New ways of falling in love in a digital world

Content appeared in this month, in a shorter version. I share the long run:

New ways of falling in love in a digital world

•  What have your thousand and one anxieties?
•  Looking for lost time and not find it. You?
•  I listen to The Smiths, on New Years Eve ... this charming man asks his wishes for 2011.
•  The Smiths, oh yes those are old memories. What good grounder.
•  Here's a picture to a stranger.
•  A stranger who begins the year with you.

It is a fact that online dating websites we have returned to writing, a way to communicate beyond the presence that allows us to invent, create a fiction of ourselves, not because we are false, finally, "person" its Latin etymology, means wearing a mask, be a certain way, a character. Love on the Internet usually begins with a sentence and is followed by a series of emails before the first call to arrange an appointment. ¿Love Blind? Yes, it might be the best definition of the meetings over the network. But would not this be an opportunity to demystify writing and regain his sight? Show that you are so present when he writes, even more than when he speaks, more aware of the creative power of the word.

And although not all players in chats have a talent for literature, pretend not wait to Jane Austin or Marcel Proust behind the keyboard, the screen provides certain freedoms and reconnects us with fiction. We are more daring, more poets, magicians and even more certain. Although the meetings in the digital age have a bad reputation and involve the range of hazardous tasteless, not digital device problem but sometimes life is revealed dangerous and sometimes tasteless.

Falling in love in the digital age is not reduced, in my opinion, to have a computer or an Internet phone, our lives are not the same, with new technology and communication today, we rely on digital devices that have changed radically our forms of expression, language has been modified, for example, Twitter only allows a specific number of words. The speed with which we pass more and shipping is almost immediate. We spend much of our time on the network, both in our working life and social manage our bank accounts, buy airline tickets, read the newspaper, listen to music, take care to acquire the supermarket and clothing on the Internet, why not search love there too?

The city is a scenario that could run into characters, cross at corners, sight in restaurants and peer through its windows. However, once it passes the time of the faculty and friends 'parties, when one goes to the same office every day and already knows all the prim @ s @ s solter their friends' s, the possibilities reduced. The chance encounters at the grocery store, park, cinema or bars are rare people go out in groups, and the approach is complicated.

Falling in love in the digital age is not like fairy tales for adults, or films in which chance plays its trump card and the players are crossing a bridge or stumble and recognize love. No, these are concepts too new (although aging). The meeting sites are similar, further to the marriage arrangements of our grandmothers, where you search someone's profile as cultural affinities, educational, political and social. Even ask the browser, as if we were writing a letter to Santa Claus, who wants children, be professional, do not smoke and likes pets. The site's search engine works tirelessly tying profiles, even when you sleep. The profile is also an outline, people continually modify it, edit it, change the picture. This may seem a calculation, though novels roses are even more fanciful and easier to go to one of the dating sites like Match, eHarmony, Mexican or Latin Cupid Love to meet someone, who going into the street. These sites have been so successful that some newspapers and magazines have included a section of search engines and encounters in virtual pages.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook have helped Cupid at work. In Mexico the use of social networks grew 23% in a year from a 32% in 2009 to 55% in 2010. Facebook allows encounters with old acquaintances, former co-school or college, or a friend of several known that appears on the suggestions complete with photo. Twitter, meanwhile, is able to relate more effectively to two strangers who share interests, and following someone else can become a metaphor for love obsession. Blogs also have witnessed the marriage, as some bloggers not only share ideas and opinions, but also moods and opening privacy. The assiduous reader, and even more if you leave comments, feel involved in the life of another person, to imagine a degree of complicity could prove non-existent or poorly matched.

In addition, falling in love in the cyber age is not limited to computers, extends to phones connected to the network, to digital cameras. I am convinced that digital has also transformed our body language, how to woo. Perhaps it does not change is that we can develop intuition about people, love to digital requires the ability to read between the lines. Other factors that can deny the excitement, as the supposed "chemistry" between two people, which is able to get rid of a blow the castles of megabytes in our imagination. The rejection in digital can be very painful, it is not just the indifference of a stranger, but someone with whom he corresponded and who may have stirred emotions in us.


And yet there are very fine stories:

Exchanged more than two hundred fifty e-mails before meeting in Paris. She, a Mexican woman over fifty years, he, his contemporary, a man who lives in Australia. Were contacted on Christmas Eve, two lonely with many miles away. He wrote every day, counted their lives, shared music, copied poems. The couriers were doing everyday, family, indispensable. Gathered in Paris, city of love and midpoint between Mexico and Australia. In a hotel in the rue Snake looked for the first time, or perhaps treatment will have been seen before by Skype, or photography. Does it smelled for the first time? Did you discover the feel of another? Is it tested? I dunno, I think in writing are the five senses, there is something in it caress. They were on the plane back to each house, daydreaming with the meeting, with a common life. Two days passed before the first response, the time difference with Australia is not translated spiritual synchronicity. A month later, she traveled to Australia, where he lives happily married for five years.


However, not all digital crushes are so lucky. Many are synonymous with disappointment, boredom and disagreements.

I know another beautiful story of a friend of my mother who was widowed a few years ago, one of her close friends asked him to help him compose a message in English for foreign dating site. That was how, without being registered under his name, met her current husband, exchanging messages until he decided to go to Ohio and find it personally. They married in a boat on the river, she invited her children and perhaps came in spirit, her late husband, smile at her new love. Because finally, what is the border between the virtual and real. Does not it also virtual presence?