I am a hopeless romantic. I’m a fool for love. I’m a grand sentimentalist. I’m quixotic dreamer. I enjoy nights of formality and clichéd phrases. I identify most with Ted from "How I Met Your Mother." Yes, I even believe in having a soul mate and the pains of unrequited love.
And I am not ashamed of it. But why should I be ashamed of it?! I say nay to hopeless romantic shaming. I say yes to surprise dates. I say yes to extensive flower arrangements. I say yes to old-fashioned romances of Fitzgerald’s time. After all, these stories of a day past are what girls dream of, right?
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But, these are all memories of love from an outdated time. Today, when thinking of romance, we might think of a spontaneous text from our crush containing some superfluous display of emotion (you better not forget those five extra heart emojis on the end). We can not forget, of course, those beautifully annoying Facebook declarations of adoration for our significant other.
Guys, that is not romance. Ladies, don’t let a guy tell you that this is romance. In our rush to hide from anything that could be potentially embarrassing or hazardous to our egos, we have turned to technology.
Yes, technology is changing romance (and it should be), but not in the way we may want it to. In response to this, we have begun to romantically shun technology, but I refuse to believe that something capable of storing all 1,475 songs I own can’t help me be more of a romantic. And the more I thought about what modern romance actually is, the more I realized that technology is inseparable from it, for better or worse.
The rise of smartphones has brought about hookup apps like Tinder and Bumble. We can use a keyboard to approach a girl.
“Oh my God, wait do I say ‘hey’ with one ‘y’ or two? Three is way too many, right? Maybe I’ll just use one. What if she thinks that’s too casual, though?” This string of thoughts is a pretty average stream of consciousness for any modern-day millennial trying to digitally establish ourselves with another person.
I admit, even I have had these thoughts. For a hopeless romantic like me, someone who loves the idea of being in love, technology offered another avenue to meet the perfect girl. I gave Tinder a try first.
After a week with Tinder, I swiped upon a girl that I had seen around campus but never had to courage to walk up to, so I swiped right and we matched. After exchanging a few socially stigmatized messages, we agreed to meet up at my favorite coffee shop the next day.
I arrived 10 minutes early and sat there, nervously watching the door for my first ever Tinder date.
She walked in and sat down. Immediately it was awkward. What do I say to this girl? Besides the basic questions of music taste, favorite movies, major studying, what else could I say? The whole affair was trepid from the start.
The experience left me with a confirmed feeling of banality for these “hookup” apps like Tinder. Needless to say, I have since deleted Tinder from my phone. As far as meeting people goes, maybe we should leave this to the old-fashioned hello.
With this first failed attempt at marrying the worlds of technology and romance, my cynicism for the quest increased. But being a regular Gatsby myself, I refused to give up on the idea of romantic technology.
It was a few uninspiring first dates later until I met a girl who finally sparked my inspiration. There were stupid texts until 3 a.m., random dates with the touch of a button and a newfound appreciation of the sheep emoji.
It felt like high school again. And when you’re dating in college, feeling like you're 16 years old can be pretty freeing. But there were no big romantic gestures when it came to technology still. There were simple "good morning" texts, there were “I miss you” Snapchats, there were creative emoji uses. That was it.
And I loved all of it.
The relationship itself didn’t work out for other reasons, but it taught me what modern romance was really about. For all those of you who claim that technology is killing our sense of romance, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you wouldn’t be correct either. It’s simply in the way we use it.
There doesn’t need to be a grandiose marriage of technology and love. There needn’t be any opulent Facebook posts or extensive emoji habits. We just need an appreciation for the more minimal side of it.
We need to stop expecting our own Shakespearian moment from our phones and learn to love the good mornings from 2,000 miles away, the 10 seconds Snaps when we haven’t seen them in over a week, the 3 a.m. conversation when we haven’t talked to them all day.
I am a hopeless romantic. I am a sentimental dreamer. I am a radical lover. I am a Fitzgeraldian romanticist. I am a grand fool.
I am living in a world where people claim that I am a dying breed and technology is what’s killing us.
But that’s just what you might think.
