I thought your quote in the TIME article “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Tweet The Ways” directly pertained to both the article and our class discussions regarding how the internet has increased the efficiency and effectiveness of online dating. Your first quote, “What people know about each other gets revealed more quickly now,” described the increased efficiency in that the internet has made it faster, cheaper, and easier for potential future daters to find one another. Users have the capability to meet millions of potential candidates instantaneously and for a small fee for some type of internet access usually. Your second quote, “It may warn you off from some people so you don’t have to spend time figuring out whether or not a person’s right for you,” illustrates the effectiveness of the internet. After accessing millions of candidates, users then have the ability to scan through them using rather specific search engines to find out virtually anything they’d like to know about another user before pursuing the option any further.
Additionally, one particular analogy made within the article that I thought was very relatable was the comparison made between meeting a partner online by looking at all the potential mates and scrolling though them to going to a bar and eye-scanning the room for potential mates. Hence, your two quotes noted earlier really just make the process more efficient and effective by creating a “shortcut” that allows people to skip the small-talk, thereby increasing the likelihood of finding a suitable mate and maintaining a successful relationship.
My full name is Robert Earl Rosenwein (the middle initial is after Earl Browder who ran for President on the Communist Party ticket in 1936--that says something about the political milieu from which I came). I am a professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lehigh University and have been there since 1972. My politics are radical, my vocational interests are bird-watching and piano playing, not necessarily at the same time. As an academic, I'm interested in the psychology of politics, particularly inter-group relationships and leadership, social interaction in the Internet, the sociology of science and the sociology of popular music. I'm working on a research paper about subjective definitions of privacy on Facebook.com and their relationship to identity and social status/capital. I've recently written on the development of romantic relationships online and plan to write a piece on online romance as an expression of consumer culture in America. Next year, I'll teach a course on Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
Dr. Bob,
ReplyDeleteI thought your quote in the TIME article “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Tweet The Ways” directly pertained to both the article and our class discussions regarding how the internet has increased the efficiency and effectiveness of online dating. Your first quote, “What people know about each other gets revealed more quickly now,” described the increased efficiency in that the internet has made it faster, cheaper, and easier for potential future daters to find one another. Users have the capability to meet millions of potential candidates instantaneously and for a small fee for some type of internet access usually. Your second quote, “It may warn you off from some people so you don’t have to spend time figuring out whether or not a person’s right for you,” illustrates the effectiveness of the internet. After accessing millions of candidates, users then have the ability to scan through them using rather specific search engines to find out virtually anything they’d like to know about another user before pursuing the option any further.
Additionally, one particular analogy made within the article that I thought was very relatable was the comparison made between meeting a partner online by looking at all the potential mates and scrolling though them to going to a bar and eye-scanning the room for potential mates. Hence, your two quotes noted earlier really just make the process more efficient and effective by creating a “shortcut” that allows people to skip the small-talk, thereby increasing the likelihood of finding a suitable mate and maintaining a successful relationship.