As I was reading some Tinder horror story on Twitter the other day, I shook my head. I could not help but wonder what the heck happened to our society.
Then, just a couple days ago, as I was sitting in the lounge in my dorm with my friend, a guy came and sat down. We were confused, but a couple minutes later, a girl walks in to the lounge to meet up with him, a smile painted on both of their faces. They were both dressed up, and the guy put on the girl's jacket for her. We could tell that they were going on a date, and we shook our heads. Not because we were disgusted, like how I was when I was reading about how a girl's Tinder date tried to kill her, but because we were in awe of how absolutely adorable that was and how absolutely rare it was to see a sight such as that.
It's so weird to just sit and think about how different things are now than what they were just a decade or so ago. There wasn't social media, there wasn't Tinder, there wasn't a plethora of dating sites. People didn't swipe right when they saw eye candy, or slide into someone's DM's.
Why couldn't high school be like it was in Sixteen Candles? Or 10 Things I Hate About You? Or A Walk to Remember?
Lemme know.
I just wish things could be like they were before social media took over the universe. When two people met each other's gazes from across the room in a coffee shop and fell in love, or something spontaneously unexpected like that.
I love hearing stories about how people's parents met--they are all so unique and different in their own beautiful and romantic kind of way. But soon enough, it's going to be, "Mommy, how did you meet Daddy?"
"Oh, I knew he was the one when we matched on Tinder and he messaged me his smooth pickup line."
Like, how absolutely sad is that?
I'm not trying to say that dating apps are stupid because that is not the case. I believe that sometimes they can actually work when two people are both serious and have the right intentions, but that seems to be relatively uncommon. What I mentioned in the first sentence? I read a post about a girl going on a date with a guy she met on Tinder and he wound up sneaking into her basement without her knowledge and was plotting her murder. How romantic, am I right?
What happened to romance? What happened to spontaneity, and chivalry, and real love in general? Seeing that boy and girl go on a date a couple days ago was so refreshing. It restored what little faith I have in our society at ever bringing back the beauty that was 80's and 90's romance. It's those little things that mean the most, and I just hope that someday Jake Ryan will be waiting for me by his red Porsche, Patrick Verona will sing me a song, and Landon Carter will name a star after me. That's not too much to ask for, right?
