Offline Dating by Samuel Abrahams is the short film taking the dating world by storm.
Whatever happened to ‘their eyes met across a crowded room’? Yes, online dating is a lifeline for those who find approaching someone they are interested in difficult, but it has become the de-facto way of establishing that first contact and turned us into a generation of ‘cold convenience daters‘.
Tom (pictured) is quite a good-looking guy, yet there are many cringe worthy instances in the film where he is awkwardly rejected. It’s no wonder so many people, especially here in London, feel the need to shut themselves away and date online.
People have become so much more un-approachable in the modern age and apps like Tinder & Grindr are in many people’s minds the only gateway to romance or sex even if “swiped right” is not the grandiose love story we’d like to tell our kids.
Personally, I don’t believe that it is any easier to date online; like everything, online dating has a complex set of rules and tricks to get results; but there is one thing that it has beat over its offline counterpart – rejection.
It’s so much easier to reject and ‘accept’ rejection online. So much so that I don’t feel that many of us actually accept being rejected, just kid ourselves with the notion of ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, NEXT! After all, ignorance truly is bliss – online dating is here, it’s the future and there is nothing any of us can do about that; or is there?
Time for a reality check – online dating isn’t actually the real problem, we are. There is already so much ignorance in the world, some evil, and some innocent – this particular kind of ignorance falls into the evil variety because it’s a silent killer of love. Ignorance of rejection assassinates the love we all need to feel for ourselves creating further hate and animosity in the world.
Rather than hate on the tools, how about we all edit our method and every once in a while, admit to ourselves that it fucking hurts to be rejected, let that emotion sink in and actually reflect on it and then move on and try again. Who knows, maybe our reflection will allow us to brave giving offline dating a try. To feel those butterflies fluttering in our stomachs and truly be okay with it, maybe even excited – hmmm, perhaps romance is making a comeback after all.
