Entering the dating world after being with one
person for four years has been troubling, to say the least. I thought it would
be difficult to find a guy with a sense of humour, but turns out it’s far more
difficult to find someone with a clear grasp on reality.
Last week I went on a tinder date [i.e. where romance goes to die] with a cute, intelligent reporter. What a
smile. I’m a sucker for dimples. And so interesting, really a man of the world.
The date started off great.
I should mention that the fact that he
pitched at all was a great start because he’d already ghosted me once, and yes
I know I shouldn’t have given him a second chance but to be frank a fair amount
of sexting had occurred before the date and I was curious.
We drank to relax the first
date nerves and awkwardness, as one does. I continued to drink to
deal with the deep disappointment at the extensive list of conspiracy theories he
believes in – “only ones with evidence” – unfortunately a fundamental
misunderstanding of the nature of conspiracy theories. And by the way, the fact
that there is no evidence, is not evidence.
“Whyyy?” I thought to myself in despair.
“Surely clever good looking boys know better than this?”
But that is not the way the world works.
According to conspiracy boy (as I refer to him), America did not land on the
moon. Ebola was inserted into West Africa by pharmaceutical companies to test
the vaccine. The Libyan revolution was created by the West to prevent Gaddaffi
from creating an entire new currency in Africa (that one’s at least vaguely
interesting). TUPAC IS STILL ALIVE. 9/11 blah blah blah. I actually take it for
granted these days that I am surrounded by 9/11 Truthers. Sometimes I feel like
I’m crazy because I’m not one. Don’t even say it. Don’t.
I’ll give him some credit for not mentioning
the Jews controlling the international media and banking system. Maybe because
he knew I was Jewish, I don’t know. I do know though that the Conspiracy
Theorist Starter Pack always includes a “when in doubt, blame the Jews” token.
Anyways, after he finished telling me that
everything I believe is a lie, I took him back to my place, where I revealed my
true alien reptilian form and ate him. Joke’s on him, because he didn’t even
believe in lizard people.
JK. But I was feeling like if we didn’t get
to the “chill” part of our evening soon, I was
gonna start getting cranky.
On a serious note though, as a young person
in a world with so much uncertainty and so many kak things going on, I do often
feel a sense of powerlessness and insecurity and I understand the urge to look
for simple answers and explanations for horrible things.
The world can be a really scary, confusing
place. I felt bad for conspiracy boy. I wanted to hold him and stroke his hair
and say, “it’s ok baby, I know Tupac wasn’t at his peak yet. It’s terrible. I’m
sad too. I’m sorry he was cremated and The Outlawz smoked his ashes in a joint
[???] and he keeps releasing music. But he’s dead.”
I also totally get the deep mistrust in powerful
governments and corporations. The control they hold over us is scary AF. Obvio it makes people feel super
vulnerable.
And let’s not forget, everyone loves a great
villain.
But this kinda made me think of something I
learnt in an undergrad politics class about the problem with conspiracy
theories (a true miracle because most of the time I feel like I’ve forgotten
everything I learnt in university). It’s called the fallacy of the single cause
and it goes like this:
X
occurred after Y. Therefore Y caused X.
Easy. We reduce the problem to one great
evil source. It’s a government plot, or something.
But then we start being suffocated by
confirmation bias and scrape around desperately finding any shred of evidence
or non-evidence to support the theory, and we are sucked into the black hole of
the internet and start believing everything we see and slowly the cats that
rule the internet and the world start feeding us our own brains and we don’t
even realise it.
Fortunately, fellow humans and lizard
people and cat overlords, we are in 2016, and we hold the capabilities and
resources to rigourously and scientifically analyse these situations and
understand them, because the world is a complex place and mostly X was caused
by a combination of A, B, C, and a bunch of other reasons. Not just Y.
It just is not all a deliberate plot.
In any case, since when has the white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy ever needed a sinister or secret plot to
subject, kill or ignore the suffering of people that have no value to it? The
whole system is fucked, that’s the problem. #jussaying
Anyway, I digress.
I must come clean. Or dirty. Or at all,
really (too far? Too far.) After listening to this drivel for long enough, my
mind just wandered to previous illicit conversations between conspiracy boy and
me. Eventually I really became far less interested in whether man landed on the
moon (lol jk I never cared), and far more interested in whether this man was
going to land in my bed, and in what position (see what I did there?). Expectations
had been created, what’s a girl to do?
So eventually I did take him home. Not
because I needed the human sustenance to maintain my human form as a lizard
person, but because goddammit it’s been a while and quite frankly there wasn’t
much that was going to stop me from getting my rocks off that night.
Turns out I definitely would have gotten
more satisfaction from the experience if I was a lizard person.
Instead, I came to the sad realisation that
there were probably many hours that he spent feeding his wild theories, that
could have been better spent learning where the clitoris is and how to please a
woman sexually.
I’ve been debating in my head how much
detail to go into here, I’m not used to talking about my sex life on the
internet, but I think it’s enough to say he had his fun, paid zero attention to
me or my clitoris, and rolled over to go to sleep. Very typical selfish lover,
very average sexual experience, and an unfortunately very common story.
I wasn’t going to just let this slide
though. I tapped him on the shoulder. Pointing to my phone, I said, “Hi there!
Can I refer you to this string of texts in which you explained in detail your sexual
prowess and expertise in pleasuring women? What about this one where you said
that you were going to bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep?” Sigh. False advertising.
And unfortunately there is no advertising standards authority for sexting. “Sorry,
I’m just so tired,” he said.
Ignoring for a
moment certain obvious lessons here, like don’t sext with people you’ve never
met because they will lie to you (I knew there were too many cry-laughing
emojis), I think we can see what the ultimate moral of the story is: there’s clearly
a massive conspiracy keeping men from learning anything about sex and women’s
bodies that isn’t just about their own dicks, and that’s why the world is so
full of average sex and so void of female orgasms.
Waaiiit, no.
That’s just the patriarchy again. Either way, I think I’m updating my tinder
profile:
"Looking for a
cute, intelligent, funny guy. Must believe that man landed on the moon and that
Tupac is no longer alive. Working knowledge of the female anatomy essential."