Fuck Tinder, Go Outside.
No one has to look anyone in the eye any more. You can sit in your job doing digital Godknowswhat, collect a paycheck, order food, watch movies, laugh with friends, talk to your parents, almost anything online. You can even find a significant other online. But why? Why would you even want to?
Initiating contact via the internet rubs me as cowardly. I’ve downloaded the apps, I’ve tried to buy in but I can’t. Nothing replaces the act of going up to a person and making contact with them and being able to overcome that initial nervousness.
I live in a new city now so I am always looking for ways to expand my social circle beyond my fingertips and phone screen. Being new means I get to redefine who I am, I count myself lucky for that. That’s the freedom that allows me to go outside and meet people. Make mistakes, adjust my game plan and improve. Those are the skills moving forward that will become intangible. Have a business meeting with your boss and you can’t look him in the eye, will he read you as shifty and nervous? Is that the tone you want to give off? Fuck Tinder, go outside.
The internet as we use it has become one big self-editable mirror. You snore when you sleep, don’t put that in your eHarmony profile, no one wants to sleep next to a chainsaw at night. Insecure about the acne scar you got in 7th grade? We’ve got the perfect filter for that. What of that is real?
Go outside. Everyone walking around is just as flawed, insecure and oblivious as you. We’ve all hurt and been hurt, that’s the natural push and pull of life. You can’t let your scars make you an ugly person or even worse some jumbled up mess of 1’s and 0’s that swipe right and left as if they’re accomplishing something.
Invest in your own growth, go places you have actual interest in. You spend all that time watching Love and Hip Hop, why not go to the theatre? It’s just as dramatic, believe it or not the same things happening in LHH Atlanta have been written about in plays from Shakespeare and more. Join a book club, amateur sports league, whatever it is that helps you disconnect from being plugged in.
In those spaces are where you’re going to find people who share common interests and goals. Those are the people who are going to bring you up, not bring you down or keep you the same. I’ve got faith in you, you can make it happen.
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