When following someone is no longer stalking, ‘sexting’ features in the dictionary, and a DM is no longer a bureaucrat, can love itself stay unchanged? Payal Puri examines COURTSHIP in the age of SOCIAL MEDIA

The exhausting search for Mr Right unites single women like nothing— either Louboutins, miracle diets, or George Clooney—can. Yet, for all its power to drain you faster than flash on your laptop battery, dating is arguably the world’s favourite pastime. Not surprising. The search for love is more universal and compelling than any other humankind has ever experienced. No matter what your location or age, social status or profession, political leanings or personal failings, you probably want to feel loved, admired, desired—and I’d wager you want to find someone you can feel the same about.

That doesn’t come easy. Dating in the real world is fraught with uncertainty, insecurity and a chronic, powerful fear of rejection.

First, there’s the highly iffy stage one: the challenge of finding a man who captures your interest and you don’t need me to tell you, that’s difficult enough. This bright, smart, civilised, well-read, funny, sensitive achiever who exercises his brain and abs equally is mostly a figment of your imagination, but then, once every few years, you run into someone who makes you think, ‘hmmmm, I could live with that’.

Of course, spotting this endangered species then turns out to be the easy part. It’s what comes next that isn’t; I call it Death by Dissection and it goes something like this:

Does he like me? Am I too fat, thin, flamboyant, reserved, sarcastic, subtle, choosy, easy? Does he think I’m too opinionated? If I make the first move, will he think I’m desperate? If I don’t, will he think me old-fashioned? Should I agree to go out on Saturday night or let him think I’ve got plans? Will he expect me to split for dinner? Do I even want to go out with a man who lets me pay for our first date? Should I wear a hot dress (trying-too-hard)?, jeans (too casual)?, cleavage (too much)?, boots (too tacky)? Does he care about his mommy too much (wimp)? Does he not give a damn about his parents (jerk)? Does he get along with people (yay)?

And all that before you even become a twosome—before you navigate the minefield that is coupledom, where your friends, families, pets, and bosses raise their eyebrows at one another in

quiet assessment; where you confront the challenges of reconciling your love of books with his passion for gaming; where your aversion to smoke meets his fondness for cigars; where his manic love for children and your allergy to booties comes head-to-head. Because no-one said Mr Right would be Mr You’re-always-right, Sweetheart— and let’s face it, you wouldn’t want him if he was a yes-man anyway, because in your world, Mr Right better have a spine as sharp as his suit.

Damn, it’s tiring, and I’m only writing about it.

Which leaves me entirely unsurprised that we’re finally, belatedly, thankfully finding a new way of navigating this sticky terrain—with technology, the modern savant that is omnipresent, helping us communicate, watch, learn, play, work, buy, sell, share, argue, and now, more and more often, love

Connectivity is everywhere— on your desktop and laptop and Blackberry; in the office and in the car on your way to work, in the tiny 3G symbol on your smartphone and over Wifi at the café where you read during lazy afternoons, and at the airport while you wait out your flight.

You no longer need to be with someone to be into someone, which is why dating, circa 2012, often looks something like this:

Guy follows you on Twitter. You glance through his 140-character bio, look at some of his tweets, and decide he’s worth following back. He says something funny to one of your tweets. You send snarky reply (and look up his Facebook profile in another window). Guy retorts with smart-ass answer. You kick the wit up a notch. Guy holds his own. You laugh and decide you quite like him after all (and his profile picture’s pretty cute, too). You casually start sending each other Dms—that’s Direct Messages to you—making private jokes at fellow Twitter users. He adds you on Facebook (and you instantly trawl all the photos that weren’t ‘public’). You send him a forward on email. He asks for your BB pin. And soon enough, he’s part of your life pretty much constantly. He knows what movie you’re watching, what you bought at the mall, what a bitch your boss is, where you’re going dancing tonight. You know the footie team he loves, the project he kicked off at work, the car he drives, the fight he had with mom this morning, and the fact that his best bud just got hitched. The only thing you haven’t done? Actually met. Which means he may know the scent you like—he just doesn’t know how you smell yet. You can see that his hair tends to curl at the nape of his neck—but you haven’t reached out to run your fingers through it (or resisted the temptation to) so far. You like the look of each other—but it’s anybody’s guess whether there’s any real chemistry between you. You’re familiar with each other, but that doesn’t mean the mystery’s gone. What has gone, though, is the awkwardness.

You’re friends now, with the easy intimacy that comes from faceless-butfrequent interactions online. You’re in touch at all hours; you share links to articles you both liked, videos you watched, songs you enjoyed, books you want to read. You know details about each other that in the real world would take weeks, sometimes months of knowing someone to figure out—and you know them without ever having to change out of your pyjamas. By the time you do decide to meet, you already like each other a whole lot.

That’s a powerful, liberating advantage, and it’s not the only one.

Online encounters, for all their risks—and there are many, from identity theft to being taken for a good oldfashioned ride—open up a world of opportunities we didn’t have before. They let you ‘meet’ people across class and social boundaries. They dismiss distance and geography as a consideration. They use shared interests to bring you together. They push factors like how you look to the relative backburner. They neutralise the shyness that can prevent you from pursuing someone you’re interested in. They temper the chance of rejection, because it’s so much easier— and acceptable—to talk to strangers on social media than it is to walk up to a stranger at a bar. They give you an insight into each others’ lives, likes, and personalities long before you ever. set eyes on each other. In fact, so distinct are the advantages that Michael J Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and lead author of a study called Meeting Online: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary, recently suggested that the Internet might soon replace friends as the main way for Americans to meet their romantic partners.

That wasn’t all. Rosenfeld and study co-author Reuben J Thomas of New York’s City University also found that people are more likely to be in romantic relationships if they have Internet access at home. Let’s not even go into the possibilities that emerge when your smartphone gives you access to Facebook and Twitter, messenger and Skype, email and SMS, all in a pint-sized package that’s at your command 24/7.

And when you actually show up for that all-important first meeting, you’re not going to wonder whether he’ll like you—you’ll already know he has a weakness for opinionated women who wear high-heel boots and hate splitting the tab on a first date. And that’s a pretty good beginning.