Hello again,
And welcome to what should have been yesterday’s missive. I’ve been ill recently, I think perhaps with covid and so I am a little out of sync with things. It’s not ideal timing because my book is out at the end of August, but then that’s life isn’t it. The timing could be worse, things can always be worse. I’ll be in great shape by then, so that’s the silver lining. Probably I’ll be in great shape by the end of this week, so what am I even complaining about, eh?
I should warn you that I may swap to using this space simply for links to book related things in the coming weeks depending on how much time I have, we will see. Either way I’ll swap back after. If you hate self promotion this is your warning that that may happen.
Personally I don’t mind other people’s self promotion. I like to see it actually, it makes me smile. Maybe that’s because I have to do it myself (well I don’t have to, nobody holds a gun to anyone’s head and says “go on then, post the pre order link there” but you know what I mean). I know what it’s like to make something and put it out into the world and know that people will broadly be indifferent to all the time and effort that went into it.
It’s inherently a little embarrassing and I find it charming when anyone casts that embarrassment aside and trumpets their wares regardless. A few times in my life I have seen a brilliant band or DJ play an absolutely incredible set, with a great deal of spirit and professionalism, to a room of about 5 people. That’s one of the most heartening, bravest things I can think of. It gets me every time. I just love it, and I’ve always thought of self promotion a little like that.
So anyway, that’s the warning that there may be self promotion to come out of the way. Into the substack.
I’ve seen some discourse about posting screenshots taken from dating apps recently. I’ve written about dating apps before a few times. I like writing about them because I like writing about people carrying on in strange ways, and the apps are very well designed to send everyone who uses them a bit loopy.
I think the loopiness originates because the apps create this sense of both an infinity of choice and a scarcity of options. And this sends people into a panic. On the apps you get shown thousands and thousands of people, most of whom will be wildly unsuitable for essentially silly, petty reasons, because the reasons we find certain people more attractive than others are, past a certain point, usually fairly petty and silly.
I myself am so horribly picky about the clothes men wear and their haircuts and not even in the way you might expect. I stopped seeing someone once because he once wore a t-shirt which had a pocket on it. I know this was a fairly common item for a while back there, but I couldn’t bear it. The less I say about primary coloured shoes the better. Then, at the same time, I don’t really notice men’s height in a big way, so there is that.
It isn’t fair to ghost someone because you discover they own a duffel coat with a hood lined with yellow, I know. But that’s the way everyone is about dating, in their own way.
And I think this is one of the big problems with the apps: That you’re shown so many people who are disappointing to you in small, silly ways and you know that you’re being shown so many people, and that your reasons for finding so many of them disappointing are small and silly, and it can make you feel as if there is basically nobody eligible out there at all and it’s all your fault for being too fussy. Having to sort through all the people that an imaginary perfect app just would not show you is demoralising. And you know you’re being sorted through too, one drop in the ocean of potential mates, unwanted by many.
My sense is that there is as big a pool of “attractive to you” people as there always was, but the way dating used to work (where you would meet people through a shared interest or friends) eliminated the worst element of the sorting process because you would mostly be choosing between people with similar tastes and habits to you. You would not have to read any bios saying “I eat what I like and won’t be judged for it” or peruse photos of faintly moth eaten arty men wearing velvet mauve jackets.
You weren’t being advertised the profiles of hundreds of romantic possibilities who hold basically no appeal to you. That’s what I mean about a huge volume of choice and almost no good options. Also your standards change if you think you’re weighing up a group of thousands of men compared to a group of 30 or 40 but, as I say, I don’t think the app population really does consist of thousands of men, once you skim out all the ‘absolute nos’.
So anyway, I think that’s one of the reasons they send people a little loopy. Now to the screenshots. I saw discourse recently about the ethics of sharing dating app screenshots, say of an annoying exchange when trying to organise a date or similar.
I think it’s bad to share the screenshots. I think it’s rude and an unfair invasion of someone’s privacy, and also corrosive to your own pursuit of sex or love. I wrote about this a little here, and I think if you’ve read even one thing I’ve written it’s probably obvious I would think sharing the screenshots is bad. But actually that isn’t what I want to talk about, I think even that side of the discourse is a little played out at this stage.
What I did want to talk about is how boring the shared screenshots often are. And I think this context is missing from much of this discourse. Whenever this topic crops up it always seems to be triggered by something like someone asking someone else to an ice-cream parlour for a date and the person they’ve asked sassily responding: I only go to restaurants, I’m not to be taken for a fool with a cheap date at the ice-cream parlour!
This is a paraphrased version of the latest one (shared by the ice cream refuser), which went viral. This is an incredibly popular personality to act out on social media. This basically performatively unreasonable and uncooperative figure, with a vague social bent (in this case because a woman was refusing something from a man). And to me this is an especially cruel instance, because I think one of the worst feelings is when you are generous and kind to someone and they throw it back in your face, it makes kindness feel foolish and pointless.
But my main point is that nobody should consider this an anecdote worth sharing, even with close friends. Someone you’ve never met asked you to go for ice cream and you rudely said no? This is simply not an interesting or noteworthy exchange. It’s juvenile. A reasonably mature pre teen would know this wasn’t an interesting story to tell about themselves.
I imagine this kind of thing goes viral basically because it is so boring, either because it can feel comparable to many other situations, or because it is surprising to see someone performing outrage at something so mundane.
But I am interested in the impulse to share an anecdote this boring. Why does anyone do this? I suppose social media can help to foster the delusion of celebrity or importance, to the extent that even incredibly mundane occurrences feel like they must be broadcast as urgent missives. Crucial updates to a baying, thrilled audience.
Still though, most people are able to keep a vague sense of perspective. People in general aren’t uploading screenshots of themselves bossily refusing to see a certain film with a friend, or being rude to a DPD employee or the like. I sort of wonder if dating on the apps becomes, after using them for a little while, so sort of regulated and work-like that an exchange such as this might feel comparatively thrilling, and the attention that sharing it might garner even more so.
I find that depressing if so. This seems so detached from trying to find love or sex, which is supposed to be the whole reason to be doing any of this in the first place.
Till next time xxx
Self promo: The usual pre-order links for Lazy City are here. And here is a link to my London book launch event. (Please come!) Here is Belfast. (Also please come!)
Some Things I Liked Recently:
I found this essay by a porn actor quitting the industry because of how much everything has changed with Only Fans and so on really interesting, in the context of the recent Hollywood strikes particularly.
This essay criticising a novel called Yellowface. I think there’s a type of book/film etc at the minute which is extremely commercially viable. It’s basically something which someone with fairly progressive politics would not find challenging, but which they could imagine that another, less progressive person might find extremely affronting. The entire audience for this stuff is of course the person who doesn’t find it challenging. And the whole appeal is precisely the fact that it is not challenging. The thrill of imaging the theoretical affronted person is an added bonus. We live in self congratulatory times…. Anyway that essay is good on an example of this kind of book.
Witness by Jamel Brinkley. A short story collection I thought was really great, which is out this week. I thought it had interesting and fresh things to say about heterosexual relationships in particular. And one story is from the perspective of an old woman who has worked for decades in a glamorous New York hotel, need I say more…
Weekly flowers: