Love In The Time Of Pageview-Inflating Comment Sections

Here is an advice-seeking letter from a single lady who is being somewhat self-deprecating about her choices regarding relationships, and who is wondering if maybe the problem is her. In the opening paragraph she notes that in the past she has looked for “someone who likes competing in triathlons and baking pistachio biscotti, who would consider moving to Botswana for a few years with me as a development worker or researcher, who eschews motorized vehicles and television and prefers bicycles and books, and who can make a witty reference to Kant and macaques in a single sentence, without too much effort and without sounding smarmy.” Now, if that bit was the entire letter, sure, this woman sounds somewhat garden-variety special-snowflakey in that “Let me give you a Moo Card with my Etsy site’s URL” way. But in the paragraphs following she notes that maybe she is expecting too much by wanting that whole package, given her own tendencies toward sloth and lateness and impatience and other general imperfections, and that perhaps she is avoiding intimacy by creating a checklist that is not dissimilar to the ones presented by online personal sites, only with more personalized features. And it sort of gives her checklist a bit more of a humorous edge!

The response from the designated advice-giver, who goes by the name of Dr. Meredith, is nuanced and on-point (“You strike me as someone who will wind up falling in love with a friend or colleague,” Dr. M. says, which is advice that, um, maybe personally resonated? Anyway.) But then, since content businesses are based in pageviews, the greater Boston area was invited to weigh in. And oh boy, did its residents (and other passerby) have a lot of thoughts on that opening laundry list!

In fact I would hazard to guess that more than a few people saw the words “biscotti” and “Botswana” and went right to the “post a comment” box in order to leave advice like this:

Attention LW: people everywhere — the intelligent, the stupid, the philosophy buffs, and artists alike — are rolling their eyes at you. Like, constantly.

How many cats do you have?

And this:

Your problem is best summed up in a single word — PRETENSHUS (Mispelled for dramatic effect. LW probably can’t stand it.)

And someone had to drag politics (and more cats) into it, of course:

You are unreasonable to the point of sheer ridiculousness. Funny that you should mention the word “megalomaniac”, because in a philosophical sense, it describes you. I am not sure if your delusions of perfection stem from simple immaturity, or if you have some deep psychological dysfunction.

Why can’t you find a mate? Well, the reason is, from your own description of yourself <- that’s why! You are looking for some uber-hippie, even liberal leaning dudes will run from you like the plague. Any man willing to put up with your self-importance, is likely to be so dimwitted that you will then eventually find them unsuitable. Hopefully, you will take my advice pragmatically. If not, then your subsequent knee-jerk reaction proves my assumption that you are a potential Leftist Moonbat. Get over yourself, or enjoy feeding your cats…

I bring up this comment section only because it transfixed me for a good 20 minutes just now, with all the implied yelling and “shut up, smarty, who knows how to spell pistachio anyway?” derision that pretty much ignored the bits of this woman’s letter acknowledging that, yes, maybe she was part of the problem. Indeed, the whole package in many ways encapsulates so much that is wrong with the Internet, and The Way We Love Now! The pickiness is straight out of the world of online-personal ads, which reduce the whole messy idea of Finding Someone to a results-oriented transaction that is based off algorithms and remembering that you like the “right” bands and movies when you blearily fill out that part of the profile during a sleepless night; the reluctant attitude toward accepting others’ flaws (and use of said attitudes as an intimacy defense) is reflective of the online world’s ever-beckoning bounty of Other, Better Offers; and, of course, the sober and pretty on-point advice from the expert being summarily ignored in favor of name-calling and bruised-ego flogging in the name of “real talk” is right out of, well, pretty much any online article with an attached comment section where people can get defensive about their own life choices. It would all be funny if it wasn’t such an encapsulation of the future and a reflection of the way people just, you know, are.