuitively felt that for my whole life. I don’t consider myself someone with extraordinary empathy or understanding. But I like people. I like getting to know people. Part of me intuitively knows that behind every seemingly dull façade lies a world of intricate human experiences of which I have never experienced or will never experience with my one lifetime.
I loved this Mark Twain quote so much that as a 15-year-old, it became the cover page of my journal when I entered university. (Unfortunately, the more I wrote during my early university years, the less I did. I typed 400 pages of a journal in my 16 week semester, chronicling every single day in emotionally laborious detail, so much so that I have never revisited it for more than a few minutes at a time. It is so painful to read for the me of today that it is clear that I have grown tremendously.)
One unexpected consequence of having this Mark Twain quote in my face for so long was that it reminded me to look inward and recognize the value in my own life. It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others.
I have a weird thing for the Winter Olympics. I grew up surrounded by speed skaters and snowboarders. I remember being a teenager thinking, “Well, I’m screwed. I am too old to be a child actor. And now I’m too old to compete in the Olympics.”
And yes, I’m too old to be a child actor. I might not be too old to compete in Curling, though.
It has taken me time to realize that, at least for the next few decades of my life, one thing is certain:
The best is yet to come.
Will there be setbacks? Oh, yes. Absolutely. There will be failures and tears, moments that test my patience. But there will also be joys. Joys that are unimaginable to me at this very moment.
And there will be relationships. There will be others with whom they and I choose to foster a deeper connection. There will be a chosen few whose lives will be laid bare in front of me, and mine in front of them. The complexities and nuances of our stories on display for one another.
I used to be afraid of that level of discourse with some people. After all, growing up between worlds with the birthright of two cultures made me feel more than a little displaced. And as someone who doesn’t physically look like he is entitled to both cultures, I felt even more prone to misunderstanding. (Actually, no, not even felt. It was certainly more solid than that.)
But that level of discourse does not happen with these snap judgements. I was told growing up by a very conservative mother that I should get married as young as possible so that I didn’t get picky. Now I realize that this was another way of observing that our snap judgements increase over time. We as a species are so prone to picking out the negative that we will instantly spot the slightly drooping rose in the bundle of a dozen otherwise brightly beaming roses.
Yes, “beneath the dullest exterior lies a world of drama, comedy, and tragedy”. But we don’t get to see any of that unless we make room for it. That only happens when we slow down. That only happens when we look deeply into someone’s eyes and realize that their thoughts are as complex as our own, no matter what the rest of them might look like.