Around the beginning of this year I was single and alone. Or I felt single and alone, hard to say for sure if I really was that way. For sure that story would make a far more interesting read than this one, but this is not the time nor the place. Maybe in few months, maybe in few years.
Anyway, I felt single and alone and I entertained the thought of joining a dating site. And in fact I did, I joined not one, but two sites. Not for very long, though. The first one for maybe 2-3 days, the second one for a single day. To be honest, I did not like the experience. When you feel alone what you need is help, and what I felt joining those sites was being taken advantage of. My money seemed very important to them, more important than gaining my trust first, also my information seemed very important. So important that one site actually asked for money to fully delete my profile. And during that brief time I had my profile visible I felt ashamed of myself. Maybe because I had to give so much information about myself and this sent me far outside my comfort zone. Maybe because I did not believe in what I was doing and I had no hope of any positive outcome. Maybe also because the last thing I needed then was somebody new in my life.
But this is not a story about dating sites or my love life. This is a story about technology.
In real life, where time is measured in seconds, minutes and sometimes hours, my encounters with the dating sites were brief. The total time I spend creating my profile and wondering around was brief, maybe an hour, at most two. Maybe the time it takes to see a movie, it doesn’t matter if you like it or not, if you totally forget it after few months. An insignificant amount of time at the scale of our life. Even at the scale of one month or one week. A momentary lapse of reason.
You and I may forget what we did few months ago, especially if the experience was not a particularly pleasant one, but the Internet does not forget. And it keeps reminding you what you did and what your “interests” are. Far too many times when I visit a page with ads, those ads are about dating sites. I cannot seem to find the button that says “I am with someone, I am not interested in dating anymore”.
I am wondering, maybe the button is in the Settings application of my Android phone. The one under “Location” that sets the location accuracy to “high”. The one that the great majority of people with Android phones have enabled and that makes their phone to continually send their location to Google, for “improved service”. Maybe if I switch it on and continuously send my location, Google will notice that for some time now, at night, my phone “sleeps” near another Android phone. And the ads to dating sites will change into traveling ads, or restaurant ads, or ads for whatever things couples do.
