New adventures in JDate online dating (1)

This dating post is talking about old 'adventures' but thought that instead of turning the piece of paper with the old notes into little pieces, I rather use it for publishing on my blog. Sooner or late, I'm sure that someone will resonate with my impressions too.

I always felt that online dating is a sign of terrible failure. It works only for people that in real life are guilty of big social inadequacies, well known for an enormous record of problems - including domestic violence and various religious transgressions - and even though you might gain a match through it sooner or later you will end up single. Better single than the victim of a sociopath and potential murderer. 

Anyway, at the time I was in a relatively desperate dating situation. Y. disappeared - apparently for good - among the black hats of who knows what yeshiva in Jerusalem coping with its newly discovered religious fervour and the latest frum match I was into it was in fact one of those irreversible cases of people with a perfect yichus but unacceptable psychological problems, even for a poor BT girl as me, with a complicated yet resourceful enough heritage for writing an interest book about just another Jewish family from Eastern Europe. 

As usual, things were getting confused and the perspective of 'for ever alone' was more real than never. In fact, it was a perspective I was pretty ready to accept wholeheartedly. Isn't it better than being heartbroken in the painful other people's process of becoming a better Jew or being tricked by a smiling shadchan from Golders Green? 

For the next months I was frantically traveling as often as possible, trying to keep myself away from computers, social media networks and spending instead a lot of time learning, reading, doing some writing and eventually sleeping more than usual, maybe who knows, some answers to my singleton problems will be sent through the Kabbalistic waves of Y.'s new teachers through my dreams. After three months, nothing happened and a dramatic break up with the nice yet unstable frum match - ended up with the delightful observation 'Woman, you are crazy!', guess who's talking - I decided that it is about time to do something until it's not that late. Of course I was still dreaming about that family of mine, some children - not the old magical 10 - and a life immersed in learning and some meaningful trips along the way. Dream on, former little girl, dream on...

I had a look around my shul maybe something will miraculously jump along my way and rescue me from loneliness. Maybe one day. Started to ask discretely my relatives about some maybes, who knows perhaps they still be helpful after all. But it was also some other resource, except of course some valuable shadchamin resources specialized in 'Russian Men for Jewish Girls': the damned JDate. Back in the old country, I started to use it of for a while, out of boredom and a bit desperate that will never be able to find my Jewish boy. I didn't find him through it, but at least I did have some interesting conversations. The two guys I've met after some months of discussions were definitely not my style, and I wasn't their either but at the time, I was taking life more lightly.

After another seconds of regrets and badmouthing the one and only Y. who...read above what he did to me...I set up the profile on a late Saturday evening. - the same timing of years ago - and started to look around. Surprisingly enough, online there were some characters I've been in touch years ago, they grew up more mature, with updated pictures, far away in their 40s. What happened? This is what's waiting for me too? A decade or even more of online hanging looking for the one and only? 

With every new profile I was discovering, my desperation increased. Here he was again, the Swiss guy that used to show off as a non-religious OTD guy when he was only looking for some out of the bed adventure...

The more desperate you are, the more tempted you are to believe that money can solve almost all your problems! Should I maybe buy a 6-month plan, my maximum deadline for finding - again - a one and only? What gonna happen this time? Wish that this time I knew much better! For good!

to be continued...

The missing picture

Questions: "Why you haven't posted a picture of you? How do you look like? I'll be interested to see a picture of you...Oh, you don't have a picture! (Window closed) You are on a dating site and you don't - want to - post a picture of you? (the same as above) What are you hiding in fact?..."

Answers (boring so, again, no ways to continue the conversations): "What about talking first, for making a smart sentence you don't need to have in the front of you a picture (it could be anybody's)" - (isn't it or not)? Do you care how your friends look like ?


The advice of the specialist: Continuing to interact with people from these environments will not bring anything interesting and fit to your expectations. What about coming back in the real world - where you have as well the proper percentage of numbs, just to never ever dream life could be perfect?

Living on-line

Internet is a wonderful thing. Really. I can pay my bills on-line, order food, buy on ebay, reading whatever I want to, writing on a blog for whoever will find me, learning, find new friends and dates too. You stay in the front of a computer connected to Internet and the world is yours. The knowledge you can acquire is amazing. The condition is to have medium Internet skills, a good knowledge of English, and your on-life is waiting for you.

One of the dangers of a life exclusively, or mostly, set on-line is the lack of basic human interaction. Why, you could ask, because you could make your "relationships" made on-line became at a certain respect a reality, through a video-call, for example, when you can effectively see who you are talking to. It's in a way similar to what's happening when seeing a movie, with the difference than you could now be an actor yourself. And, also, not less important, you can close the window if you want to.

You can spend hours and hours messaging on-line people, perhaps telling the same creepy story 100 times to 100 different people. You can call it an intense social life. You can find people with who to share different thoughts and interests, even at different corners of the world, with a low certainty to ever meet them in person. It could be rewarding, again, and you are free to call them "friends". Or to fall in love on-line after seeing one's picture, as the teens who are gathering pictures of favorites actors and hang them near their beds.

Sorry, but real-life relationships are more different. (fortunately) You call friends those you can rely on, that could be any time "on-line" (to be read available, ready) to help you, with whom to share a cup of coffee talking or not, but simply offering you a strong human presence. A conferece call it's very different of a real party or of a friends gathering. A virtual tour of a city - through pictures or short movies - could be the same for every place. You still don't know nothing about the smell of the streets or the sound of the voices.

In Japan, they created recently robots with a human appearance, able to answer with a human voice basic human requests. I'm not sure their system is not down when asked "How are you?", but I can bet they don't make any difference between the people who are addressing them. And they don't need to, because...they are robots.

From my own experience, I can say that the on-line environment, dating sites included, is full of people with a high degree of stupidity and aggressiveness and intolerance, with serious, hard to cure psychological troubles. I'm happy I never had the occasion to meet them in person. I'm already worried they are so many on planet Earth.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and in completely accidental circumstances, once in a century, you can find as well outstanding brainy people.

But still, everything is just an opportunity we still have to tackle with very basic human knowledge skills. Human brains projected extremely sophisticated tools, we are used to work with as they are appendix of our bodies. And without them, we could feel disabled. Every time you feel technically addict, try to close your eyes - a suggestion - and imagine a survival test in a simple world, without mobile phones, Internet, different machines. Are you still able, for example, to find a street only with a simple map? Or to talk with your neighbors? Or to write a letter to your real friends telling in a couple of sentences - not only disparate messaging-like words - how do you really feel (maybe happy, maybe sorry)? If yes, you are still alive.