“The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”
—Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
“You can’t step in the same river twice.”
—Barack Obama (some speech or talk or something)
Who doesn’t love aphorisms? They are where truth resides, the house of “Being” (“and Nothingness,” for our French friends), a dwelling ever ungraced by the tiny-minded fact-checkers of the world. (“But facts are sacred!” you protest. Okay, fine, say whatever you like—“comment is free,” after all—but I squat heavily upon your imperialist empiricism.)
Who doesn’t love truth? Truth is better than a late-night jog around the Rose Bowl followed by an enchanting fantasy of a tryst with a polyamorous PhD with whom you’ve struck up a correspondence on OkCupid. Better than a baby-spinach-laced fruit smoothie made blue and silky with berries and organic nonfat Greek yogurt (a fine food invented, sort of, by the same people who came up with that shit about the river, though President Obama, like Ursula K. Le Guin before him, did in fact find occasion to use the river aphorism).
Back to my original point. Or, rather, Debord’s original point: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”
And nowhere is this more true than in the world of online dating.
First you see the photos, which are compelling or scary or ridiculous or just plain off-putting. It doesn’t get much more mediated than dating-site photos. (And it doesn’t get much more “social” than the dating site itself.)
Maybe there’s a candid shot, someone’s New York vacation, perhaps. “But wait!” you say. “Aren’t those the fucking Twin Towers in the background? That picture’s at least 11 years old! I don’t care what anybody looked liked 11 years ago! What do you look like now?”
So there you have it: a social relationship mediated (rather inelegantly) by images. The collection of images, however many there are, doesn’t actually mean too much. The meaning comes from a social relationship—and not just any social relationship, but one involving two hopeful people, each other’s other, judging and lying, judging and lying, till the cows come home and step into the river—that is the spectacle.
But don’t worry too much. It may be possible to mediate the mediation of the social relationships, which will give you a little control over the spectacle. Like don’t post New York vacation photos from early 2001.
For instance, lately I’ve been pondering the works of Kheremsov, and this morning Gunny puts him up on the “Quotes from All Over.” Coincidence? Serendipity? No way: it’s synchronicity. Jung wasn’t wrong about everything, you know; on his good days, he could walk downstream with the best of them.
As for your own dilemma, Bim, I’ve only got one word for you: Photoshop.
Most days, that would be all I’d have for you. But I’ve done the Kabala thing with your post and found the hidden phrase that somehow says it all for me this morning: polyamorous online dating, another idea whose time is irresistibly upon us. Truthwise, these are exciting times, aren’t they?
Well Bim, i do think that you’re very brave to do the online dating thing, that i would never do. And not because of the pictures. But because a) i actually meet enough attractive but totally inappropriate and unworkable people in real life so i don’t have to resort to online frustration, and b) at this point in life, pictures are kind of meaningless. Someone i would have found not attractive in a picture may turn out to actually be attractive to me in real life due to personality. I take this to be a rather reassuring sign of some sort of uncharacteristic personal maturity, as i have always been a sucker for a pretty face and height. I’m straight, but that’s not a requirement for male objects of affection. Used to be i wouldn’t even consider anyone under 6’3. Somewhere in my late 30′s this begun to get revised downward an inch or so every year as i disconcertingly started to find guys around 5’11 attractive. until now all i care about is that they’re a couple of inches taller than i am (a lofty 5’3). Can’t go too low though, or it ends up being clash of the Napoleons.
As to Obama’s quote though, i rather think he’s full of shit.
Bim you are such a talented writer. Thanks!
I totally totally sympathize. I would imagine if I were to get involved in an online search for a date I would want to spend about a year exchanging emails. Then progress to phone calls. Then meet up when I am absolutely certain the guy is interesting enough to spend time with. And that he isn’t a republican. (Last part not exactly true – I did have one Conservative-with -a- capital- C love but that was in the UK and somehow it didn’t seem as much of a deal breaker.)
Bim I will tell you that of the people I know who have recently married or become engaged, most met their partners online. Including a friend of mine who was a single mother for many many years then met an English professor on a dating website. She seems very happy although there is the problem of the adult, unemployed stepson living with them….oh well, nothing’s perfect!
Good luck to you, never give up. And if you remain single, well, there can be pleasure in that too. Especially for women. I have a group of friends in DC, all single (divorced, widowed, never married) and are having a terrific time.
And being the cineaste that I am, I would argue that although a collection of images may not mean too much in the sphere of social relationships…..they can be very, very powerful and significant in other ways.
I am thinking today – September 11 – of those images of the twin towers.
Ha, Pornstar, somehow I just knew that I’m taller than you. That one inch makes me feel so empowered!
Funny piece, Bim. Y’know, there’s other ways to meet someone online than those dating sites. Sometimes you’re scrolling along minding your own business when a big bunch of synchronicity lands splat on your head when you’re not only not expecting anything to fall on you but are carrying a Kevlar umbrella to prevent such things.
And good ol’ Slobodan K. Nice to see the fellow get some recognition.
Well, with a big mouth like mine, i just had to be short, right? I was always pretty thin too, but lately, with being plopped in front of a computer so much for work and consuming, um, more than a few beers almost daily, i have the disturbing beginnings of a gut. That has to change soon.
But as Elena said, i rather like being single, a lot. I like living in my own space, and i’m a total slob so it’s nice not to have to clean up. I like to be alone, a lot. I have no interest in a relationship until i get moved to a city that i like. Then i could be interested. Here, where i have no plans to stay settled, it would be just be an irritation.
Hmmmm.. Haven’t been on a date in a quarter century. Probably wouldn’t have a clue what to do.
We should have a discussion on women’s height. At 5′ 8″ I am probably close to average for my age and I didn’t meet a lot of women my generation that were taller than me. I suspect baby boom generation women probably averaged about 5’5″. They say each generation gets a bit taller, but I don’t think young men these days have spurted up all that much more than their parents (with a 4’10″ mother my kids to our surprise actually pipped a bit taller than me). However, it seems as though almost all women under 30 are at least 5’10″. That’s probably an exaggeration, but there are a lot of very tall young women today. It actually seems hard to believe that diets today are really all that superior to what we ate, but perhaps they are.
One of the more common sites around here are very short Mexicans walking around with their very tall kids. Likewise I noticed in Honolulu recently that young Japanese tourists today are so much taller than I remember Japanese being when I lived there in the ’70s. I could be in a crowded subway car and look across everyone’s heads.
Dog,
Average height of Japanese men is now 5’7″. Average height of Mexican men is still only 5’4″ (and women only 4’11-1/2″).
Average height of American men is now 5’9-1/2″, which proves once again that I am exactly average in every way. Average height of American men aged 20 to 29 is now 5’10″, which is also me, thanks to my occupational training in rounding up.
And average height of American women aged 20 to 29 is now 5’4-1/2″. If they really do tower over you, then I’d suggest standing on your hind legs. Which is not something I tell all the dogs, believe me.
Pornstar – Understand completely. I’ve been most deliberately single and solitary lo these many years, and living alone since the kids saw fit to abandon me, in their selfish desires to live actual lives in places where the restaurants are open after 8 pm. To those who’ve been nosy enough to inquire, I’ve always said if I ever lived with anyone again I would need my own room…and quite probably my own house, with visitation rights of course. People laughed at that crazy idea. Funny how things turn out…
As to the gut, yes, interesting how something concave can suddenly turn a bit convex when one sits at a computer all day. Must nip this in the bud. The best method is the Guinness diet. Guinness only, one a day. I know this first-hand.
Bim,
What a desirous woman says to her lover
Should be writ on sand and fast moving water.
Can’t remember who wrote that one. I’m sure it counts for men, too.
About ten years ago I toyed with the online thing. Actually was kind of… fun. Met some very mad, some very bad, some very sad, and a very few really lovely women. None of whom was remotely compatible. The entire business was, for me, categorically out of kilter. Despite really trying hard to figure out how to make it work.
And the photos! The photos! Honest women posted honest photos. I did meet one or two or even three of those. The rest…. I think the most egregious was about 25 years out of date, but ten years too old was, well… normal. Almost a relief. I asked the one with the 25 years out of date photo why she used it. Her reply was honest enough, ‘Because if I used a current photo none of the men I fancy would show up!’ Sad part was she said it, astonishingly, without a hint of irony. (True, a quarter century back she had been quite the looker. If indeed it was even her in the photo, but the passing decades had not been kind, or at least the buffet had been overstocked and the cigarettes plentiful).
I met a woman who insisted that she had not come to the appointed venue alone. He’s right over there. Really? Then she whispered, you can’t see him but he’s by the door. No one was by the door.
‘He’ it transpired was 15 feet tall and had wings. And superpowers.
Or maybe that was just her way of saying help let me out of here fast. Except she would have had to draw breath for a convincing length of time to make that convincing. I left convinced that ‘He’ was really there.
Weirdest one was, however, a woman, who, despite living now in London, claimed to come from the same (very small) town in which I grew up in Florida. Oh really, I said, where did you live? She told me what street. It was the same street on which I had lived. I asked her what number. She told me the number. It was the number of the house in which I had grown up until, aged 13, we sold that house and moved into the house next door. At this point I thought I was certainly being set up, either for some kind of joke or some kind of serious drubbing, but she had more information yet! She knew the color of the tiles in the bathrooms. She knew where the red fence and the dog run and the magnolia tree had been, as well, but they were all kocked down, cut down and hauled away when that house was knocked down, in 1981.
So unless it was one of my siblings setting me up, it was just too spooky. But my siblings have neither the time the inclination nor the energy to play tricks like that. Turned out that she was legit: she was the step-daughter of the guy who had bought the house from my parents, the very same pretty blonde 17 year-old who I used watch get undressed at night through the window of my own former bedroom. To whom I had never actually spoken back in the day (I was a couple of years younger and hidiously shy and she only lived there about ten months and then ran off with her boyfriend on his motorcycle, mostly to escape her step-father, who was in fact a creep).
We had all that history in common and yet- she was still completely not my type! I gave up the online thing after that. But you shouldn’t. It’s more mainstream now, so I’m told.
In any case next month one of my oldest friends here is marrying a sweet woman he met online. Everyone knows lots of people for whom it worked out really well.
You could always ask them to include a current newspaper front page in their images, like hostages tend to do.
Bluth -
I was expecting the punchline to be that the girl who lived in the same house was your wife now.
I never even had the urge to do the online thing. Just for fun, i had a look at the Graun’s mates thing online. I’ll be 52 next month, so i looked at 45 – 60. But who knows what you’re leaving out? Like kind of nerdy professorial grey haired guys in glasses. The current Richard Gere type totally works. the people i meet these days seem to all be in their 20′s. My boss is my age and hot, but married as are most other my age. I don’t do that. And if encumbered with children, a massive no go turnoff, unless they’re out of the house for good. 20′s are shaggable, but not relationship fodder. Nearly had a go with an very tall and pretty 18 year old a few years ago, luckily that got nipped in the bud.
But you know, it’s all a lot of work, even for a quickie. If you ever entered my apt, you’d never guess a girl lived here. Empty beer bottles (just had the breakfast beer), pizza boxes, and i don’t fold clothes back from the laundromat or even put them in drawers. Has to be a massive turnoff.
Exciting times indeed, Natasha.
An “everything but the kitchen sink” commemoration of sorts, as promised… Thanks all.
The eternal question: How far to drift from the finely tuned persona…? (I knew this would happen if I came here and was liberated from some of the Cif crowd.)
Okay, WTF? Because of an unusual history, I never really dated in those tender years when most people discover the joys and miseries of coupling. So most of my experience has been online. It’s actually kind of okay. Most of the people are fine, though there is a lot of deception and it’s kind of impossible not to see the other person’s humanity, which can make things awkward and sad. But there’s great beauty in the little dance, so full of yearning and hope, so likely to end in exhaustion and isolation…
Totally off topic, but Harry Enten has another piece on the Guardian today and I actualy commented. I guess it was all that talk about the Guardian made me have another look.
And MT’s current thread is troll-infested so no point going there.
Back on topic.
bim, sad to say there is deception in every sphere of life. Business is even worse than dating. and politics?
Semantics question – it deception if you are trying to fool yourself as well as somebody else?
I mean “Is it deceiption if you are trying to fool yoruself as well as somebody else?”
Bluth,
Catullus.
As you see, it was originally “wind” (vento), not “sand,” and it was about what the woman says to her desirous lover. But that’s gotta be it.
Elena,
Excellent question, and one I’ve wondered about a lot. It’s so tough to see ourselves clearly.
I have a somewhat resourceless childhood friend who used to ask me to put up on Craigslist things he wanted to sell–cars that didn’t really run, etc. He would tell me the price he wanted, like $1800 for a non-operational car worth $200 at best, and spend a good 20 minutes telling me why the car was so valuable.
It was pretty tedious, but who among us…?
Ed. Dom. is trying to figure out whether it’s the man or the woman doing the desiring.
Bim – How far to drift from the finely tuned persona…?
One does tend to drift away from the CiF persona here. A good thing, I think. Best of luck to you.
Madame,
Thank you. Yes, it’s better here. Time now for the jog and the job, I suppose.
Re height. Sad to say I am shrinking. Two years ago when I was measured for my bone density scan I was 5’4″ and last week that had dwindled to 5’3 3/4″.
I’m due to start shrinking soon, but what sucks is that my feet are bigger. I used to be a 6 1/2, but i’m an 8+ now. I think they just got wider and more flatfooted from walking so many miles every day in NYC, but you can always find 6 1/2′s on sale, but the 8′s are always gone. guess it doesn’t matter much when you live in surf flip flops these days instead of heels. After 30 i said no heels over 2″, fucked up my back too much.
Just went looking for young Harry’s article, it seems that he’s been bumped off the nav bar now. But AMC is on there, Ollie (huh?), and dipshit Naomi are on there. None of whose articles i ever bother to read anymore, except Ollie had a really nice small cabin porn article up there a few weeks ago.
Nat,
Good catch!
Found a webiste a few years back for “liberals” or progressives or Democrats, back when I thought there was a difference in the 2 parties. The guys my age (boomers) were looking for a woman in her 30s, max, and the words fit &/or thin were used frequently. From the pictures, most of them were neither.
When I mentioned this to a male friend, he told me that I should go to the women’s side, as they would all be looking for a rich dude.
Nice article and fun comments. Pornstar, I know exactly what you mean about shoe sizes. And I am going to have to find a way to steal this phrase and use it (h/t Bluthner):
“…the passing decades had not been kind, or at least the buffet had been overstocked and the cigarettes plentiful.”
Pornstar:
If you’re putting on weight that can spread your feet.
Thankfully, I’ve missed out on shrinkage so far and am still 5′ 4″, but hubby is a real short ass now. He’s lost at least two inches
Our son is just on 6ft. I don’t know where his height came from because both our families are short.
Apparently the foot growth thing is normal, without any weight gain. I went up half a size and sadly had to ditch some really cool boots, including the Frye knee-highs I’d had since my early 20′s (re-soled several times).
I haven’t shrunk yet. Despite what my kids claim. It’s just that they grew: Daughter is 5’9 and Son is 6’1.
Reading “Personals” is an eye-opener. Who knew there were so many perfect people out there who somehow can’t manage to find one another?
A lot of the Graun personals seem to be like, i travel a lot and don’t really have time for or am not looking for a relationship, etc…translation – i just want to get laid but can’t in real life.
Porn,
A woman who can pull 18 year olds and doesn’t bother to fold her clothes! Still my beating heart!
Thing about the spooky girl from next door: she turned out to be a paid-up member of a cult.
Sigh.
The internet. Where everything is possible. What is so hard to grasp, though, is that everything really is possible.
Bluth -
I don’t cook either. So if you had a hankering for, say, 9000′ sourdough, you’d be on your own there. Although i suppose i could assemble a Gunnison caprese salad without too much difficulty to go with it.
Luckily the 18 year old never happened. I think the mutual lust thing was embarassing to us both, not the least because i knew his dad and we had the hots for each other in high school. I’m gratified to find that i’m at least able to set some sort of limit on personal tackiness.
I googled Slobodan Kheremsov and all I got was a link back to this page at 9’000.
Who is he?
My remedial education continues.
Fucking mods…
Expat:
So glad you asked that . . .
Dating online is great if you do it right. Met my boyfriend online and couldn’t be happier. Picking the right site is the key! A good review site is the place to start. I used thetopdatingsitesonline.com, they use member reviews to rate dating sites and then they rank the best dating sites in order. I got a free trial as well by clicking through their links. Can’t ask for more than that!
Go on, Renee, you’re really Slobodan Z., aren’t you?
Bluth,
I suppose it’s possible but let’s not be hasty. While it is true that Mishmashkin attempted to refute Goliglorioski’s claims that Kheremsov haunted online dating sites throughout his tragic and lonely last decade, many scholars have regretfully concluded that he brought more heat than light to the task. I, however, in my dilettantish way, believe that Mishmashkin may have detected the scent of a truth that he somehow lost between parlor and kitchen, as it were. True, we are all struck by the pathos of Goliglorioski’s most famously quoted pickup line — the one where “he” called “himself” a “sedate, retired thinker with a minimal hump” — but does his attribution of those words to Kheremsov really convince?
I maintain that it does not. I quote the remainder of that pathetic plea for companionship: “…seeks hot grad student for maximal humping” — and am forced to wonder if it could really come from the same pen that wrote the epochal “The World as Wille, Vorstellung and Twinkies” from which Gunny so faithfully translates the merest fragment, above. In all sincerity, I find that I must doubt it.
In fact, it is because of crudities much like the one Goliglorioski so blithely attributed to a failing but acknowledged genius* that Gunny himself was forced to suspend the Meet And Frolic At 9000 Feet feature that brought so many of us together here in the first place. How cruel it is that such unseemliness now stands between our very own Bim and her own quest for solace in her declining years!
* who surely is worthy of – at least – our pity, no matter how bathetically befuddled his belated attempts to master Twitter…
Nat,
I’ve always hewed to the contrarian camp that reads ‘Twinkies’ in the title of Kheremsov’s masterpiece as a veiled reference to ‘Ding Dongs’, and therefore a clue to the great man’s nom de felt-tip.
Slathered, of course, in taco sauce. Yow! in other words. He commands everyone to wear Bermuda Shorts.
Bluth,
Typical. With nothing else to go on, you slander his calligraphy. But who among us has not sometimes spiced the ding dong when all else has failed?
While your interest in this great man does you a certain amount of credit, I feel that talents such as you show here would be better employed in elucidating the Dark Lady of the Sonnets — or perhaps the true identity of The Ripper.
Frivolity is a stern taskmaster. Accept the provolone into your life.
Not without the capocollo I won’t. Keep the tomatoes and the vinaigrette to yourself if you must, serve it up on Wonderbread if that’s all you can get, but let’s at least have some properly seasoned pork.
Ohhhhhhh god. Doesn’t this blog have any moderators?
That’s right, Madame: let the troll rant away to his heart’s content, but censor anyone who dares oppose him!
It is a sad, sad day when anyone can go about flinging p*rk into any discussion they please. Have you no shame?
So…I’m a p*rk-flinger now, am I? Well, since I am, beware my ch*ps! But when the shower of charcuterie you’ve started turns into the inevitable chit’lin-storm, you’ll sitting there showing off your (or somebody’s) whiskers and purr, Who, me? Am I not a blameless vegetarian struggling through this ugly world of meat?
Provocateur!
The barb finds its target, she staggers, stumbles, stinks, no, sinks. The mist closes in. The battle is lost.
You guys need to find an agent