I am far from a dating expert, but so are most people who call themselves dating experts, so I wrote this and I think it doesn't suck.
We can wring our hands all we want to about how the college dating scene doesn't exist- but take it from a girl who knows, it DOES exist, and more people could probably get in on it if they'd stop pretending like their only options are Flying Nun and Kim Kardashian circa 2005.
Dating IS real (like narwhals...those exist, and they're awesome) but people who are good at it are an endangered species here (like unicorns. More unicorns please.) We all fail a lot and most of the time we fail at texting.
Let me break it down for ya- please pretend like I didn't just use weird MC Hammer slang okay thanks
The Introductory Text:
"hey let's hang out," 1:00pm = We're friends, let's be friendly.
"hey let's hang out," 1:00am = BOOTAY. Ladies, pick your dignity up off the floor and run away from people who only have time for you when it's late at night.
"hey let's hang out," 5:00am = Cloudy with a 90% chance of also being a serial killer.
YES, time of day matters. This is college: Intoxicated is a time zone and you know it.
Taking an Hour to Text You Back:
Cosmo says - If he takes an hour to text you back, he spent that hour with another girl/guy/goat that he loves more than you. Skank yourself out if you ever want to find some semblance of what the glue-sniffers who write this magazine think love is.
I say - I am a Person. Sometimes, as a Person, I do things like going to work or to class. During this time, as I am busy being a Person, I cannot be checking my phone constantly. Therefore, if someone takes a while to respond, I assume not that I am destined to be a cat lady, but that the other person is, in fact, a Person.
Extra Letters:
"Hey!" = "I'm a Person!"
"Heyyyy" = "I'm chilling out."
"heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" = "See all those extra y's? LOOK AT HOW FUN AND CAREFREE I AM! WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME?!? *sniffle*"
Emoticons:
Nothing insightful here, just whenever a straight guy texts me a happy face I feel like I've staged a coup.
Who Started It, You or Him?
There are so many people who stress over who initiates the text conversation. I have a strategy about this one- I call it, "Not Giving a Damn." It worked for Clark Gable and he never even had a cell phone!
Sexting:
Name a classy person who sexts. See, you can't do it! Because classy people don't sext. Remember the whole wiretapping scandal a few years back? Do you want Dick Cheney to see your bits? I didn't think so.
This whole ideology of texting is a crap kebab. I am not immune to the overanalysis trap- I have to remind myself not to drink the Kool-Aid and start judging my relationships on the basis of 140 characters or less. But if more people like me could remember to be Persons, and stop pretending like your future depends on a message that will inevitable autocorrected into something you never meant to say, we could be a happy campus full of unicorns. And who doesn't want that?
As someone in a (mostly) successful Georgetown relationship, I can tell you that my very loving, very adoring significant other is a terrible texter. Sometimes I'll wait for hours to get a response to a text. And that's okay. It's nice to know that I'm dating someone who has his own life and is busy with his own activities and isn't constantly waiting by his phone to respond instantly to my messages.
ReplyDelete@Maria: Truth. The best people in the world are the "doers," not the "talkers." If somebody is busy, more power to 'em!
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