I came across an interesting piece the other day on SNS and dating. Instead of simply stating the obvious, that casual sex has moved to the digital realm, Charlotte Metcalf raises some interesting questions about bachelorhood and SNS. The author, a middle-aged mother, posed as a 21-year old brunette named “Charlie” on the SNS Badoo. Using a stock model’s headshot, she described herself as “a fun-loving, easy-going, fit, athletic girl who worked in sales and was in an ‘open relationship’. [She] loved parties, sport, dancing and cinema.” When asked to describe her drinking habits, she responded with an exuberant “Yes please!”

Within 11 meager hours of posting her profile (and paying a minor sum to ensure that her profile was made public to all), she received over 1,500 messages. Many of these messages were candid requests for sex. But many of the messages were also desperate attempts at friendship and conversation. As the author states,

“So many seemed convinced they would find genuine friendship, even love, among the millions of faces in the Badoo membership lists. Here were men, young, old, professional — or so they said — and otherwise, all seeking to fulfill unresolved longings for companionship, and all seemingly willing to suspend their disbelief that this beautiful young woman they were sending messages to might be real.”

And many of the men were worried that “Charlie” might not be real. Many of the men messaged her out of desperation proclaiming, “Please, please, please be normal.”

Metcalf raises some important questions about impersonation and authenticity online. As is often the case with SNS, the most beautiful women are seen as imposters, fabrications, and inauthenticities. As she states, “why on earth [would] a good-looking girl like Charlie [try] to meet men online, when clearly all she had to do was walk down the street to start heads turning?”

Metcalf concludes by proclaiming the dangers of such behavior, citing the experience of a colleague whose husband had recently left her for a woman he met online. She argues that “Sites like Badoo give married men — and women — an opportunity to be unfaithful, and married and single people alike the chance to indulge fantasies and dream up new identities. More alarming still, the women at least are putting themselves in the sights of lurking online predators.”

But I think the author takes her concerns too far. She states,

“But isn’t there something deeply troubling about the fact that, instead of socializing with their families or friends, hundreds of thousands of men and women are sitting alone throughout the night engaged in this fantasy world where, I have no doubt, so few people are what they seem?”

Do SNS really provide opportunities for individuals in committed relationships and marriages to cheat on their partners? Is it really SNS to blame? Or are individuals who scour the internet for partners already inclined towards infidelity?

Metcalf’s piece also raises some important questions about authenticity online. Do “beautiful” people really have less reason to engage with others online? Or do we simply assume that digital relationships are for people lacking in “real” relationships? Have our social relations sufficiently become digitized that even the most popular and beautiful individuals engage primarily with others online?

Finally, Metcalf’s piece seems to suffer from digital dualism, a topic that has been discussed before on this blog. Her views of dating on SNS seem ripe with condemnation and a belief that such digital liaisons are false, inauthentic, and unreal. In essence, she seems to pivot the digital against the material, seeing them as different and distinct spaces. But isn’t it possible to see SNS as spaces of “augmented reality,” where our social relationships of the material world collide with relationships of the digital world? Could these relationships be theorized as one and the same?