How many girl friends did Jerry Seinfeld have on Seinfeld? According to Moira Weigel, Jerry Seinfeld had 66 girl friends in the 9-year run of Seinfeld. The characters on Friends had nearly that number. Dating was the focus of a lot of TV programs. But, once the Internet took hold, dating changed. Around 2000 Tom Wolfe published Hooking Up to document the changes in dating patterns. Today, we have apps like Tinder to facilitate social connections. But, as Moira Weigel points out in her history of dating, today’s hooking up and hanging out seems particularly joyless. Dating is part of the market economy for the “best looking” and “sexiest” companion. I’m glad I’m not part of this scene. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Dates
Tricks
Likes
Outs
School
Steadies
Freedom
Niches
Protocol
Plans
Help
Afterword: Love.
So am I, George. In spite of our constant engagement, the internet (and social media) is a very cold place.
Prashant, there’s seems to be a lot of fraud and cruelty with Internet dating.
I’m so glad I met and got to know my husband in the pre-social media days. I think having access to a stranger’s internet persona (my girls are always talking about “following someone’s Snapchat story”) creates such a false sense of intimacy; it takes time to really learn about someone. After all, as I tell them repeatedly, we can all edit the way we present ourselves online; few of us are going to show the worst person we are (intentionally; there’s a lot of unintentional disclosure out there). Nonetheless, my girls have dated and had boyfriends over the years: normal American dating lives, but with a lot more selfies thrown in!
Deb, you are so right! We worry about Patrick and Katie in this social media age. So much of these dating apps seem to be phony.
Interesting idea for a book but like so many-scary.
Patti, I learned a lot from reading LABOR OF LOVE. But, as you say, much of it is scary.
I think it depends – you can find friends on the internet (and therefore partners too …) – just look at this, George’s site.
And I’ve met friends in political forums and later in real life that I wouldn’t have found any other way – like a professor from India and his Chinese wife, really nice people!
On the other hand I still think luck and coincidence play a large role – and the hands of others. My favourite story (sorry if I’ve told it before) is how I met my wife:
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I was already over 60 years old and after the death of my first wife I didn’t think I’d find another partner again. So when a female friend told me that she had the perfect companion for me (a Hungarian woman even) I laughed – but she didn’t give up, evry time I went to her for a manicure etc she asked : Have you found a new girlfriend? You’re not too old and I have the perfect woman for you …
And she must have done the same thing on the “female side” …
So in the end I gave up and agreed to take her and that unknown woman out for dinner and it was nice and when I drove her home and asked whether she would like to meet me again she said: yes!
And when I asked: When? she said Tomorrow!
And since that day we’ve been together (and very happy …) for ten years now …
Nice story, Wolfi!
I met my wife through friends from college, at a party. I was actually working in the city but my best friend from high school took me to a party with his college friends, and she was one of them. We were friends for a couple of months before we got together. Then mere four years later we were married.
Jeff, Diane and I went to High School together. And we worked on our Class Yearbook together. We knew a lot about each other.
Wolf, like most tools the Internet can be used for good purposes and it can be used for evil purposes. A lot of online dating sites generate a lot of controversy. There’s ASHLEY MADISON which caters to married people who want to engage in affairs.
George, I read about this – interesting but also horrible in a way. And there are/were other sites – some of them clearly a tool forblackmail!
We have similar sites in Europe where people go because they want an affair on the side or maybe because their partner is no longer interested in sex …
PS and OT: WE both still are – at over 70 years of age! 🙂
I’m on a German/American forum where regularly people report that they met an US soldier eg in Germany, fell in love, wanted to marry … and after they went to the USA it turned out completely different and sometimes ended in catastrope. On the other hand there are also stories with a happy end, so it just depends.
Wolf, love is risky at the best of times. Many of the people who use sites like ASHLEY MADISON for affairs do have partners who aren’t interested in sex any more or are physically or mentally impaired.
Why would anyone hook up with someone on Craigslist, when the odds are they are murderers, rapists, or otherwise criminal or insane in some way? As Bill Crider often says, I miss the old days. I would not want to be part of millenial “culture” with regard to “dating” (or hooking up).
When my sister was about to turn 40 she decided it was time to get married, so (like Cap’n Bob) she joined dating sites, went out with several people, picked one out (it was pretty much that methodical), and got married. And this was 1998. Today things are – I won’t say worse – really different.
Jeff, I’m more with Deb. I want to get to know a person before I enter a more serious relationship with them. There’s too much hanky-panky online.
You got your Craigslist Killer. Then on Long Island there is the Craigslist Ripper, who has apparently killed about 10 or more prostitutes.
It’s like a Donald Trump fantasy nightmare come to life!
I agree. You need to know someone first. We do know people who met, got together, and got married in very short order. Sometimes it has worked out, but the odds aren’t great, Jackie’s parents moved in together (in her grandmother;s house!) 6 weeks after they met, but after WWII a lot of people were in a hurry. My parents met December 14, 1941 and had a long distance correspondence while he was in the Army Air Force in Britain for nearly 4 years before getting married in 1947.
Jeff, but many people today just want to “hook up” online. They don’t want a relationship, they just want sex. Tom Wolfe wrote about it in 2000 and it has only grown with social media.
Face it, we’re old. And for once, that’s not a bad thing.
Jeff, good point.
George, I can’t imagine why you used (I won’t say wasted, but that’s what I’m thinking) your time reading this. You surely could have found something much better and more compelling than this! Let’s se, you could have read a mystery, or science fiction shot stories, or novel, or fantasy, or… just about any fiction.
Rick, LABOR OF LOVE received good reviews. And, Patrick and Katie are part of the dating scene so as a concerned parent, I decided to learn more about dating behavior in the 21st Century. You’ll enjoy my post tomorrow!