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EMBLEM PARADE'S REVIEW OF DATING
Here is a re-post of what I found to be an amazing analysis of dating that I wanted to share with you...

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So, this has been in my brainfluids for a while, and it's time to open the Gates of Spiritual Enema and sully the internets with my minds. Embrace yourselves. Hold on to sturdy, heavy objects, such as wall-mounted black dildos. Bookmark for later if you need to go earn bread. Ready? It's:

EMBLEM PARADE'S REVIEW OF DATING

Once upon a time, there was a boy (kinda) who had finally finished college and moved to the Windy City, to go to Advanced Super Graduate School. He was a bit lonely, and a lot tired of school and students and talking about school with students. Beyond his tiny studio apartment was: The City. Equipped with a fascination (often morbid) with online sociality, he decided to break the confines of the library-department-apartment Triangle of Suckiness, and create an Online Profile on Social Sites. He wanted to date people. He never really did much of dating in the Old Country, before he came to college in America. There was an all-boys high school, military service, a fall-out with his family, and a really confused little tail-chasing raccoon of sexuality fluttering in his chest. No time. And time = money. Then, in college, people didn't date. That's not to say that there weren't intimate relationships. There were "Dependable Hookups," a dysfunctional adaptation borrowed from prison culture. Two people find each other moderately hot, in a drunken kind of way, and go fuck in some disgusting dorm room. Once the social hymen has been broken, they can do the same next weekend. Assuming they don't find somebody hotter. The boy was kinda, like, what; I'm going to wait until I get out of here; help me Jesus Christ; I'm sorry I killed you. Well, he did really like this one chick, so there was that, and everybody's friends now.

His goals for dating were many: 1) Meeting people who were not students who talk about school all the time 24/7; 2) Falling in Love Again Maybe; 3) Embracing Chicago; 4) Fucking and sucking; and 5) Understanding American dating and, perhaps, something about American society. All noble goals, fo sho. Right? He kept at it for about 3 years, with some breaks (he kinda fell head-over-hells with this one chick for a while; everybody's friends now). All in all, there have been dating and dating-like encounters with about 70 (no joke) different people, girls, boys, and one or two others. This makes him an Expert, and perhaps even a Guru of sorts. He has Observations.

First of all, he found that there's no one kind of dating in America. We should call it datings. Expectations and goals differ widely, and calling them all "dating" leads to a lot of confusion, and excellent sitcom material. Here are a few kinds of datings, which may very well overlap and coexist. Pick yours! :

1) Dating is for finding a Good Match. I have a list of things that I like, you have a list of attributes. Mix and match! The final score will be determined in the courthouse of talking with their friends behind your back. The assumption is that happiness is a grocery list of points to check, and that suitability is measurable. It's very easy to disappoint people like this. In fact, it's practically guaranteed. At some point, they will lower their Minimum Suitability Rating (MSR) and get married to the first person who fits. Then, they will talk shit about their mates behind their backs. Each date is like a test. There's usually also a minimum number of tests/dates one needs to complete before suitability can be confirmed to +/- 5% accuracy system. There's often a standard speech for rejection, practiced countless times before. There are often many Rules as to what is permissible or not on a date. Often, too, people of this Dating expect you to be looking for the same kind of Dating. If not, you are a Creep or a Foreigner. This kind of Dating is part of the wider social phenomenon I call the Seinfeldian Paradigm, in which we need each other but never actually interact with each other. There are lies and lies and more lies. This kind of Dating also forms the blueprint for the online experience.

2) Dating is for scoring. Some people pick people up at bars. Some people date. In this case of Dating, we are talking about two sides of the same coin. This is a very reasonable adaptation to the Age of AIDS, and I'm essentially sympathetic to it. What I'm less happy about is that this kind of Dating often masquerades as other kinds of Dating, usually, by sheer coincidence, the exact kind of Dating practiced by one's Date! Imagine that! We are looking for the same thing, aww! Now, let's share bodily fluids. And I wasn't serious about the Soul Mate thing. There's nothing particularly wrong with wanting to sleep with people, except that some people think that it's particularly wrong, which is why some people need to be no-good lying bastards. Luckily, not everyone is an asshole, and sometimes people can find that they're looking for the same thing, and happiness ensues. Sometimes people pretend that they're not doing this when they are, which is both cute and pathetic.

3) Dating is for friendship. Intimacy, love and friendship are all different angles on the Triangle of American Fucked Up Sociality. There's always some moral or otherwise logical polarity going on there in between, keeping you from enjoying them in combination, or else forcing you to only have them all together. This means that for many people true friendship can only be found with a loved one whom they fuck. So many people dream of finding the Right Person to complete their life, because the Right People around them aren't Right Enough. It's not that they're wrong, it's just that it's socially impossible to be fully social with them, to have all angles of the Triangle coincide. Thus, in a performance that would be considered insane by many people in the world, Americans can claim that they're "lonely" even when they have many, many friends. "Lonely" because they don't have The Friend. The One. Now, this kind of dating is very different from #1 above, though it may seem superficially similar. It's even the opposite in some ways: the one looking for a Good Match is actually not interested in much intimacy there, just a match, which they will lie to while achieving true friendship elsewhere. On the other hand, the Friendship Dater wants to tell the One all the innermost secrets, things which couldn't be revealed to the Other Friends. Sigh. This kind of Dating makes me very sad, because it keeps reminding me how shitty our social life can be. But, it makes me happy, because it can work and solve the problem, though in isolation from the rest of society. Such couples share a lot, but it's all inside the relationship. They probably have very few friends outside of themselves, and probably these few friends are all other couples who share their Datingness. At its best, these Daters are only a bit melancholic, obviously sitting there waiting, wistfully, for society to finally happen to them. At its worst, these Daters are wretchedly depressed, believing that everything wrong in their life will be solved when the One finally comes. True friendship and true understanding and true intimacy and all that jazz. Sigh, again. Luckily for these kinds of Daters, they are pretty good at knowing if the Other is of their kind. Gestures of friendship are inherently sincere. Any other kind of gesture, and they'd immediately be disinterested. This Dater simply won't Date you unless you're of their Kind. Except for the wretched ones, who get desperate and compromise and then hate themselves for it. Good times.

4) Dating is for dating. Let's play! For these Daters, it's all a game, and it's a fun one at that. They are pretty savvy about the various rules, and like to bend them, for the sake of bending. They wouldn't know what to do with the Other other than date it, and don't really care. Some people would say that this kind of Dater is Not Ready for a Relationship, in the sense that there is a clear evolutionary ladder with a final destination (a tower in the clouds?) to which one must arrive. Well, maybe. But, sometimes, these Daters couldn't give a rat's ass. I should add, at this point, that Dating is not the only avenue towards finding a Relationship, and often this kind of Dater knows this social fact very well. Dating is for dating. Of course, other than being savvy, these Daters can actually be quite naive, and expect others to be dating for dating, too. Hilarity will surely ensue. (Note to self: use the word "ensue" more.)

Online, everything is complicated by the fact that offline culture is the reference point, but there's no real culture in place. Online sociality has happened so quickly that we're still making it up as we go alone. Expectations differ widely, often according to the users' ("users" are online personhood) experience with life on the internets. Newbies often expect sociality to work the same way as it does offline. Haha. They so funny. They easily get offended when people don't answer them, or stop conversations in the middle, or even block them. What newbies don't realize is that, from the other user's perspective, online personhood is very, very different from offline personhood.

You see, online, the grail overfloweth. Users are interchangeable, and they can find someone just like you, except taller, whiter, with more money, or whatever else is on their List of Priorities. In person, people get polite and guilty, struck by true sympathy for the person in front of them, and also a true sense of risk for their own image should they be rude to you and meet disdain. Thus, chat someone up at a party, and you probably won't get flat-out ignored just because you're not a lawyerdoctor. You will be given a Chance, which may possibly work out nicely for both of you. Chat someone up online, and if something small bothers them, even a misunderstanding, you're history. It could be a great match, but there's not much incentive to find out. There's no social cost at all for being an asshole. And, the grail is fake. An annoying ugly person can, with some photo trickery and cryptic profiling, a mere glimpse of something remotely sexy, become an alluring flower online. Suddenly they're the most popular person on the webs, and suddenly you're more interchangeable than Paula Abdul.

I should note that this is the same view of the world experienced by Hot People in real life. For Hot People, the grail overfloweth, too. Which is why Hot People often have Hot People Syndrome (HPS), also known as being a complete and total dickwad. Hot People think they can have anyone they want, because life has taught them that they can have anyone they want (except in a few cases which they neurotically repress by actually cultivating a self-image of being horrible people whom nobody can love which leads them to be overly defensive and even bigger dickwads than they would be if they were plain arrogant self-centered biatches). What this all means is that the online world gives everyone HPS. Something worth thinking about: Is the internets making non-hot people extinct?

Rule #16 of heterosexual dating in America: The boy must "make the first move," although that doesn't mean the boy has to initiate. Some girls are Experts at making it so that the boy makes the first move. There's a complex signaling system in place for this. What Rule #16 really signifies is that Dating is very, very, very sexist. There's a doubley double standard, and both genders try to get what they can. There's generally a lot a talk about "getting" stuff. It's America!

Rule #1 of homosexual dating in America: No such thing. Well, I'm obviously exaggerating this somewhat a whole lot, but, c'mon. Like, really. We borrow heterosexual systems which end up fizzling in weird ways. Who's gonna pay the bill? How about the older boy? How about the "top"? O rly? This is ridiculous, and I want to go home. The only successful gay couples I know started as Dependable Hookups at Club Buttfuck. OK, so let me soften this a bit (and hopefully appear less bitter): the cultural reference point of gay America is quite often not America at all. Gay culture is almost like a foreign enclave. Gay San Fran is not Gay Chicago is not Gay New York, and they're all quite divorced from what goes on around them. "Dating" is a reference point, sometimes, but it seems less important than all the other social things, such as "Relationships." This means that there are fewer ways to get to Relationships. But... it also means that, well, there might not be a need for any kind of institutionalized process. At its best, gays can just Be with each other and see what happens, without calling it anything. The problems start when the rest of the world creeps in, and forces you to call it something. Damn rest of the world!

Generally, "calling it" becomes an issue in itself. Like, did we just have a "date," or were we just "hanging out"? (Coming up: Emblem Parade's Review of Hanging Out.) This is Important, because calling it a Date puts it in one of the forms of Dating mentioned above, makes it processual, with an end goal, etc. Sometimes it boils down to "does person X really like me," but I think it's safer to see this in relation to a specific kind of dating. If the other person thought this was a date of type #1, and you were in #3 mode, there's gonna be trouble.

Last point. For now. Promise. POLYAMORY. It should be clear that, until now, I've been talking about Dating as being quite monoamorous, except, perhaps, type #4 which is all fun and games. For type #3, especially, it must be monoamorous. It would be logically impossible for the One to date someone else. For the others, it's more of a path towards monoamory. At some point, some Americans define the Dating to be "exclusive," which is merely one step removed from a Relationship. Other Americans employ the don't ask don't tell method of dealing with people. It's lovely. Hell, I know people who are married and still haven't told their spouses that they were dating someone else while they were dating originally. Monoamory, in any case, puts a sacred glow over Dating in general. Whether it's explicit, hidden, or really there, it's still the central reference point around which Dating revolves. Polyamory, then, comes in and screws things up. (Literally.) Polyamorists, quite explicitly, Date more than one person. This doesn't have to be for type #2 purposes! My favorite polyamorists date for a variety of #3: to make real friends (if not for finding "the One"). Others are #4, or even a demented #1. While some polyamorists tell themselves that they are free from monoamory, by the very fact that they participate in Dating, they are referencing monoamory.

Here, then, is my final point, and I'm gonna get a bit social scientific on your ass. Dating is, ultimately, in all its many variations, focused on the one-on-one, just like our relationships. And, as the sociologist Georg Simmel pointed out, two-way relationships are incommensurably different from three way relationships, such that the whole mode of analysis must be different. In a two-way relationship, there's always The Other, something that can be the polar opposite, reflect the Self, complement it, and other logical combinations. In a three-way relationship, there's always another Other, multiple reflections, deflections, choice, etc. This same logic is the basis of the Oedipal Complex, Freud's compleat analysis of personhood. Indeed, the two-wayness of Dating and Marriage stand in very stark contrast to the three-wayness of our relationship to our parents. This point is dealt with only cursorily in David Schneider's masterpiece, American Kinship, in which he traces the logic of marriage in America to the symbolic power of love (a.k.a. "diffuse, enduring solidarity"). The problem was that Schneider had to ask, first, if there was really such a thing as "American kinship," such that it could be analyzed separately from other institutions. In a symbolic sense (which he was explicitly employing), perhaps yes, but there's an obvious symbolic eclipsing of whatever is not marriage. It's won't surprise you to hear that a student of Schneider, Hervé Varenne, wrote a dissertation about the process of dating in "middle" America. It's a rather embarassing exposure of anthropology's failings: Varenne, the clueless Frenchman, totally got a lot of the cues wrong, and his analysis ends up laughably naive. He does, however, show that "kinship" in America is not always kinship. (Indeed, he actually saw himself more as a student of Robert Redfield than of Schneider.) I think that it kinda is. Or, at least, it aims to be a substitute for kinship. American families are famously dysfunctional, which points to a source of neurosis in every American's past, but also a destination of neurosis for every American's future. The two-wayness, the one-on-oneness, the monoamoric logic of Dating is in between, wedged as a thorn in the side of everything Americans proclaim about love, marriage, and ultimately about what it means to be a Person. (I'm making the assumption that the symbolic underpinning of marriage is indeed the "family" -- marriages that don't become families are socially structural failures, trapped in two-way Dating mode.) As personhood becomes more and more compartmentalized, "kinship" becomes less useful as a paradigm. In an era of global, flexible capitalism, where jobs are temporary and interchangeable, and workers are expected to be instantly mobile (or else), "kinship" becomes a waste of money. Single people are more hireable. And yet, they must come from somewhere. Some look at this with a nostalgic sense of loss, but I'd rather describe it as incompletion. There's a gaping hole in the structure of personhood, and Dating ends up carrying the weight, with a crucial shift in the analytic logic. What does a one-on-one kinship system look like? What kind of society do single Daters belong to? Is it still "love" underneath, as Schneider concluded? And if it is, is this postmodern "love" different from what we had before? Stay tuned for my dissertation.

Finally, you may be curious about what happened to the boy and his adventures in dating. To put it simply, he wants it all. He has sympathy for all kinds of Dating, while being rather frustrated with all of them, as you may have sensed. He does, however, officially declare his ethnography to be over, having Figured It All Out and ascended to gurudom. He might date again, but there's no more need for experimentation, unless it involves wall-mounted black dildos.

Thanks for reading this far, and may the Gods of Dating smile gracefully upon you. Questions?

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Questions (and praise) should be sent to emblemparade