If you do not meet a significant
other at the bar or church, where are you supposed to meet him or her at?
Some of my friends and I
discussed this question previously as we felt it hard to meet decent
individuals. Although we laugh and joke at apps like Tinder and online dating
websites, it is heavily becoming the norm in our culture to find our counterparts
online before actually meeting them in person.
How do we know that people online
are actually who they say they are? Scary as it can be, we don’t know for sure.
The profile each individual sets up can be presented in a manner that gives us
an assumption or perception that may be misleading. For example, Brad Paisley’s
song “Online” is about an individual setting up his life to look “cool” and basically
“entertaining” in an online platform where his true identity can remain hidden.
The problem with this—besides the fact people can outright lie—is people can
choose to only include the positive information about themselves while leaving
out negative flaws that might disturb their viewers. So while one might risk being
caught with their fake or partially fake identity, they seem to find the
outcome pleasing enough to continue hiding their true character.
This deception characters and
personality has occurred long before the internet allowed people a platform to
hide behind. Shakespeare in his cleverness, was able to disguise male actors
playing female roles that dressed as men, perhaps not to score a date or look
cool online but to get ahead in terms of gender equality. We see Rosalind transform
to Ganymede and Celia as Aliena in the play As
You Like It. In Twelfth Night, Viola
disguises herself as Cesario. Olivia ends up falling in love with
Sebastian, but clearly it is not the Sebastian she thinks it is. She ends up taking
herself to marriage because of Viola’s deception, in which she thinks she is
marrying Viola’s personality when instead she marries the actual Sebastian.
The difference today that the
online platform contains is the range and flexibility with which people can display
themselves. They are held less credible to their true identities and are harder
to track down. Even if someone posts under their own name on social media, that
person could refute that it actually happened by claiming someone else hacked
his or her account. Then, who is to blame?
At least before the power of online, people
were likely to be caught for their mischievous behavior. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio was tricked of
Olivia’s identity by Fabian and Sir Toby with the help of Maria. This prank of
acting as Olivia is revealed simply because Olivia explains to Malvolio it is
not her handwriting. If this had been typed out instead of written, the scheme
may have worked.
While the credibility of some
online dating sites and apps is not trustworthy, it may be the new avenue for
successfully finding the person one desires. It might take crawling through a
few liars or sketchy people, or perhaps a marriage to someone you really don’t know
like Olivia, but hopefully it leads to happiness like many of Shakespeare’s
marriages do at the end of his plays.
Brittany, this is a really interesting idea! I've never thought about the implications of disguising oneself adds to the relationship: serious trust issues. Doesn't it seem weird that the characters just accept the hoodwinkery (so not a word) and go on with their lives marrying a total stranger anyways? You talk about Olivia and Sebastian and they're a perfect example. Olivia has only talked to Cessario the whole play. She's truly in love with Viola, but once she's revealed to be a man, boom she marries Sebastian, a total stranger. Odd!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't know how I feel about the whole meeting people online thing. Technology has simply made it easier for people to deceive, and perhaps even diminished people's ability to genuine love others for themselves. If all we had to go off (in terms of attraction) was our own vision/heading/whatever senses we use to judge potential love interests, we may have a much more realistic view of what people are actually supposed to be like. Instead, we have the ability to morph not only our online personalities, but even our own bodies and our image - thus, leading to unrealistic expectations of things like female beauty.
ReplyDeleteI also love that you talk about handwriting because to me it is something very personal - like it's an extension of ourselves. And even though all we are writing is words, it's very different from typing - which has such an anonymity and universality to it. Writing - especially descriptions of others - in general has become such a common thing. Nothing seems original anymore - like in Shakespeare. The words that the characters in his plays use to describe their love for one another, and even to describe how attractive someone is seem so special and flattering. On the other hand, all we have now are the same old "you're sexy," "you're cute," and the occasional "you're beautiful."