Love

Contrary to population belief, I’ve always felt that the internet didn’t spark a revolution as much as an evolution of existing ideas. Most certaily, “web 1.0″ was about bringing traditional commerce to a new avenue; but in its nature, the idea behind most of these businesses didn’t differ much from their traditional counterpart. In fact, most web 1.0 companies had close ties to mail catalogue & phone order business, just with a different interface & avenue that took less resource to manage, and gave you more information than what could be expressed in more traditional mediums. Even the advent of search engine giants at the time (oh Yahoo, how far have you fallen?) was a direct cousin of our traditional 20,000 page yellow pages that the phone company so happily left on our front porch (and I bet, the cause of many back-injury related work-comp claims for postal workers).

Even though “web 2.0″ could be considered some sort of a revolution, depending on one’s definition, the reality is that web 2.0 perpetuated the communication protocol that was already available. All we did was broaden the base of communication medium. For example, anyone can start their own blog (*cough*.. including yours truly) and attempt to spread their own form of propaganda through the internet. We took what traditionally required years of struggling & attempting to get oneself published in credited medium, and spread that power to anyone with a minimal amount of technical knowledge. It did liberate authors from the traditional pathways of reaching an audience.

Therelies the problem though, that anyone can be an author, but not everyone has content & stories to tell. Numerous blogs are being added to the “blogosphere” all the time, but only a few of them contain meaningful content. Most of the news blogs don’t actually do investigative reporting, they take the same AP wire feeds from traditonal outlets and attach their own viewpoints. “News blogs” don’t bring us news, they talk about news that’s already been brought to us by the good old standard. So even with this supposed revolution, almost all of our content is still based on what we long considered archaic.

So what does all this have to do with love?

I have a profile on Match.com. A supposedly revolution towards how people can find potential dates, and hopefully long-term, meaningful relationships that can extend into the far beyond. However, just as I stated above, Match.com isn’t a revolution in how people can find & relate to each other; it is an evolution of the good old dating services that used to occur through agencies, phones & otherwise. The same personals ads that you can post on Craigslist isn’t that much diffferent in concept as those personal ads that people used to purchase in newspaper (one main difference, is that you no longer have a strict character limit on how much you can talk about yourself, which is ultimately mixed blessing at best).

The evolution here, just as blogs give everyday joe the ability to publish their thoughts, internet dating allow people to broaden their base and discover a much large population. Within the traditional market though, this isn’t all that interesting. Match.com’s existence allows me to see more profiles & potential dates than I would have otherwise (and spending less time at bars), but it also opens up a much higher number of potential competitions. All in all, it’s a good evolution that probably comes out to be a zero-sum game of sorts.

The more interesting evolution with internet, is how this broaden of base and enabling of communication allows what used to be “niche” to become mainstream. For example, linking up D&D geeks across the country through AOL (yes, good old American Online, oh, how I miss the hundred dollar bills for overage from you. Cellphone carriers has nothing on you!), or newsgroups that allows almost any special interest group to exist as a community across hundreds of miles.

Where Match.com is a direct descendant of traditional dating, the impact of internet on the “alternative”, non-traditional, and thus, niche relationships is much more apparent. Sites like AdultFriendFinder has been around for years, for people who are strictly looking for relationships that emphasizes physical connection first over the emotional (or, sometimes nothing emotional at all). There are niche dating sites that targets specific demographics, goth groups, interracial dating, BDSM, and the list goes on and on. There are even sites like AshleyMadison which focuses strictly on martial affair, or open-marriage relationships.

The traditional, Protestant upbringing side of me says, “OMG, I can’t believe there are sites that promotes such sacrilegious relationships!!” The reality is, I denounced going to church when I felt betrayed, when these same people who preached tolerance and love decided to participate in public protest against gay marriages in San Francisco. At the time I was working in a beauty company with several gay co-workers. In particular, my boss at the time, with his partner of more than six years, were ecstatic that they can finally be married and receive that ever-so-important symbolic recognition from the world. Only to see his heart completely crushed when it was taken away from him again.

One out of two marriage licenses that we issue here in United States ends in divorce. Yet somehow, we felt righteous about taking away the right of two people, who have been completely in love for years, the the ability to be married; and gladly give that right to a couple that will end in bitter divorce. At the time I thought, if my boss & his partner can’t get married, what little justification do we have for any of us to be married at all?

I think that’s really the first time, that I had issues the traditional notion of a relationship.

It’s not until recently though, that I find myself realizing that these alternative relationship, ones that veers away from tradition, might be ones that makes even more sense than the gold standard held by society (which should also be noted, isn’t a standard across society of humankind as a whole, but each culture has their unique take).

A bit of wisdom from my best friend is the trigger. In a conversation, she brought up that there is no worse loneliness than being alone in a marriage. I’ve seen those type of loneliness in people that I knew, some of them managed to escape the grasp of that life, but a lot of them also stuck around because they felt that they just had to. Conforming to what society taught them was the “right” thing to do.

This conformist ideal is in line with another friend of mine, who’s much more emboldened in traditional value than anyone else I know. Quite literally, she would fit in America of the 1940′s much better than she would today. She attributes the rising divorce rate to people who aren’t willing to stick around and work things out, very much a tragedy in her belief.

Of course, I can’t agree with it. I’ve seen too many relationships where people stick around not because they had to, but because they thought they were in fact, stuck. They didn’t want to consider the possibility of taking that risk to better their life situation, it’s too scary, too daunting. It’s not that they were necessarily working things out in their own relationship, because sometimes, there is nothing you can do when people change. Sometimes they become someone who you are no longer in love with, and you have to move on.

I simply think that people today are more intelligent and more independent, that people no longer happy to simply being accepted by social standards. Some of those time, on the path to discovering happiness, you have to leave traditional value behind.

What the success of sites like AshleyMadison, AdultFriendFinder really shows, is that as a society we are realizing the viability of those alternative type of relationship. The only type of intimacy that the Bible allows us to have, may not be the only solution. Why can’t we love more than person at a time, why can’t we be intimate with multiple people in our lives? Why is marriage only limited to heterosexuals?

An affair is only an affair because of society’s definition. Eliot Spitzer was ousted for hiring prostitutes, which I had no problems with, the problem I have with him is the fact that he was busting prostitutes at the same time. It’s his conflict of interest, rather than his interest that disgusts me. However, it’s a pretty well publicized example of a man who obviously was looking for something else outside of his marriage, and he went through with it despite of the risks. What’s even more ironic, is that his replacement, David Paterson immediate admitted that he also had extra-marital affairs for years just so it doesn’t become a media circus. In his case, his wife also had extra-martial affairs as well.

I can’t help but think, if our society accepted an “open-marriage” of sorts, or just simply abandone the whole notion of marriage altogether, that these issues would never arise. In my personal relationships, I’ve always been very much loyal and devoted to only one person at a time. However, in that devotion to one, I’ve also managed to almost completely severe my feeling towards other people that were in my life at the time. At one point, it might have been shameful for me to admit that in middle of my dedicated relationships, that I had thoughts about other women. I have at those times, very forcefully closed off my communication with these other people whom I also felt a lot of affections for. Only now, I’m starting to think that maybe I didn’t have to, maybe “we” didn’t have to. Maybe this whole society doesn’t have to. Maybe it’s about time we stopped using marriage as a claim of ownership to another person’s heart.

Of course, very much like the internet’s non-revolution, these type of new ideals with relationship management is nothing new. Beyond the fact that AshleyMadison and AdultFriendFinder are simply expanded markets for existing niches, doesn’t anyone remember the 60′s?