Opinion | Mixed messages in online dating game
Kelly Yang says dating the old-fashioned way - faceto face - was a lot less hazardous than today's minefield of tweets and emoticons
It's mayhem out there, my single friends tell me. In my day, you'd go on a date, then wait for that person to call you again. If he was interested, he'd call. If he wasn't, he wouldn't. Within a week, you'd quickly figure out which of the two camps he was in.
Now, it's anyone's guess what people are really thinking. A thumbs up emoticon? That could mean, "Come here, baby", or "Don't even think about it, you unattractive co-worker". If you go out with someone and they "poke" you on Facebook a few days later, instead of calling, is this a good sign, or a bad one? What if he Skypes but then suddenly logs off? Were you just dumped by IM?
Instead of buying a girl breakfast after spending the night, these days, a retweet seems to suffice. A friend said he texted a girl just as he was going to the gym. Forty-five minutes into his workout, he checked his phone. He had received no less than 10 WhatsApp messages from the girl. The first was nice, but they got progressively angrier. Somehow, in less than an hour, the relationship had gone from pleasant to hostile, without him uttering a single word.
Technology combined with dating can make people go crazy in other ways, too. I know people who, after one meeting, will stalk their date online. Like a detective, they will mine tweets, status updates, Gchat and WhatsApp status for any and all signs that their date wasn't in fact "too busy to call".