College Sex - Philosophy for Everyone: Philosophers With Benefits (8 page)

MICHAEL BR UCE

CHAPTER 3

THE VIRTUAL BRA CLASP

Navigating Technology in College Courtship

College Sex is Tagged: Become a Fan

One clear way to reveal someone’s age is by the technology they use. It does not take a genius to tell that the guy with the beeper or with the giant
Miami Vice
car phone is not fresh on the scene.Today, col- lege kids are swerving in and out of traffic on their new iPhones, updating their Facebook status, Twittering “I just changed my Facebook status,” and texting the guy or girl they met the night before.

And don’t tell me that in ten years people will think our Bluetooths are not hideous, but for now we’re cool. Soon enough a new advance in technol- ogy, or a change in fashion, will have us signing up to the next social media website, uploading the “good” pictures, adding all the same friends again as they slowly follow our lead from the last place, updating our status –
this place is so much cooler!
– and it is business as usual.

If you are in college and are trying to meet a boyfriend or a girlfriend, find a husband or wife, a friend with benefits, a rebound, or the infamous one-night-stand, you have to be able to navigate an incredible amount of technology. It may help you or it may crush your chances; either way, you have to deal with it. The following essay is a phenomenological account of the technological hoops college students jump through every day in their quest for love and lust. A phenomenological account is concerned with attaining an understanding and proper description of the structure

of our mental and embodied experience. Phenomenology employs a distinctive method to study the structural features of experience and of things as experienced; it does not attempt to develop a naturalistic expla- nation, i.e., an explanation that is justified insofar as it rests on empirical evidence, or causal theory.
1

“That will get you slapped!”

Think back, way back, when people were less mediated by technology. I do not know if it is true, but I have heard stories that people used to meet other people, even ask them out on dates, by just walking up and talking to one another. Can you believe that? What a rush that must have been – the Wild West! But wait, how could that work? Did they quickly look at each other’s online profile from their smart phone with the Facebook application? Would they see those awesome pictures from Cancun when I was tan and all my hundreds of hot friends? Would one person walk over to the other and say “Want to text?” followed by flirty finger-work?

Of course, that could never happen today; when was the last time you saw someone walking alone who did not have their phone glued to their ear? Walk across most college campuses and you will be shocked by how many people are on their phones. I feel sorry for the poor guy who tries to approach directly a college girl on campus, or vice versa. A girl walking through the quad on her Blackberry might as well be in a bubble.

If I saw a girl sitting on a campus bench, drinking coffee and reading my favorite book, and I walked up and started talking to her, I think there is a good chance that she would find it very awkward. There is a sense in our current customs that meeting “random” people this way is highly suspect. People who do this must be creepy and desperate, and probably rapists. This kind of encounter is immediate and direct, so much so that our culture finds it uncomfortable. Sure, Johnny Depp could stroll through campus and none of this would apply to him, but that is Johnny Depp.There are a number of different reasons why this does not apply to all people. The model, the quarterback, the rich kid, and so on, may all be stereotypical exceptions, but I am concerned with the everyday, nor- mal background practices of college kids trying to mate the hard way.

One theme I want to develop in this essay is how technology gives the illusion of bringing people together, when often it is doing the exact opposite. While someone is engrossed on their phone as they walk the

fifty feet to the cafeteria – apparently engaged in an urgent conversa- tion – they actually seal out the world around them by directing their attention elsewhere, privileging the virtual, non-present relationship over the environment at hand, the possibilities of chance encounters, of old fashioned social courtesy, and the quiet refuge or hell of the psyche.

If you are in college and want to find someone special, the old school, John Wayne mentality is not your best bet. But do not despair. This may be the best time in the history of history to be single. There are so many ways to meet people, but you have to know the technology! In any society there are a host of background practices or “forms of life” that its people learn in order to function; these are the rules and mores, ethics, and social customs that its people learn and develop from birth. Mating ritu- als and codes like who can court whom, what the proper steps are in courtship and marriage, initiations and permissions, and monogamy and fidelity are all issues in the fabric of social courtship, and college kids are no exception.With the advent of the Internet, and especially social media and networking sites like Facebook and MySpace – not to mention craigslist and Match.com – college students have chances to meet new people like never before. One hundred years ago college-aged kids had a mating pool the size of a tear drop. Technology has changed everything.

“Can I have your number?” A Short Genealogy of Stressful Situations

One interesting aspect I want to point out from the start is that if we again compare the old fashioned, direct mode of courtship with one enmeshed in technology, the trajectory is inverted. Let me explain. Let’s say you strike up a conversation with someone after class (right before she gets on her phone) and it goes pretty well. If both of you appear to be interested in each other, then the classic tense situation arises: how to contact her again? Do you ask for her phone number? But which one? Cell, home, dorm? And if you get a number how do you know which one it is? You do not want to booty call the home phone at two in the morning. If you ask for her phone number or are asked for yours, chances are you will give or receive the cell phone number (because you love your cell phone so much).

Once you have the cell phone number, you are now mediated by a base technology. At one time, the phone level of courtship consisted only of a phone and waiting for the phone to ring. It was simple, but

torturous. Then came the answering machine; you could now leave the house and not be afraid that you would miss the call. You could also leave a voice greeting, which I think paved the way for sharing small tidbits of information. At first, people would just have something generic like “You’ve reached 555–5555, please leave a message.” Then, later on, people might leave a family greeting (“You’ve reached the Johnsons!”) or tell you where they went (“We’re on vacation/Out of the office” – just like a Tweet).

The cell phone was a massive leap forward. One of the fancy new perks of a cell phone was that everyone with one also had caller ID. The advent of caller ID was a double-edged sword. It let you know who was calling you, which was great since it hopefully meant no surprises or fishing for a person’s name or number. On the other hand, if they knew you had caller ID, there was no way of missing a call. Even if you did not pick up the phone, like you could have done before the answering machine/voice- mail to avoid calls, the caller stills showed up on your call log. In some ways caller ID replaced voice messages. Why leave a message? They can see I called. This was also the downfall of many over anxious suitors who called too much, thus scaring away their potential mates.

Even more importantly than caller ID, cell phones changed the land- scape of modern courtship by adding another dimension. By leaving his cell phone number on the answering machine at home, he thereby redi- rected you to another level of technology. In homage to Mario Bros., I will call this level jumping. Now you are mediated by two levels of tech- nology, the land line and the cell phone. To the nervous freshman, there are so many questions: if she doesn’t answer at her dorm, do I leave a message? Should I call her cell? Do I leave a message there or both places? Or should I not leave a message at all; she will see that I called?

But let’s go back for a second to our couple talking after class. Let’s say now that the couple doesn’t exchange phone numbers. Oh no, they are not nervous freshmen. They are way too hip, they have MySpace and Facebook. I think the sentiment among college kids is that if you have the resources, use them. Now, instead of dealing with the potential pitfalls of phone calls, voice mails, or even the possibility of him not giving his phone number at all, you take it to another level: online. You search for him on MySpace or Facebook, probably both, and enter a higher level of mediation. The risk is much lower and the amount of control you have over the contact is surgical. You may send him a message, “poke them,” or add them as a friend. Now that you have access to his online profile, you can sculpt your witty message, maybe even through a quote from his

favorite movie. You’ve got access to detailed information about him, the likes of which your grandparents don’t know about each other.

But again, you have to know the customs of the technology. For exam- ple, it would be a bad move to write a message that was too long. It is not an email, and also having the right amount of online casual grammar, unfortunately, is the norm. Another advantage to pursuing someone through the online level is the ability to network. If you have a mutual online friend this gives you the appearance of credibility. It also is a con- versation piece and a reference (for better or worse!).You also have pos- sibly your greatest tool: your profile. Having an online template to tell the world how special you are, how cool, how eccentric, how buff, how smart, and so on, can be a great asset.

If you are online using a social media website, you have a profile and this can make or break you. In a sense, you are enslaved to your ability to present yourself through the online technology. You can have a profile that has music and video blaring, stunning background images, inspiring quotes, and a blog detailing all of your awesomeness. Or at the other extreme, you can have the default layout with an old cropped picture, a couple of sentence fragments about yourself, and be friends with four of your cousins and Tom from MySpace. Once again, suitors must advertise enough of their personality to attract interest, but not too much as too annoy or over share.

Treating Objects like Women, MySpace Pics, and Level Jumping

The interesting part of the online profile is the acknowledged unreality of it all. Everyone agrees to play this game where we realize people’s profiles are often misleading and the product of the person projecting their ideal self for others to see. A profile is a text. No, not a
text message
, but a liter- ary object. This kind of text conceals as well as reveals, has no fixed meaning, and is subject to the interpretation of its author and readers. Personal statements from an online profile, for example, are often crafted for effect, trying to highlight and emphasize a person’s perceived attrac- tive strengths.

With the biographical statements, the profile pictures, and a seemingly infinite amount of information available, a suitor must be a philosopher and detective. This online text is critically analyzed and deciphered.

The consequence of this is that the love interest becomes an object. Through the investigation of the profile, combined with whatever every- day information and contact a suitor may have with a person, that person is objectified. But isn’t this a cardinal sin in our culture – to treat some- one as an object? Or worse, a sex object? What makes things even more interesting is that both are implicated. As a suitor objectifies his potential mates, he has objectified himself in the process of engaging in the online community; the suitor has a profile as well. Instead of a couple learning about each other through intimate personal dialogue, suitors are chal- lenged to interpret vast collections of data and have a refined “bullshit detector.” At its worst, this kind of evaluation is reminiscent of a physi- cian reviewing a patient’s medical history.

Nowhere is this more clear than with profile pictures. “MySpace pic- tures” is a phrase that depicts certain poses, angles, and lighting that are used to frame a picture in such a way as to focus only on part of the sub- ject. These kinds of pictures have served as ammunition to numerous online parodies and have trained the suitor’s eye. Of course, not everyone online has less than truthful pictures or information. Nevertheless, this kind of behavior is rampant and is more or less unavoidable for people looking for love or lust online. The funny thing is that everyone in the online community seems to know profile pictures are often misleading, but it seems that as long as “I” get to post my own misleading picture for my benefit, everything is just fine.

This process, where one has the intention of getting to know and court someone, ultimately leads to an alienation of both parties. The online technology has mediated them to the extent that courtship is entrenched in two virtual personalities, interacting as objects, and further distancing each other through what was supposed to
connect
them. And remember that “connecting” online is a metaphor, and obviously quite removed from the embodied face-to-face encounter that suitors desire to have.