Stranger Love: Young People's Stories of Finding Connection Online

By Isabella M. Vaccaro

Why is dating online so hard? Do dating apps even work? And how do I foster healthy online dating habits? 

Drawing from thirty first-hand stories, Stranger Love: Young People's Stories of Finding Co

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637300947

Book preview

Stranger Love

Young People’s Stories of Finding Connection Online

Isabella M. Vaccaro

new degree press

copyright © 2021 Isabella M. Vaccaro

All rights reserved.

Stranger Love

Young People’s Stories of Finding Connection Online

ISBN

978-1-63676-926-4 Paperback

978-1-63676-990-5 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-094-7 Digital Ebook

Contents

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Stranger Love

Introduction

Chapter 1

Dating, Evolved

Chapter 2

SwipeLand

Chapter 3 - Part 1

The Friendly Yellow Ghost

Chapter 3 - Part 2

The Friendly Yellow Ghost

Chapter 4

The Glorious ‘Gram

Chapter 5

Living, Breathing, AI Cyborgs

Chapter 6

The Love That Flows from Cash

Chapter 7

Intentional Everything

Chapter 8

Sexting the Chameleon

Chapter 9

‘Til It Happens to You

Chapter 10

The Ice Cream Aisle

Chapter 11

It Gets Less Strange

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Prologue

Stranger Love

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My eyes were beginning to blur from staring too hard at the sun from inside my train car. It was my favorite part about riding the Metro-North Line to and from Connecticut and New York City in the summertime. If you picked the right seat, and angled yourself in a certain way, you could get a decent tan in an hour and twenty minutes.

I wasn’t really focused on tanning during this ride, though. I was trying to rationalize why I had upended my weekend at home in Connecticut—a nice respite from my summer internship in Manhattan—to go and meet up with a boy I knew I didn’t like.

Austin and I met in an Introduction to Marketing class during my freshman year of college and, even armed with the knowledge that one of my close friends had drunkenly made out with him at a pool party and still kind of crushed on him, I couldn’t help but stare from my stake in the back of the lecture hall instead of learning about product, price, promotion, and, well, I forget the last P. As I said, I wasn’t really paying attention.

I think Austin started to notice my staring because one day he came over and introduced himself, and before I knew it, we were working on a group project together with a shaggy-haired boy from Morocco and my friend, Sarah. Each time our group strolled out of class together, Austin and I always slowed our steps just a half-beat from the other two until we were yards behind them and could talk, just the two of us, on our way back to the dorms.

Austin was sweet. A little nerdy almost, but seriously athletic, and he was Italian, which meant our first date was at a pasta place. Sometimes we’d hang out at the pool at his apartment, and then he’d order pizza. I wonder what kind of food guys would choose if my looks and last name didn’t scream, Bring me for pasta! The thing is, I had a lot of fun with Austin, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. But, after we’d finish our pizza or our pasta or whatever kind of Italian food we were eating, and he’d pull me in for a kiss, I sadly wished I was still tasting that pepperoni instead of his lips.

The attraction just wasn’t there, as hard as I tried to convince myself that it was. And I tried. I tried for the rest of that semester of freshman year. And I tried again when he asked me on a date the first week of sophomore year. So, why now, did I leave my family early on a Sunday afternoon to go get drinks or something in the city with Austin?

Well, simply put, I was desperate. Desperate for connection. Desperate for some male attention. Okay, let me just say it, desperate for a boyfriend. When Austin had DMed me on Instagram a few days prior, saying how much he would like to catch up with me over drinks or something, I was thrilled! I’d forgotten all about the annoying way he used to say ‘jeez’ and the complete numbness that washed over my body when our lips met. He was an attractive male who was nice and sweet and perfect boyfriend material, and maybe the third time would be the charm, my delusional brain chattered to itself. At the moment, I hadn’t even stopped to wonder why he had reached out to me via Instagram DMs when he clearly had my number. It didn’t matter! I was going on a date, and I couldn’t have been happier.

That night, once I got off the train and rode the subway back to my shoebox apartment in Williamsburg—which sat atop a noisy nightclub ironically named Privilege, from which you’d hear the occasional, all in good fun, gunshot on a random Thursday night—I anxiously awaited a notification from Instagram. And, as the sun set over the Williamsburg Bridge and the sweet sound of old school rap stole through our windows (because, yes, Privilege was even popping on Sundays), that little pink and orange logo never materialized.

I checked a couple of times to see if the little green dot next to Austin’s name would indicate if he was online or not. He was. But no message. Finally, at around 7 p.m., I DMed and asked him what the plan was. Two hours later, he said he was super sorry and that he got caught up in meetings and could we please reschedule. Unfortunately, I was emotionally past the point of rescheduling, having already curled up in the lap of my roommate, a stream of my tears spilling out onto her leggings. I’d been stood up. It just didn’t seem like Austin. But, then again, neither did sliding into my Instagram DMs. And it was no skin off his back! Yeah, sure, browse through your feed while I bust a gut waiting for you to make a plan. It was almost as if Instagram had let him off the hook for completely floundering in the communication department.

And, in a way, it had. Most of the way we communicate today—digitally—is casual and noncommittal. Whether we’re meeting on dating apps, making plans on Snapchat, or reconnecting with an old fling on Instagram, the liability our parents’ generation faced when setting dates over the phone or on a front porch has gone out the window. I realized if I ever wanted to be a part of a real romantic relationship, I’d better figure out how to play the game of digital love.

Introduction

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This is not a how-to book. It’s not a self-help book for lonely Gen Zers or a memoir of my failed attempts at love. This—Stranger Love—is an exploration of my generation’s forays into romance amidst the backdrop of the digital world. Today, 86 percent of eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds are on some type of social media, and 48 percent are using dating apps.¹² In 2017, meeting online officially surpassed meeting through friends as the number-one way people form romantic relationships.³

In each chapter of this book, I have recounted stories from college students I have interviewed over the last year and their experiences in dating and hooking up in the digital love era. These are real stories from real people, though, at times, you might think they’re made up. At the end of each chapter, I have posed questions on topics such as: can I really find a soulmate on dating apps?, why Snapchat might not be the best tool in romantic partnerships, how to express your intentions online, and more. And with the help of experts, I’ve answered these questions in hopes of creating a dialogue around navigating the nebulous online world.

The Stories

During my years at college, I’ve collected more hook up horror stories and dating fails than I care to admit. And, believe it or not, they’re not all mine. My friends and peers at my college, as well as at other universities around the country, have some pretty wild stories, too. Most of which have transpired in part—or entirely—online. I wrote this book not to expose the tragic mishaps that plague college dating, though it does add some fun, but to illuminate what failed in terms of communication and forming connections online.

Answering Our Questions

Just like sex-ed is meant to arm you with a bundle of knowledge to go out and engage in life’s most popular activity, why shouldn’t there be a manual on how to handle Instagram DMs and what to say to a match on Bumble? I certainly didn’t know in what order to place my Hinge profile photos or how to expedite getting on that first date before I started writing this book, and I figured if I didn’t, then perhaps others have questions, too. Plus, the questions are where I get to show off all the cool people I’ve talked to who’ve made it their livelihood to help people fall in love. Dating coaches, dating app CEOs, authors, and other experts helped me help you get to the bottom of communicating and connecting in our digital culture.

My Inspiration

In twenty-one years, I’ve found my romantic connections to be few and far between and with much left to be desired. My mom and therapist always chalked it up to things like, you’re mature beyond your years, and you’re too intimidating or even you’re looking too hard, blah blah blah. And while all that might very well be true, that didn’t stop me from searching every corner of every bar, club, and frat party at college for my soulmate. Seriously—I can’t recall a single time dabbing on makeup and choosing the perfect outfit to wear dancing that wasn’t an attempt to attract my perfect match. And when that failed, I turned to dating apps to fill what I saw as a shameful and ugly hole in my life.

In researching and writing this book, I have come to understand that the mediums through which we meet and communicate with people today are not always working to our advantage. And the reason why many millennials and Gen-Zers refuse to label their relationships, thus existing in hook-up-land till their mid-thirties, is due, in part, to the way television and cinema reinforce this casual culture with their all-too-familiar no-strings-attached narratives.⁴

And while I am definitely not placing blame outside of myself for my own downfalls, I do have to take into consideration the way my environment—Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, Hinge, and the likes—has played a part in my experience thus far. Over the course of this book journey, not only have I been through the wringer of self-discovery, but I have also gained an understanding of how to take control of this environment and make good-old-fashioned, hearty, and meaningful connections with people.

Stranger Love is a tribute to all of those years stuck in the murk trying to figure out what connection really is and how to capture it in the realm of social media and dating apps. Don’t be fooled: it can be, at times, shocking, scary, and steamy as hell, but the lessons are invaluable. It’s a laugh-and-a-cry-at-yourself type of read that, I hope, will also arm you with some useful skills in using these platforms for good. So, college students, recent grads, even high schoolers, or forty-somethings trying to figure out what the heck an emoji is—if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep reading to find out how we can conquer the digital love age, once and for all.

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1 Aaron Smith, Record Shares of Americans Now Own Smartphones, Have Home Broadband, Pew Research Center, January 12, 2017.

2 Emily A. Vogels, 10 Facts about Americans and Online Dating, Pew Research Center, January 12, 2017.

3 Michael J. Rosenfeld et al., Disintermediating Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaces Other Ways of Meeting., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116 no. 36 (September 2019): 17753–17758.

4 Sarah Whitton, Does the Hook-Up Culture Signal the End of Marriage? Psychology Today, April 18, 2019.

Chapter 1

Dating, Evolved

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Find anything? Aiden mumbled to Luke, not looking up from his phone screen.

Luke looked at his boyfriend, who was red-eyed and in a Grindr-induced trance that only comes after hour three of perusing the grid.

Nope. You? Luke shot back, growing weary of his and Aiden’s Friday night routine. Drink, smoke, make out a little, then scroll through Grindr for three to four hours looking for a third guy to join them in sex. It was as enjoyable a routine as having to clean your toilet every couple of weeks, except this happened every weekend.

Let’s keep looking, Aiden persisted, again not even bothering to look up at his agitated boyfriend.

It hadn’t always been this way. Luke remembered the first couple of weeks of his relationship with Aiden. It was good. They’d had a lot of sex—just the two of them—and it was passionate, not like the random one-night stands he usually found on Grindr or Tinder. It was Aiden’s idea to open the relationship, and Luke, not wanting to lose this semblance of a