or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Yoga
So, I just discovered that there's a dating app called "Hater" where you can, in theory anyway and in their words, "meet someone who
hates the same stuff." This is perfect. I actually love this app, not because it's well designed (it's not... at all), but simply because the whole core theme of everyone in online dating seems to be their unfettered positivity about everything. The idea of being able to bond with someone not over your shared love of something stupid like kombucha but rather your mutual hatred of something stupid like people who don't own televisions is exactly what the emotional slough of despond that is online dating needs.Now, listen. I am not an inherently negative person. But, I am a human being. I experience a full spectrum of emotions. I have good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments. I certainly have my share of annoyances, not to mention the occasional existential crisis. What baffles me about online dating is the absolute relentlessness of people's desire to appear to love everything all the time. I can't tell if this is genuinely how these people are or if they're just desperately slapping a veneer of preternatural sunshine over their humanity. Either way, the women of online dating are clearly terrified of seeming negative about anything. "I love my kids, I love my pets, I love my job, I love my family and friends. Everything in my life is perfect I just need the right man to share it with." It makes me feel a little like I fell asleep and woke up in a Huxleyan dystopia where people will be thrown in a gulag or exiled to the Falkland Islands if they admit that they get bummed out now and again. "The world is wonderful! The Dear Leader makes the sun rise!"
I don't know if it's Xanax or yoga or just plain old fashioned denial, but I'd love to be that happy all the time.
