Last chance

Sometimes I just get naked from any activist intentions and I try to act like any other human being. What happens is that activists need to be radical to make their point. This can actually be inconvenient because navigating life often demands lots of incoherent action. And this is exactly the kind of shit an activist can't afford.

In any case, I really do my best to be aware of my two hats. And I try to act more softly when dealing with private matters that don't necessarily make to the cover of a magazine. On the other hand, there's always a limit. And when this is reached, I feel rather obligated to make it public for the sake of my cause.

One of those nights, I've matched with a girl in Happn. She was really fun, very young, and unfortunately very compliant to some sort of primal beauty standard that must be embedded in my jewish DNA. Yes, she's like 10 years younger than me. But although I'm mentioning that to make sure it's taken into account, I don't really think it can be deemed as a valid excuse for everything that happened later on.

She was very eager to meet me after the late night chats we've had. Although tired, she never for a second hesitated about wanting to meet me on that Saturday night. But then, as I always do, I felt I needed to tell her I've had cerebral palsy. I did that only for the sake of being entirely transparent, since I don't really believe it should be that relevant, especially for making the decision to blow me off in the last minute.

But then, that was exactly what happened. When she came across this info about me, she has just decided it was OK to cancel the date in the last minute. She has used her mental state as a excuse to do so. I was angry. I was frustrated. I felt as an activist it was my duty to hold her in contempt for being such a low person.

However, I've also put myself in her shoes, and decided to swallow my pride and my hatred as a means to promote a real positive change. I knew I'd be absolutely excused to just treat her as the lowest possible creature in the world without any trace of guilt. After all, being nasty to someone that has been ridiculously obscene to you is hardly something that will give you bad dreams at night.

Fact is I didn't really want to believe she was nasty. Because minutes before I was totally into her, lost in a great chat about nothing in particular, Seinfeld style. And all of a sudden, she felt ok to be treating me as subhuman because I've told her I have a disability. In this light I've managed to control my anger and give her the benefit of the doubt.

Now I realize this wasn't really about her. I was challenging myself to turn something despicable into another walk in the park. I was obsessed. I really felt that if I could make this person treat me as another person, I would have been able to erase some of the evil thrown on disabled people all over the world, since humanity's inception.

I've failed miserably. After so much time trying to convince her to meet me and end that horror situation she was causing both of us, I just had to give up. She really thought she could treat me like crap, and still have a clean conscience, still being able to consider herself a decent person. Well, unfortunately I have to disagree. But I'll give her yet the last chance to make it right. You see, this essay is going out without her name. So it is public, as much as all my records about being abused at work.

Her name is not here, so no one will be able to tell she did it. Now my pledge is the following: if she really thinks what she did was OK, I think she won't mind me mentioning who she is. Otherwise, she's exactly like my ex-ex manager. Just a lousy person without any special talent abusing people to appear less incompetent and unskilled than she really was. In that case, I don't see any reason why her identity should be protected. Especially by me.

Modern love

Time goes by and things change. Yet of course basic human feelings are still the same as they were 500 BC. But the social structure in which these feelings unfold as well as the technological means by which they are exchanged have definitely changed drastically.

In a world where the vast majority of the rich people already have a smartphone in their pockets, several novel forms of social interaction emerge. Mobile broad band internet connection that enables people to instantly access thousands of high definition photos, and built-in precise geolocation systems are allowing the exponential growth of virtual dating.

Advantages are pretty large. To start with, you're not tied up to your inner social circle in order to find someone you wanna date or something else. This is very convenient, because at a certain age, most of the people around become committed, meaning that choices within a particular social group are very limited. Expanding the target socially can be great for those that either didn't follow society's common life tracks in terms of romantic relationships, but also the ones that have, and for some of several reasons, have left that position later in life. This virtual social field has the potential to give people many additional opportunities to avoid loneliness.  

Furthermore, meeting this is way is also more convenient in terms of time commitment. For those who are shy, there's also the advantage to be able to talk for a while with a person before meeting her, which can help avoiding social anxiety. Since there's no full visibility of the person you're interacting with, it's possible to do it simultaneously with multiple people, thus increasing the chance to find someone that's worth it, whatever this may mean to you.

But not everything is so great in the online dating world. Same information asymmetry about what each person is doing, causes engagement and commitment levels to be really low. What this means is that even if conversation is fun, and one thinks the other person is an interesting candidate, it's common to see them treating each other with much less respect and consideration, compared to someone that's right in front of them.

Probably there's a physiological component to that behavior. Looking someone in the eye when you talk to her definitely gives you a whole different level of understanding of what the person is talking about, but maybe more important, what she's not.

In any case, this is an aspect that really undermines how successful these relationships can ever be. If people will always consider each other so disposable, this makes them more convenient to interact with, since regular social etiquette doesn't seem to apply, and they are suitable for last minute date cancellations or just not returning messages whenever the smallest distraction comes up. But it also means these relationships will always worth very little, and the communication means be considered as a lemon market.

I'm positive about the fact one can define his own conduct to a certain extent,, regardless of his environment. I'mMeaning it's possible to be a decent polite person in the virtual world where there currently no incentives to do so. Thing is, if incentives aren't there, it means most people won't do it. The result is that the likelihood you can find someone that will respect you enough for a relationship to be started in these apps is indeed very low.

So their reputation as being platforms for enabling casual sex encounters is actually a natural outcome of how little incentives people have to behave well and engage in meaningful conversations and relationships based in mutual respect. So for the satisfaction of sexual needs of physically suited people, the apps do work quite well. But if the idea is to turn these virtual meeting points into opportunities to find compatible life companions, or even people you'd like to be around for longer than a week, developers will need to put more thought into interaction quality, rather than the current focus in quantity.