See a cute boy lately? Did he not ask for your number? Was she just scared? Did you just not have the time to talk to her? Don’t worry, Missed Connections is here to save you from a life of loneliness and desperation.
If you’re shy and have trouble talking to guys, maybe you thought you were destined for an adulthood spent with 12 cats and stacks of newspaper, but with the advent of Missed Connections you can put yourself out there just enough to not have to risk your pride or anonymity.
You’re unfamiliar with Missed Connections? Allow me to fill you in. Craigslist doesn’t just sell you on a job, toaster or a 1990 Chrysler LaBaron anymore; it now pitches men and women who you may have barely noticed. Just post a random and practically non-existent meeting you had with a complete stranger, or confess that you have been stalking the guy that works at Powell’s Sweet Shoppe for three weeks, and maybe they’ll respond (or a bevy of creepy stalkers who may or may not have a mental illness will, but at least you aren’t alone). Why didn’t I think of this? It’s a gold mine.
I took the liberty of posting my own Missed “Con-sex-tion” yesterday. I studied the posts for hours deciding how I would structure my own post and after reading about missed connections at McDonald’s, Starbucks and the movie theatre, I knew just what to do.
Of course this is completely in jest, but still I felt myself wanting to check my e-mail every 10 minutes hoping to get a response. Who knows if this was because of the excitement of having news to report back to you all, but a dark part of me thinks that the simple act of posting a Missed Connection shoved me right into the kind of desperation that I believed only existed in “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
Suffice to say I got about three posts overnight, all creepy, and I suspect that even if the incident I posted happened in reality and not just in my mind, the real guy wouldn’t have replied and anyone who did would only be e-mailing me because I would appear desperate and easy.
On the opposite end of the desperation spectrum, much closer to missing your old friends with benefits and girls gone wild, lurks a new kind of monster. Onlinebootycall.com is a new Web site that prides itself on having what every college aged person dreams of: a dating Web site that doesn’t set up couples for marriage or long term happiness, but the opportunity to get woken up at 3 a.m.
Apparently, Onlinebootycall.com thinks Eharmony.com has always been for saps, and Match.com is for people who want to get married. I guess all we have been needing is a good old fashion Web site to schedule no-muss-no-fuss hookups because the frat parties simply aren’t cutting it anymore. The site’s commercial boasts a boy who begins a first date asking for his partner’s hand in marriage (perhaps a bit forward, but also a bit hyperbolized), but is pushed on the ground by the boy who lets the girl know up front that all he is looking for is sex. The choice is simple?
With Web sites flaunting desperation like it’s the new black, it’s hard to believe we’re in the dead of a month in which we celebrate our love for each other. Is the Internet where romance goes to die? Is all I have to look forward to in the next decade a blind date over video chat? Because if it is, well, maybe I will stick to the cats and stacks of newspapers.
Rachel Newman is an English junior. “That’s What She Said” takes a fresh and lighthearted look at issues at Cal Poly and in San Luis Obispo.