Week 3 - Modern Love

If you love someone, then their life is more important to you than your own. You would willingly go back into a burning house to attempt to bring out someone you truly love. That is how I would define love. Pop culture seems to have a similar definition of love itself, but reaching that state of loving someone has changed greatly over the years. These days, it feels like hooking up with someone is the primary objective, while things like dating come later, almost as an afterthought. Personally I am quite against that policy, and feel that people should really get to know each other through dating and spending time with each other first. However, it today’s world, sex has largely lost its meaning and importance as an act of love. Many people will engage in a one-night stand with another and then may never talk to each other again. Media tends to embrace this new methodology, portraying sex as just another way to have fun, with little meaning attached. I feel that sex should be an act you only do with someone you love, but perhaps that sentiment is old-fashioned these days.

On a different note, the evolution of online dating has spread wildly over the past few years. Before meeting people and talking with them was always done face to face, person to person. Now we attempt to remove the human connection by talking to each other through electronic forms of media like Facebook, texting, Skype, and various online dating sites and apps. Searching for people you may like has become a kind of game, where you categorize people based on limited information. Additionally, communication through electronics seems hollow at best, since emotion can’t be conveyed through plain text easily. As a result, electronic communication likely increases the chance of misunderstandings, which makes forming strong bonds harder.

All in all, I don’t like where media and pop culture’s views on love and dating are headed. I wish it were a more personal experience, but we tend to be moving away from strong interpersonal relations and moving to more detached forms of communication. Regardless, I cannot deny that dating sites have fairly good success rates in matching people. They probably also encourage meeting people without considering distance constraints. The search range that online dating gives people greatly increases the chance of finding a successful match. So while I don’t like the impersonal aspects of online dating, it does have some positives not possible in regular face-to-face dating.