Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/385222
illustration by Daniel o'leary Online dating has always struck me as tacky. Call me an old romantic, but meeting your future girlfriend on the Internet somehow seems cheaper than if you serendipitously spill beer on her at Cask'n Flagon after a Sox game. Today you don't even need to turn on your computer to play the field. Smartphone apps like Tinder allow men to thumb through women like baseball cards. It just seems to take all the charm out of it. "How did you meet Mommy?" a child will someday ask. "Well, son, I was sitting on the toilet at work, f lipping through my phone, and your mother, boy, she just caught my eye. Man, did my legs go numb!" I'm with whoever made up the following quote and attributed it to Einstein. "I fear the day technolog y will surpass our human interac- tion," said fake Einstein. "The world will have a generation of idiots." Online dating is just another symptom of our frantic cultural evolution. Let's face it: Couples in Boston aren't meeting at church socials any- more. In this age of Uber and Peapod, is it any surprise we have a generation of tech-savvy Casanovas who can measure their power of seduction in bandwidth? Look no further than MIT alum Brandon Wade for a shining example of technology abetting Boston's new-age pickup artists. Wade invented Carrot Dating, a smartphone app that literally allows men to bribe women to go on dates with them. "From f lowers to jewelry, there's a bribe for everyone's budget," Wade's website states. So what's the best bribe going in Boston? According to the site, a tank of gas. How romantic. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I'd bet a dozen roses that we're paying a deep psychological price for turning our search for love into one fat, addictive—and ultimately empty—session of Angry Birds. Professor Sherry Turkle of MIT would agree with me. In her book Alone Together, she reckons that technology shortchanges relationships, that we sacri- fice rich conversation for cheap connection. Big hug to Turkle. Dating apps have put the casual dalliance on demand. They've removed all the social anxiety, awkwardness, and fear of mustering up the moxie to go over and talk to someone at a bar. Was that torture? Sure. But it was also human—live and real. No airbrushed profile pic- tures, no beefed-up bios. (I have friends who use dating apps like Tinder to put up numbers that porn legend Ron Jeremy couldn't shake a stick at. But I digress.) So what's the answer here? Can we find online the same kind of genu- ine love that kept our grandparents holding hands for 60 years? Can we Google up the pet name – filled romance that our parents enjoyed? If you figure it out, please don't text me. Call. BC You've Got Male How Boston's next generation of pickup artists finds love at first site. by robert cocuzzo 144 bostoncommon-magazine.com PARTING SHOT