When’s the last time you went on a date with someone for the very first time and knew virtually nothing about them? Can’t remember? Yeah, neither can I.
Picture this: your friend tells you they want you to go out to drinks and meet their super cool co-worker that you, at this point, know nothing about. What do you do? Say OK and head out the door without knowing a thing? Yeah, right.
We’re the generation of “needing to know everything before the situation actually happens.” I don’t blame us. There are some scary and, to be honest, weird things and people out there. It’s nice to know what we’re getting into before we agree to drinks with a stranger.
So, there you are sitting shotgun in your friend's car, casually Facebook stalking this so-called “super sweet, awesome guy”, trying not to let your friend see. So far, so good. No shirtless mirror selfie as their profile picture, and huge bonus, no car picture as their header. As quickly as you clicked their profile, you learn virtually everything there is to know about them. The sad thing is we think this is normal.
You get to the bar, and you meet the “not-so stranger.” Things are already awkward because you know that anything you would ask at a first meeting, you already know. But, you have to ask them anyway while trying not to slip up and say, “Yeah, I saw that on Facebook.” The weird fact is, it's not weird, at least not to our generation.
It’s normal for us to stalk and pry at a stranger's social media to find out every secret we can because we are too afraid to jump into something blind in fear that we will be judged or get hurt too easily. The truth is we’re blinding ourselves with too much truth. We’ve taken the excitement out of the dating game and the fun out of a new relationship. There’s no mystery anymore, and we don’t even know anything different than what’s happening.
Something has to change if we ever want a whirlwind relationship like we see in the movies. People always talk about how unrealistic they are, and that, “this would never happen in real life.” And, at this point, it’s true. Maybe if we put down the phone and took a chance, something cool could happen to us. Maybe we’d have to learn about someone face-to-face and figure out if we click with them on a personal level through talking and going on dates. Now I know, this seems so weird, but it’s what used to be normal. Our parents and grandparents did it, why can’t we?
