Love in the Time of Technology

One fine evening, I witnessed a conversation as I waited for the breeze to get louder. I carry it till date.

A charming man. A beautiful woman. They were sitting with each other in a cafe which had dim lights with Leonard Cohen playing with the cool breeze.

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It looked like they had just met in person. More on the lines of a judgement call. Not many people were around so the voices were quite clear and of course, the demeanour.

He said, “I am quite surprised. I had a different picture of you in my mind. You look nothing like your profile picture and the text messages we shared.”

She kept looking at him, overwhelmed and offended, “What picture you had in mind?”

He said, “ You seemed very adventurous and outgoing. You face also looked very different. The energy was different. Now I feel, I have just met you. A new person. A different person.”

She said, “ I could say the same thing.” She didn’t feel like plunging into details. She was bored. She took out her phone and started swiping the screen gently. She wanted to feel important and create another image in his mind. She isn’t needy. She isn’t here to be judged.

The conversation ahead went back and forth, with random fillings and mentions of how different they were and what they share as common.

After an hour or so, post a drink, they both were busy on their phone. It looked like a search began again. They talked about the friends/acquaintance they had in common. The pubs and cafes they visit and their profession. I kept waiting for them to ask each other as to who they were. It seemed like I was more eager to know who they were than them. Their face and their eyes had reflections of new faces that appeared on the phone. They weren’t patient enough to look at each other and relate to it. It was quite a date. A digital date. I had some idea but I could see what it meant for the first time. They left with a cordial hug and lots of questions. It was evident. It was a digital date. Very technical, very calculated, very inhuman. Dating in the age of social media, we say.

The idea of love evolved in me over the years. A teenager related to it as love at first sight, an adult still believed in it but there were cautions and love was redefined over the years. But, it meant the same thing all these years and it continues to do so. Love meant so many things. Scented letters, flowers, music, vinyl records, fragrance, places, touch, feel, and believe. That means something else now.

Change is the only constant. We change with time and situations. What we understand and what we don’t understand. What we don’t like and what we like and how it is okay to admit that you don’t comprehend something instead of blindly following it. Stop, think, and talk. Digital love is intriguing. The lesser you want to know, the more it appears on your feed. Social media has developed a new anti-social movement that is consuming us by the day. The feeds are all filled up with nasty feelings, irreversible heartbreaks, self-love which seems like more of self-loathing and of course, loveless conversations about love. One is funny, unromantic, carefree, the other is a realist and believes in practical negotiations, one is non-believer and other, scared. Actually, all of them are scared. Of appearing to be ‘uncool’ by digital standards, on not having any substance in real life, of not being who they are, of not liking what they actually like, of not making choices, of not knowing who they are in the first place.

The digital space offers us so many things. More friends we have never met, free music, funny memes to get through the day, party notifications, freedom to say whatever we want even though we aren’t interested in the topic and last of all, likes, hearts, compliments, response, a measurement of how much we matter.

Meeting new people is always fun and such interactions teach you so much. The question is do we even have the attention span left in us to get to know someone, giving them and ourselves some time to figure it out. Why are we more focused on harsh memes and one liners to get through the day. Where did we lose it all? When did we surrender so hopelessly and mistook a few likes and swaps for romance? The old-school, the classic the evergreen romance of waiting for a glimpse, of talking through the eyes, of wanting more, of passion, of love. The endless scrolling gets us nowhere, the black mirror is making everything invisible so why we keep looking into it?

Where is the analog of love? In a world of never-ending group chats, pop-up messages, edited pouts and skin tones, the organics of love and other things went missing and how many actually realized that they lost it somewhere. Everyone is busy consolidating the variety and handle it all.

A self obsorbed realm of self-celebration and a cry for help and attention.

What are the collectibles now to cherish and remember in the future? A visual monologue.

A trapped version of self?

A mediocre sense of being?

A confused sense of being?

As much as we might daydream about quitting it all and curse the digital era, we will still keep anticipating parting ways with it. We are not ready to toss the black screens away. We try to improve but in vain.

Maybe, a sense of balance might help for now or these digital fortresses will collapse the foundation of many things, and most importantly, the meaning of love which now is popularly called, “modern love”.

From the February-March 2018 issue of FHM India.