Living & Arts

Dubious encounters: dating in and out of the Swubble

In print | February 5, 2009

Once upon a very dark time, the Swarthmore dating scene had me desperate enough to start browsing the Craigslist personals. You know you’ve hit a romantic slump when they start to look attractive. The plausibility that my soul-mate, “m4w – 50 – (Springfield)” was at that very moment just waiting for me to come give him a passionate kiss at the Springfield Cinema was —on one dank, claustrophobic afternoon — utterly tantalizing. Alas, tragedy (or sanity) struck, and paralysis left me unable to do anything but stare at my computer. Agonizing over these ads, I thought about how much I resented the dating dynamics at Swarthmore until I started to see each and every dancing pixel that made up the screen. Damn you, pixels from hell! How you mock me! And so long, lost love, “m4w – 50 – (Springfield),” make-out laureate, man amongst boys. Sadly, I am either too damn senseless or too damn sane to come and get you.

Okay relationship veterans, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve been led to believe that the Craigslist dating scene is more dubious than that of our Swarthmore campus. Erroneous! Foolish assumptions! For I have probed the depths of DU basement, fought the ‘dactyls and propositioned naked Rugby men with single dollar-dollar bills.

So why, you might ask, is Craigslist any safer than our cozy little bubble? Well, at least you know what you’re getting into. Granted you might not know WHO you’re getting into, but at least people’s intentions are transparent. The point of my column this week is to illuminate the dynamics of the Swarthmore dating scene. For instance, why does it (did it) suck so bad for some of us at certain times? First of all, people barely leave campus, so the dating scene is more like a “hook-up culture.” The opportunity to hit it off with a crush comes about once per week if you don’t make it to Pub Nite, because campus becomes a wasteland on Friday nights as you all scuttle to Cornell like squirrels to finish your problem sets, and then rendezvous with your cronies for a badass Pirated TV party until the wee hours of the night (Rock on!). Most Swatties feel decadent allowing themselves one night of the weekend to “party.”

You see, I know you better than you know yourself. You’re a product of a very delicate social habitat. In my effort to make the Swarthmore hook-up culture more like Craigslist (by increasing the transparency of the Swattie’s intentions), I will elucidate the following Sexual Swattie Stereotypes. If you do not fit into one of these three categories as closely as a puzzle piece, you are clearly lying to yourself, your family and your peers. There are no other alternatives, so please come to terms with this now. Denial is a common but futile reaction.

You are either (1) Completely disinterested in (or unmotivated to pursue) sex and/or relationships for any slew of reasons. You may have just ended an unhealthy relationship or are working on your mental stability. Conversely, you may have convinced yourself you’re just “too busy” for romantic pursuits. While the first two cases are dubious, the legitimacy of Scenario Three is clear. You probably have two labs, plus you sing in Sixteen Feet, and with that schedule, you’d be doing a disservice to any girlfriend, spreading yourself so thin and all. On second thought, maybe it’s none of those three. Maybe you just haven’t yet gotten your foot in the love door. You have your platonic friendships and that satisfies you; Swarthmore runs the rest of your life, plus you’re a bit too naïve to care about what you’re missing. After all, you don’t really know what you are missing, or to what extent you are missing what you’re missing. OMG WHAT AM I MISSING???

Okay, so this is not you. I know you. Your name is Joe Bloggs. You are the type of guy that is decently good-looking. Congratulations! You’re not a gremlin! But because the number of beautiful people in the Bubble is so low, and the number of awkward-looking people is so high, the reasonably attractive are left with no one to compete with. By virtue of the deceptively low attractive-to-awkward ratio (aprox. 1:15 by my count), Bloggs is fooled into thinking he is some kind of (2) Paces Adonis. Now with an ego inflated like a hot air balloon, Joe only wants to hit it and quit it, like he was T-Pain. If only Joe would do an exchange program at Williams, perhaps he would come back having realized that the 1:15 ratio is only an illusion, and he might start to prepare for reality.

“No, Ambah,” you insist. “I’m a respekful guy, I swayah!” Unfortunately, I’ve fallen for that one before, but let’s assume you really are respectful and you’re a living, breathing person that I might consider dating at Swarthmore College. Could it be? Is it (s)he? Oh wait! Of course! If you’re not mentally/emotionally unavailable and you’re not insanely awkward then you’re … you guessed it, (3) Taken!

And so, after fleshing out the dynamic of the Swattie Sexual Stereotype — the couple, the Paces Adonis, the asexual, the emotionally unavailable and all that is Swawkward in between — I don’t feel quite as pathetic as I did starting out this column. I maintain, however, that whenever you are violently ill from a Swarthmore relationship, Craigslist is as good as chicken soup.

Amber is a junior. She does not in any way advise or condone trysts via Craigslist. Seriously. She can be reached at email address removed at request of the author.