Weekly Writing: OK Fine, Cupid
Friday, March 1, 2013 at 7:01PM Hello everyone and happy Friday! I'm so excited to announce a new section here on MDP called Weekly Writing! Let me introduce you to my incredibly talented friend Katelyn, who is the creator of the brand new blog Too Pretty for a Cubicle, and our new guest writer! I've illustrated a snippet of her latest piece entitled "OK Fine, Cupid"... Today's topic: online dating!
If scoffing at Match.com commercials while I watch my Thursday night lineup of NBC comedies, one hand in a bag of chocolate chips, the other on a spoon in a jar of peanut butter is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
Okay so maybe that exact scenario has only happened once or twice, but you get the idea. I thought online dating was stupid, pathetic, weird, etc. But as I near the other side of 25 and find myself unattached to anyone again, my also newly-single girlfriend changed my mind.
I’m not necessarily looking for my soul mate, or even a serious relationship online, but the way my girlfriend put it was, “Just get out there and date! Meet new people and expand your circle.” The more I thought about it as I looked over the sea of mustaches and plaid in the Silver Lake whiskey bar we were in, the more sense it made. I mean, she had a date that weekend after being on the site for just a few days.
Expanding my circle is the best description of what I hope to get out of my time online. See, I grew up, went to school, and now work in the same town about 30 miles north of Hollywood. As much as I love “Awesometown” (please don’t judge, that’s seriously what City Hall has deemed it) it’s a little too family-oriented for a twenty-something trying to date. My town, as populated as it is, is still too small a world to meet someone truly “new”. It seems like every guy I’ve met since college either knows, dated, or slept with someone I know…blah! So the first thing I did when I created my OKCupid account was set my location as the broader, Los Angeles.
Almost instantly I was met with a barrage of messages from guys that ranged from, “Hey, what’s up?” to, “Hey sexy do you model?” But the one that takes the cake has to be, “How many pairs of shoes do you have? Do you like to cuddle?” Ehhh… Luckily about 90% of the messages are somewhat normal so after weeding through the creeps, I chose a few guys to respond to.
The first thing I discovered about dating in LA is that I am the only person who was actually born here. Fine, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but seriously, you moved to LA from Nebraska, Ohio, Kentucky, because you want to be a director, writer, actor...more power to you, but it gets a little old. Unless you are Ben Affleck, I’m not impressed by your aspirations to produce a film.
And where are all of the Mikes, Christophers, and Sams? My first date was with a struggling stage actor-writer-director named Giorgio; then there was Ruben, and finally Hamilton…huh? Well regardless of their interesting names, it seems like most of these guys are looking for pen pals as opposed to dates. Perhaps it’s the curse of our instant-gratification generation, but I don’t want to tell you every detail of my life before I’ve met you in real life.
So far I’ve been on OKCupid for a little over a month and have seen more shirtless-in-the-bathroom mirror pictures than I’d like to admit (the ones with toilets in the background are my favorite…classy, gentlemen!) I haven’t made any love connections, but I have been semi-wined and dined and am on the road to successfully expanding my circle, getting over that first-date awkwardness, and definitely meeting truly “new” people. I still prefer to carouse North Hollywood’s dive bars and downtown’s hot spots with the girls to meet guys in real life, but I think I’ll keep up with my online extracurriculars for the time being as well.
Spoon, Writing, dating, katelyn, love, quote in Graphic Design, Inspiration, Weekly Writing 
