How technology is ruining your love life

**The stats show that people like to read posts about love and relationship mishaps. Gotta give the people what they want! It's the start of a new semester so slow going on any sort of relationship front, but as we prepare to dive in to this brand new year's dating pool adventures, here's an article that got me thinking:

"Technology Killed Courtship. Good Riddance" by Amanda Hess (full article here).

Let me start off by saying that I'm not sure I'm interpreting this article completely correctly. Sometimes authors try and make themselves sound really smart (though I know I'd never be accused of this) and all they end up doing is using a bunch of big words and confusing their readers. That being said, I think this author is a feminist (not that there's anything wrong with that) who is saying that the use of technology in today's dating world has broken down the gender barriers and the need to conform to said barriers that existed back in the day of the rotary phone and pager. Which she thinks is a good thing.

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But I'm going to disagree with her a bit here. I think that technology has killed off a lot of courtship and romance because it allows us to distance ourselves from people. We can send a quick text asking someone out and no longer have to worry about being rejected in person. We can construct whole relationships that are based around text messaging, with no real face to face communication (believe me, I'm guilty of this). And I think all of this is a bit of a bummer. There's less accountability for our actions; it's easier to make excuses/be excused for not texting or calling back than it is having to justify not showing up to a dinner date. It's easier to claim that things really aren't as serious, and it's a hell of a lot easier to hurt someone's feelings. This obviously isn't a new idea; I feel like I've been seeing articles like this for years, but for the longest time I think I just scoffed at them. Now I think there really might be some truth to it all.

I'm not sad to see the whole "guy ordering dinner for a girl" sort of sexist thing disappear, but I am sad to see how there's generally such a lack of effort on everybody's part nowadays. It's sad when you start to feel special because someone sent you a text message; it's a text for crying out loud, not that hard to do! Is courtship dead? Feels like it to me; then again I do know how to pick some winners... but hey maybe I, with my attachment to text messages, have also served as an enabler?

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