Will it be "weird" for the children of couples who met on the internet? I personally don't think so: swiping right on Tinder could one day be the quaint equivalent of getting together in college, or, longer ago, at a church group. After all, who knows how the next generation will couple up. DNA testing? Algorithmically arranged marriages?
One San Francisco man's supposed commentary on the internet dating system took the form of a series of YouTube videos in which he asks women to apply to date him. Chuck, as he's calling himself, is right that dating has become a job for which we apply, but perhaps that isn't new or really all so wrong.
“Our parents had to look people up in a phone book if they wanted to take them out on a date, call them up, and then get coffee,” he told SF Weekly. “They would actually sit down and get to know each other.”
Like most of San Francisco's single population, I've gone on more than a few internet dates, and that's still what you do, Chuck. The app is just the phonebook from your analogy.
But if you want to apply Chuck's terms, that's fine. However, dating is a pretty important "gig," and you probably want the right "candidate." Setting that aside, let's take a look at the video, before we take our "application" literally anywhere else.
I KNOW, how is this guy single?! As the Weekly highlights, Chuck's YouTube channel is full of videos like this one, filmed at SF State, where women were asked (among other fun resumé questions) how many sexual partners they'd had.
Though Chuck has couched his "commentary" in humor and dated Anchorman style jokes (Anchorman is about the '70s, for the record), I have a sneaking suspicion he's playing to (unsavory) type.
Take, for example, the one-sided nature of Chuck's application process. That, to me, is what makes dating interesting: both parties are simultaneously "courting" one another's favor. The presumption of male dominance in these "negotiations" is Chuck's rather gross starting point.
It should also not be lost on the viewer that Chuck is "hilariously" seeking women at a college, and though he doesn't give his age, it's clear he's not a student. Not creeped out yet? Here's another go Chuck took at two colleges. In this video he displays his sensitive side, portraying a blind person and ruthlessly mocking the disabled.
DO NOT DATE THIS MAN! Hell, don't even talk to the guy. To use his terms once again, I hope he stays unemployed for a long, long time.