Modern Love: So Not Crush-Worthy

Published Jul 11 2006, 04:36 PM by Sharon Steel

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who is regularly disturbed by the New York Times' Modern Love essays. This week, Theodora Stites takes us into the bone-chilling world of the online social networking scene. Way to pick up on the trend stories. People keep in touch via the Web?!!

Stites spends most of her word count here bragging about the many online communities to which she belongs--it's an exhausting laundry-list, and I'm wondering whether she's at all embarrassed by the amount of thought she puts into not only maintaining her personal pages, but her shameless admission that she'd rather experience a well-connected fake life on a machine than in reality. Worse yet, she says most of her (my) entire generation operates this way. Huh? Yeah, I like my extended network as much as the next person. This, though, is unnerving: "I live for Friendster views, profile comments and the Dodgeball messages that clog my cellphone every night. I prefer, in short, a world cloaked in virtual intimacy. It may be electronic, but it is intimacy nevertheless." What the fug? She probably reads Chuck Klosterman books on her BlackBerry so that she can scroll down instead of turn the page.

It's astonishing that despite the immense amount of self-justification, Stites refrains from divulging exactly how many friends she has. How coy. So how come I can't find her anywhere on MySpace or Friendster? Don't hide, Theodora. I need to know who else you roll with, besides the dude that runs Flavorpill and Dennis Crowley--both of whom you gratuitously name-drop, just to make sure we know that you're for real. And that you do hang out with hip, important people on weekends. You're not home alone, playing D&D in meta-looking Yahoo chat rooms.

Usually, Modern Love will at least devote a couple of sentences on the author's exploding, dead, or dying relationship with someone. There's an epiphany. A moment where some deeper understanding has been reached for author and reader. They're always well-written, though lacking in subtlety. What does Sites tell us? That she is hopelessly, completely, head-over-heels in love with the Internets.