Gatsby & OkCupid

Don't you just love the title of this post? It's like a Lewis Carroll riddle! How is a raven like a writing desk? What do Gatsby and an internet-dating site have in common?

Read and learn.

About six months ago, Stephen and I went out to grab dinner. We sat down at a neighborhood Thai joint and started sipping iced tea. I think Stephen was talking about the upcoming Star Trek film. I logically chimed in with, "Ooh, did you see the announcement of the new Baz Luhrmann version of Great Gatsby?" To which Stephen responded:

"Wait, which one was The Great Gatsby? I don't think I liked that one."

This was followed by an hour of heated argument where I eloquently expressed the merits of F. Scott Fitzgerald and 20th century American literature, and Stephen said he thought Nick was kind of a lame narrator and he didn't understand why this was such a big deal. Slamming down a spring roll, I hurled:

"Sometimes I don't understand how we're dating!"

Hyperbole? Maybe. But I'm an English major, and we can get away with this sort of thing.

Apparently you can date a person for more than five years without realizing that they "didn't really like" one of your favorite novels. I own three copies of The Great Gatsby--the one I read in high school, with my sixteen-year-old's notes, the one I read in college, with my twenty-year-old's notes, and a third that just came to me. (Sometimes paperbacks just materialize out of the universe, right?) Also, I'd like to point out that we have a print of the cover of Gatsby hanging in our apartment. Writing this now, it occurs to me that Stephen probably has no idea what that is.

And therein the riddle lies: If I was on OkCupid, there is no way I would let this kind of thing slide.

Having dated someone for more than five years, I'm of course not on OkCupid. I'd like to take this opportunity to disclaim that I'm about to give an opinion on something I have zero firsthand experience with. But that said, a lot of my friends are on it, and I find it . . . fascinating. It's up there with Uber--yeah, okay, cool idea, but I'm still not going to try it.

I have one friend who met an actual boyfriend on OkCupid. I have another friend who met the guy in real life, but then they reconnected and started dating after finding each other through the site. I have a few friends who have been on some mediocre dates. And then, I have whole lot of friends who never go on any dates at all. I feel like they might do some messaging? I don't really know. I think they mostly just click around. But really, it's this part, the screening process, that interests me most.

I was at a party recently where some OkCupid-ers were rehashing an argument that they'd all had on a recent camping trip. Someone had admitted to screening potential dates by their ability with grammar (or lack thereof). Apparently everyone ganged up on the grammarian and he was deemed snobbish and elitist, and he spent a good part of the rest of the weekend sulking in the wilderness. I was shocked. "But of course you'd judge someone based on their ability to communicate!" I exclaimed.

"Well, you're an editor," one girl shrugged. "I feel like that's different."

What? But then again, it's not like my boyfriend writes gorgeous and on-point emails. Don't get me wrong, he's the cleverest kid I know, but writing is not his forte.

My friend Karen is one of my favorite OkCupid enigmas. First of all, she outrageously under-mentions her interest in internet cat videos. Then, she holds men to mythologically high standards. Karen, if you're reading this, I'm actually really glad you're on OkCupid. I find it highly amusing.

Dating someone the old-fashioned way, you inevitably discover that you have different interests. You learn from each other. You also get into admittedly stupid arguments over Thai food. But you experience new things that you wouldn't unless you had that person in your life.

It's also weird what you can have in common with someone, without even realizing it. Stephen and I were attracted to each other before we realized that we both came from large families, had black-and-white tuxedo cats growing up, sucked our thumbs to a borderline embarrassing age, are both the rarest Myers-Briggs personality type (INTP), love PG Wodehouse and hilariously idiotic narrators in general, and harbor a healthy skepticism for anyone who believes too blindly and whole-heartedly in anything (that includes God and political parties and sports teams). It's entirely possible that the selection of young men that OkCupid would sort for me might have as much in common. But I don't know. I kind of like to think that Stevie and I were MFEO.

My theory is that OkCupid is supposed to pre-match good contenders for you, but it inevitably fails, because people don't actually know what they want. Please note, that's not the same as the old adage, "never dating someone who's good for you," which is a variation on the theme of "she always chooses terrible men." I'm not going to get into the psychoanalysis of who's good for your mental and emotional well-being. All I'm arguing is that you don't actually know what you want. No one can anticipate the many ways that a partner who is different from you is going to enrich your life and make you happy.

So, as a non-expert bystander, I say go au naturel! Hook up with more guys at bars. Or better yet, try to choreograph some meet-cutes. That's a better idea. An Italian tourist tried to hit on me at the Academy of Sciences last week. If you're single and unemployed, that could be a great way to go!

Also, does anybody want to go see Gatsby next month? Because apparently I don't have a date.