topic 00047
a mash-up of romance & belief
Romance in 2015 has been upgraded.
Now, rather than simply the obligatory box of chocolates for the classic Hallmark(TM) love holiday, we are apparently destined to a future of ever-more-loudly extolling the wonderfulness of our relationships through grandiose twitter status updates. We are adrift in a technological loveless anarchy of strategically changing our Facebook profile photos to a smooshy-faced couples pic with our significant other bearing a caption that leaves no mistake about the awesomeness of our partner. We are primed to validate our romance by the power of sheer external belief, a belief that is measured in likes.
I attempt to decline my participation in this modern version of unbelievable romance, yet it drags me in as if I’m perched on the event horizon of a massive emotional black hole that will never let me free. I grab hold to the sanity that is the external universe, yet I watch the swirling mass of friends and followers vowing endless and undying tenderness to their spouses through one hundred and forty character shout-outs and an flurry of animate GIFs guaranteeing to burst forth a heap of beating hearts in honour of their beaus.
In a similar vein, my sister-in-law made an acute (if a somewhat cynical) observation with regards to the recent passing of the Valentine’s Day fog through the echo-chambers of social media this past weekend. She said something along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing, here) that “you now can tell whose relationships are really awful because they’re the one’s being all lovey-dovey romantic on Facebook this weekend.”[1]
I had merely been ignoring the flurry of warm fuzzies, but the sidelong and cynical look at the practice did leave me to wonder:
Is it true: do we dare deceive so?
Have we pushed the realm of romance into the public arena where we are possibly positioning the validity of our private affairs under the scrutiny of the lurking eyes of our countless online friends? Do we measure our romantic success by how well we are able to foster belief in the same within a select cluster of random casual acquaintances? Is love now measured in likes?
[1] My Sister-in-Law