subject: Online Dating And The Networked World - A Man's Advice To Women [print this page] Online Dating And The Networked World - A Man's Advice To Women
Copyright (c) 2011 Dirk SayersNot long ago, I ran across a provocative video featuring MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist. Her remarks in the video were about higher education, rather than online dating, but her observations have implications for women looking for meaningful relationships online. As a man who has been advising women in the activity of online dating (or online meeting as I prefer to call it), I wanted to share her observations, because they illustrate a point well worth remembering.
Professor Turkle's remarks were delivered at the Harvard University Extension School at the "Centennial Panel on Higher Education in the Networked Age." She shared many thoughtful remarks during her talk, but none more applicable to women and online dating than her observation about academics as practiced today. Said Turkle: "...we are all doing more of our work in simulation; something that doesn't always force us to confront the real."Earlier in her talk she observed that this is the first generation where simulation can be a surrogate for what is real. When you take Professor Turkle's remarks about education and insert them into the online dating/meeting world, it's hard not to be struck by its far-reaching implications for everyone in the online dating world. Education, Dr. Turkle notes, makes extensive use of computer-mediated learning resources. Online universities abound today...an educational framework in which virtual class rooms obviate the need for a commute to a bricks and mortar class room, while simulations stand in for hands-on, practical applications. Online dating occurs in a virtual environment in which the meetings (at least at first) are "virtual." Depending on your comfort with closing the distance, the email "discovery" process can go on for quite a while, subtly shaping your perceptions of "him," even before you meet. Professor Turkle's point with regard to education is that as highly symbolic learning becomes more and more wide spread, the behaviors, conditions and standards it is meant to prepare students for become equally abstracted. As a result, the lines between the symbols and that which is symbolized become blurred.Which brings me to a man's online dating advice to women. In online dating, we meet in a highly symbolic environment, very much like the educational environment Dr. Turkle was describing. Our conversations is scripted at first, our photos are selected for the best possible impact, to the extent we're able to achieve that. Subsequent email contact can be edited at leisure. But the symbolic persona you see are in his profile, or in his emails to you is no more "him" than a video simulation (even the most interactive one) of a leadership challenge is leadership; or time on a flight simulator is flying an aircraft. While both have decided value in the learning process, simulation and symbolic abstraction can only go so far in replicating reality.We recognize this intuitively. It's one of the reasons online dating profiles retain their reputation for "creative" self-representation. But some (perhaps many of us) nevertheless behave as though we don't
know this. How many of you have emailed back and forth extensively with a man, not quite sure if you wanted to commit to the flesh and blood reality of a face-to-face meeting? That little whisper in the back of your mind is telling you something. It is saying, comfortable or not, you need to push through to a meeting...or move on and let him do the same. Deep down, you realize this. Consistent with the needs of safety, meet and meet soon! The "written voice" we know from email is a shadow of him; not the man and the reality will be the more reliable litmus test of long term fit.
To take another illustration. How many of you have agreed to meet someone face-to-face only to be surprised by how different he looked? Did you get suckered by photo-shop or an old picture? Maybe not!
An uploaded gif or jpg photo usually required for posting on most online dating sites loses some of the detail in order to display as accurately as possible on the site. In this case, even without an intent to deceive, the man you're meeting falls short of your expectations. But the culprit isn't deception, it is the limitation of the very symbolic medium you're using to connect with him. (Just like the examples we discussed in computer-mediated training scenarios.) Neither Professor Turkle's observations in the seminar nor my own comments should be interpreted to mean that simulations or computer-mediated meeting have no value. Both have great
value. I have personally used both to great advantage. We simply need to keep their limitations in mind, as well as their undeniable value. This man's advice to women about online dating is to keep their
limitations top of mind. The most practical advice I can offer women who are using online meeting as a means of finding Mr. Right is to be aware that the profiles you are reading are in fact not the man himself. Once you connect via email and find yourself "interested," confirm quickly by talking on the phone and then close the distance to meet in person as soon as you're comfortable doing so. You'll get the unfiltered truth much more quickly up close and personal...and so will he. And that's what you were doing online anyway, wasn't it?
