What qualifies as a date to you? Dinner? Watching a movie (or Netflix)? Bar hopping until you meet a guy? These days, we as millennials consider none of these as a “date” because the d-word is simply too horrifying to suggest. Leaving everything up in the air, we try to come off as light and care-free, when really we’re not, but we have to be. We disguise our true wants and feelings under the concept of ‘casual’. We want to be cool and chill and okay-with-everything because once were not okay, they run away.
Girls used to stress out about the color of their dress before a date. Now, the root of their stress comes from the ridiculousness of the cyber world. “Double-taps” or “swipes” have too much power over us, so much so that they even have the power to undo us. Why are we so obsessed with dating or, excuse me, hanging out, that millennials have come to the conclusion to meet people over apps? Have we lost all hope in meeting someone in the real world? Dating is a trial and error process. It was meant to reveal if a man or a woman was marriage material; a puzzle piece perfectly jagged to fit our own jaggedness. How can we possibly leave the fate of our future up to a swipe left or a swipe right?
‘The game’ is the most exhausting, most aggravating game I have ever played. Every step is over examined and specifically calculated to make sure you don’t come off as too much or too little. Don’t text him too much, you’ll come off as clingy. If you text too little, you’re not interested. Never text first, that’s crazy!
It’s because we have lost the courage. Our digital life has led us to become cowards in everyday society. We hide behind screens and choose to rely on swipes, tweets and carefully calculated text messages to convey our true feelings. How about we all just stop being cowards and date how we were meant to? Get the girl flowers. Meet her parents. Be chivalrous. Take her on a date.
Put away the cyber world for one evening and live in the real one, because at the end of the night, after real date and a good night kiss, you smile. That smile, that feeling, is better than the temporary happiness of a "swipe right" or "like."
