Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

Are you passionate about journalism and social media? Win a pass to Media140, 5-6 November 2009

Early November is shaping up to be a bit of a social media fest here in Sydney. Online Divas are hosting their inaugural M I S S B L O G conference on the 7th, and I’m hosting an all-day workshop on freelance writing and blogging at the Vibewire Enterprise Hub the same day (more on that another time).

The event I’m most excited about though is Media140, the latest in a series of over the past couple of years that have dealt with the thorny - but exciting - question of what lies ahead for future of journalism. Named after the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter and the old-school SMS, it’s part of an international collaboration - think London, New York, Bangalore, Dubai and Rome - that sets out to answer the question: “What is the future of journalism in the social media age?”

The Sydney conference features an all-star cast including Mark Scott, Leigh Sales, Laurel Papworth, Jonathan Green, Caroline Overington, Mia Freedman, and many, many more (see the full list here). They’ll be talking about everything from ethics, to Iran, to political reporting, to whether when it comes to social media journalists do it better (or worse).

Sound good? It gets better. I’ve got a two-day pass, valued at $250, to give away to one reader. Just leave a comment below before 8pm EST on Monday 21 September, answering the following question: “What’s the best journalistic use of social media you’ve seen, and why?” Responses will be judged by me and Ande Gregson, the founder of Media140.

Good luck, and I hope to see you there!

Actually, on reflection, I think that these days I would do it. Not on a dating site, for the same reasons I have never picked up at a club (the meat market just isn't 'me'), but I would totally date people I met over Tumblr, Twitter, etc.

If I was the kind of person who went on dates, and if I was single.

Let’s just say I’d meet up with someone in person if I thought they were cool (which I regularly do, and have been doing since 1999), and if I fell in love with them - probably after a while, because I’m slow like that - that’d be awesome. Because love is awesome.

2009 is a different place to 2006, and all that. (Although even then, my query was more “why is this still a taboo for me, when my online dating friend is clearly so much cooler than I am?”)

Now I need to go find some pretty picture to post to break up all that black text.

Online dating is soooo 2006

Okay, well not really, but this article is (note the Livejournal and MySpace references). I’ve been reading the online dating-heavy and excellent forthcoming book by Brigid Delaney, This Restless Life, which I’m reviewing for the SMH, and thought of it.

And no, three years later, I still haven’t picked up online.

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It was a thoroughly twenty-first century moment.
 
Nearing the end of our Sunday afternoon coffee, my friend casually dropped the subject of her new boyfriend into the conversation. “You didn’t tell me you had a new boy! Where’d you meet him?” I cooed. She smiled and blushed, just the tiniest bit embarrassed. “Online.” There was a pause. “Livejournal or MySpace?” And there you have it: the uniquely twenty-first century question.
 
I know, I know, online dating is nothing revolutionary. People have been hooking up using the net since last century. But these days it seems like everyone I know is hooking up online, and not in that desperado way either.
 
When I was in ninth grade, my friends and I came up with a list of 37 essential criteria for prospective love interests. Older, taller, with a healthy appreciation of Pulp and the Smashing Pumpkins and a requisite disregard for the Spice Girls.
 
Since then, I’ve broken every one of my own “essential” criteria. My love interests have included guys who were 3 years younger than me, guys who lived in other states, guys who liked guys as well as girls, guys I worked with, guys who were an inch shorter than me in flats and, yes, guys who had girlfriends. And not a drop of guilt or remorse (except, perhaps, for the last). Because when it came down to it, most of my criteria were kinda meaningless.
 
In fact, the only dating prejudice I haven’t overcome in that time is meeting guys over the internet. Of course, that internet dating isn’t a total taboo anymore isn’t anything new. We’ve long moved on from the idea that, in the immortal words of Ryan Phillipe in Cruel Intentions, only “geeks and pedophiles” use the net to pick up. Shy people, people who spend too many hours behind their desks and even people who are serious about finding a person they like on the kind of holistic level that’s hard to find in noisy, smoke-filled bar use it too. And as even the hippest of the hipsters start to spend too much time behind their desks typing clandestine personal emails at work and googling their crushes, we know that normal, non-psycho, non-geeky (well, maybe geeky in a socially adept kind of way) people just like us and the people we hang out with are online.
 
And they’re using it to find dates. Not on actual dating sites, mind you. That would be too obvious. On “social networking” sites like Livejournal, Myspace or Facebook. Girl meets boy online, girl “friends” boy upon discovering mutual love of Pulp circa 1996 and the Kaiser Chiefs circa 2006, girl and boy read one another’s daily musing on life for a month or five, decide to meet up and kaboom – true love.
 
When you think about it, it makes sense. The daily rantings and ravings we post on social networking sites offer an almost unparalleled insight into the mind of the person who wrote them - and in the scheme of things, it’s considerably less likely that someone’s going to create a sustained imaginary persona for themselves on a self-created website that isn’t designed to attract a lover than they would in a personals ad. After reading about - and commenting on - the minutiae of someone’s life for months on end, it’s easy to feel as though you know them, and in many ways, you actually do. Then, if you happen to bump into each another at a gig or at the markets…
 
So I can’t help but wonder then why, if all around me smart, attractive and socially competent people are hooking up with folks they met online, does online dating remain the final taboo I refuse to break. I blog! I’ve met people over the net in person and not one of them has been a freak! (Okay, maybe one or two.)
 
Maybe it’s just that no one on my “friends list” has really tickled my fancy, or maybe it’s because amongst the portion of the population who don’tuse the internet frequently, hooking up with someone you met online is still a bit of an anomaly. I still have friends who think I’m weird for keeping a blog in the first place. And as my friend comments, “The best part is trying to explain how you met to people who don’t use the internet. Non internet users don’t really understand it.” She tells most people she met her boyfriend at a gig, or “just out and about.” I’m not the only one still suffering from online dating prejudice, it seems.
 
Still, I think if I came across someone I really liked, I’d give it a try. Don’t tell anyone though.