Cynicism rules modern romance
Sometimes, even though I pretty much moulted every signifier of “effort” after getting married, and even though my current, typical outfit features Birkenstocks stuffed with camp socks, I still get hit on. In the time that elapsed since I was single and, now, presumed to be single — because of my “talk to me” lighthouse-face, or because I don’t like wearing rings? — something changed in the hitting on: men used to want phone numbers, but now they’re asking for Instagram handles instead.
It’s a cynical move, even in a cultural moment when the primary colours of conversation are app-based dating, technology burrowing further into our lives and bodies and Donald Trump. Cynicism, felt about shared institutions, ideas, systems — like relationships, politics and life itself — seems to define whatever is left of the collective consciousness, for better or worse, and worse, and worse.
And why wouldn’t it? Cynicism defines dating in 2018. Millennials, especially, but also gen-Xers and baby boomers back on the scene after divorce, find themselves in a kill-or-bekilled scenario where potential partners are considered and discarded faster than lunch options on Uber Eats.
There are some legitimately good reasons to ask for someone’s Instagram instead of their phone number: Instagram adds a modicum of legitimacy to the catfish-pond that is the online dating pool.
I mean, most people aren’t trying to catfish their date, but a lot of people offer half-truths and obfuscations — like “single” — in their dating profiles and early communications with a potential date. Women who are cautious about handing over personal details to strangers might prefer to communicate through a semi-anonymous Insta instead of their real-deal phone number — still, even smarties reveal details on Instagram and other social media that can be triangulated to reveal their real life.
But the realer reasons are obvious: asking for someone’s Instagram info is a shortcut, artlessly transactional, a way to purposely dull what is naturally exciting as a way to selfprotect by not developing feelings for someone you’re not sure of. Realer and darker.
With a few scrolls, someone can scan the efforts of your self-representation, see how impressive or interesting your lifestyle is (or is faking its way into being), and maybe see what you look like beyond your dating-profile pics, or whatever form in which they’ve already encountered you.
It’s also a way to measure someone’s fluidity online — for some people, being “good” at social media is equivalent to being cool or informed and is up there on the dating checklist with “has a job” and “doesn’t smoke” — which offers, you know, context, but isn’t actually relevant to falling in love.
Meeting someone online is a shortcut, and a mostly good one, but every subsequent shortcut corrodes the process of finding — or, really, “creat- ing” — a relationship with someone.
The early, discovery phase of a relationship is more precious than a treasure box of rubies, and going straight from meeting someone, online or IRL, to a theoretical trove of information about them is usually pointlessly misleading — honestly, whose Instagram could be more than 1 per cent representative of them, when themness is so much about their movements, their voice, their scent, their undigitizable vibe — and unfun (even less fun than the already-compromised way of getting to know someone text by text), which is a major sin in adult life, when every opportunity for clean pleasure should be clung to like grim death.
When guys have asked me for this, I say no. I’m not, after all, available, and my Instagram is half self-promotion for work and half dog pics, nothing these guys are after. More than that, though, I want to indicate, I want to insist, that what is getting lost to cynicism doesn’t have to be, that taking longer and writhing in the discomfort of not immediately knowing something you want to know — a feeling that’s now as anachronistic as “Can I buy you dinner sometime?” — is the whole point of what they’re trying to do.
Have you asked for someone’s Instagram details instead of their phone number? Or, have you been asked? Tell us about it! Email kate@katecarraway.com