The year is 2019, and the internet is taking over. You can try to escape it, but the thing is–you can’t. Like how Bandersnatch effed with us a few weeks ago, we still cannot quite wrap our heads around how much the online world is a living, breathing human taking in everything in its path. Today we have interactive TV shows; tomorrow falling in love with Alexa will be a real thing; and hopefully by then we would have lost our minds.
Before we jump onto the mental part of it, it’s important to preface the fact that some of it is already happening. Take online dating, for example. Until a few years ago, we couldn’t imagine a situation where you could use your phone to find love. Not in person, not by meeting someone through friends or fam–but on a device, which even on its best days hangs at least twice on us.
There is a sense of frivolousness that has become attached to online dating–like the inherent understanding when your phone breaks and you know arey, naya toh aa jayega… it’s pretty much down the same alley way. The “naya aa jayega” complex has stretched its way past the phone-iPad-AirPod situation; and it’s becoming toxic for all of us.
The one place where most millennials would finally relate to the point we’re trying to make is in the arena of love. In a world where double tapping has more value than double dates, is love really real or is it a make-believe fantasy we all like to forever be in the quest of? Well, there are two sides of the coin.
For some people out there, the internet-stamped world is nothing but a place to find everything and anything you want. From kinky sex partners to intense 3 am conversation holders–there’s something for everyone. They’re the optimists who are willing to fight for what they love, and fight, they will. Dare we say they’re also the ones who believe that true love can be found on Bumble and for that, we are proud–we need that kind of positivity in the world right now. They are the ones who don’t believe the internet has a role in destroying the naivete that once was the purest thing in the world. Unfortunately or fortunately though, information is power and the internet is full of it.
On the other hand, a lot of us think that because there is so much of everything on the internet, it’s hard to be completely true to another person who you think you love. You’re always going to open that incognito tab to stalk your ex three years after the breakup. You’re always going to find porn at the click of a button–some really strange and mildly-discomforting genres included. You’re always going to tell yourself to not check your partner’s phone when he’s left it unlocked for a minute. The internet is changing the way we love. It’s changing love itself.
With so many dating apps just one-click away for all of us, are we running from real-term relationships because we think there is so much out there to know, feel, explore, and understand? Does it or doesn’t it make us think we deserve more, better, grander? Are we not letting ourselves be tricked into the mind games the internet and the game of love have decidedly put forward? We only hope there is a way out of the mess that we’re trying to run in the name of what’s real. Till you figure which side of the game you’re on, keep swiping right babies!
