The Price Bloggers Must Pay

After ending my last post on a rather unusually melancholy note, I was determined that the next post would contain as much feeling and emotion as that possessed by a mortician dissecting a corpse. Thus I sat prepared, waiting for some bizarre and preferably evil topic to blog about; the more evil and more bizarre the better. Usually inspiration hits me within a few hours; yes, it is no hardship to stumble onto such things in today’s day and age. There’s always some cross dressing celebrity couple, blockbuster movie launch or other miscellaneous nonsense to comment upon.

However, despite my best efforts, nothing came. My mind was as dry as one of my patented and pathetic pick-up lines, and as blank as the expression on the unlucky recipient’s face. I suppose it is to be expected; how often have we failed to do something that usually comes so naturally to us, simply because this time we’re actually trying!

Days flew by; nothing. In desperation, I even turned to Facebook and other people’s blogs to look for inspiration. Perhaps if I saw what everyone else was talking about, I’d stumble upon a direction to go. But that didn’t help much either; most people simply wrote about their life experiences, which on the whole were rather miserable.

And then, just when I was about to give up, someone tried to set me up on a date. Thank you GOD!

No, my gratitude to the heavens is not because I’m single and desperate. Far from it; I was just grateful because finally I had something to write about! Granted, I have already written a post about dating back in April (“My Reason for Blogging…!”) but this time around I wanted to dwell on another aspect with regards to dating; i.e., the setup!

Have you ever set someone up on a date? Perhaps you’ve been the one whose been set up? As far as I can recall, I’ve definitely not set anyone up on a date, and the one time that I was a victim to this ploy it ended in disaster! But we’ll get back to that later.

The entire concept of setting up two individuals, both of whom are usually your friends, on a date together just boggles the mind. How am I supposed to decide whether two individuals will suddenly develop chemistry together? What criteria am I supposed to qualify them for each other? Yes, one of them is a boy, the other is a girl; after that, well it’s anyone’s guess really. Similar tastes and similar outlooks don’t necessarily mean ‘love at first sight’, in the same way that ‘opposites attract’ doesn’t quite work either.

The main issue I have with the whole process is this; the match-making business involves reducing the people involved simply to ‘players’, almost like tokens on a board game. Allow me to illustrate. When I was a kid I used to collect trading cards of NBA players. Each card would have a player’s name, photo, and his career stats. Then using those cards you compare them with others, calling out one of the stats in which you feel your player is strongest in, in order to trump out the opponents. In that respect, if I owned a Shaquille O’Neal card, and I called out field goal percentage or rebounds, I’d definitely beat out Kobe Bryant, whose stats in those departments are lower, simply because he’s a good 6 inches shorter than Shaq and plays a completely different position. However, that doesn’t mean that Shaq would win in a one-on-one game; no statistic can express Kobe’s ability to get to the rim, his quickness, his reflexes or his athleticism.

The same is true about match-making. The fact of the matter is no person, no matter how simple he or she may be, can be summarised into a set of ‘qualities’. Besides, in spite of how well you know a person, there is no way that you can really ‘know’ him/her. The ability to gauge people’s character and true personality is a rare gift, and I’m sure that most of the match-makers out there are not in possession of it. Let’s remember that this is romance we’re talking about, not just ‘making friends’. Aren’t these type of relationships supposed to be spontaneous and, well, ‘romantic’? What happened to the chance meeting, the accidental coffee spill, the ‘oh alright I’ll drop you home, though I really don’t want to’, the shared smile, the stolen glance? Being set up with someone kind of eliminates all that, because now there’s expectation, which makes any form of chemistry seem contrived.

As for hooking up with friends, well, I for one do not see how two individuals who are friends can suddenly try to be partners in romance. Sure, we get along well, we’re of the same age group, we think alike; but heck, that’s why we’re friends! Just because it may seem like ‘a good idea’ doesn’t mean I can press the secret switch hidden on my right butt cheek, go into ‘romance’ mode and see what happens. This goes along the lines of every woman’s complaint about how they can’t be just friends with guys because we apparently expect ‘more’. However, these same women can be found all huddled together over coffee, trying to mix and match their friends together like some kind of human card game.

Bottom line: match-making doesn’t work. And even in the rare occasion that it does work, it shouldn’t! I would hate to be in a relationship with someone that happened because someone else thought it would be a good idea. That would mean

a) I’m not as deep and difficult to understand as I thought I was; which means I’m shallow.
b) I’m miserable when I’m single, which is why I was set up in the first place.
c) I don’t have a hope in hell of meeting good looking intelligent girls on my own.
d) The only reason this person met me at all was because of her friendship with our mutual friend.
e) That mutual friend is now sitting back and feeling like god.

But when my friend tried to set me up, I admit that it wasn’t the above reasons that got to me. The real sting came because she assumed I was single without asking. Apparently, only single men are jobless enough to maintain a blog.

A dagger in the manhood, that was. And I thought chicks dig bloggers. That date doesn’t sound so bad all of a sudden.