If you haven’t entered a pseudo relationship thanks to social media, kindly hand me your twenty-something card so I can revoke it.

On November 22, 2012, I did something I never fathomed doing: stood in line like an asshole for a Black Friday sale. I always grimaced at those people who would fiend for discounted televisions until I became one of them. While standing in line for my 26-inch Proscan TV, I took up a direct message chat via Twitter with a young lad I only vaguely knew from one party back in the day.

“You should come to D.C.” Those words were the catalyst for my pseudo relationship thanks to social media. Let’s be serious: I don’t even live in the District of Columbia. But, “You should come to Lansdowne, Virginia” didn’t hold as much appeal.

I got my Twitter wish a few months later, but not until I was fully entrenched in a dizzying orbit of subtweets, direct messages and Skype chats. The social media gods had fully converted me. I was hooked, a moth to a digital flame. Thankfully, if you’ve paid an ounce of attention to the trajectory of my blog posts, I am no longer spinning in that confusing sphere.

I almost did a “TWENTIES UNSCRIPTED POLL” about this topic today, eager to ask if social media has made dating easier or more difficult. I then generalized that most people would say “more difficult” and decided against crowd sourcing. I find myself writing more and more about technology (whether it be texting, social media, etc.) and the tangled web it weaves when it comes to twenty-something dating. It’s impossible not to acknowledge the unforeseen landmines modern technology ejects into our dating lives.

Despite my I will say that it is impossible to know someone entirely or get to know someone via social media. If you looked at my tweets, you’d probably think I were a dumb ass, a jackass, a smart ass, or just a plain ass. You’d only be partly correct. Like most public displays of personality, social media is only one panel of a person.

Nonetheless, it becomes easy to get wrapped up in an online rendezvous–need I say Catfish? That’s an extreme example, sure. But, if you get bored or like flattery, you’re not above doing stupid shit when it comes to pseudo dating, whether that means hanging on to every text a person sends, stalking someone’s ex on Facebook, or hosting 150-line Gchats. Stupid shit encompasses a broad range of behavior and I can almost guarantee you’ve engaged in it at one point or another. If No? Hand me your twenty-something card again.

A few punches of a button on your iPhone 4S and you think you’re suddenly en route to a relationship. Meanwhile, the person on the other end is typing some saccharine one-liners while they simultaneously play FIFA, hardly giving two fucks about the digital connection you believe is transpiring. Take it from a scarred veteran: relationships do not exist on screens. They do not exist via text messages.  They do not exist on Skype. They do not exist on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any other platform that some college dropout built for you to waste hours a day browsing. Relationships exist in person.

You build in person. You build when you are together and pheromones are flying. Everything else is necessary fluff that only pacifies the sting of someone’s absence.

Xoxo,

Tyece