Hey, online dating liars! If you fib on Tinder, you're only hurting yourself
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Version 0 of 1. Lately I’ve been wondering what Aristotle would have made of the world of online dating. This is partly because it’s fun to imagine who might swipe right on the polymath philosopher if he was able to upload a smoldering selfie onto Tinder. But mostly it’s because internet dating has assumed such a central role in human interaction, it is in dire need of being appraised from an ethical perspective. Ethics – especially the virtue ethics espoused by Aristotle – provide a way of thinking about how to do the right thing by ourselves and by other people online without being moralistic or overly prescriptive. As such, it allows for the fact that it’s entirely possible to hook up with any number of hunks on Grindr without ever abandoning one’s excellence of character. But first things first. The inconvenient truth about online dating is that all too often truth is tossed aside as a mere inconvenience. In fact, “singleton lies on dating profile” is right down there with “dog bites man” in the unsurprising headline department. According to number crunching from the OkCupid dating site: At this point, the natural question is, so what? Everyone knows singles sites are a truth-free zone, right? Isn’t the trick simply to check out the most unsightly selfie someone is prepared to post, then subtract the attractiveness quotient you first started with? Well, maybe. But the thing about ethics is that you’re not supposed to do dicey stuff a) just because everyone else is, and/or b) just because you think you can get away with it. Even if your interest in ethics is zero, it’s worth thinking hard about how you conduct yourself online because you have the potential not only to hurt others, but to cause yourself plenty of grief as well. Aristotle didn’t philosophise much about internet hook ups, but he did have plenty to say about a condition called akrasia – a term usually translated as “incontinence”. Contrary to the modern medical meaning, ancient Greek philosophical incontinence involves a weakness of will rather than bladder. It describes that familiar moment when we know what we should do, but when we give in to impulse or emotion and act in a way that won’t promote our long term happiness and well being. Akrasia is a useful way to think about the ethics of internet dating because it captures the banal, everydayness of the less-than-ideal decisions so many of us make while browsing for friends on the various flesh versions of e-Bay. Like claiming we’re available when we’re actually just a teensy bit married. Or ticking the “jacked” body type box when the more honest option is “Jack Black-ed”. Or bingeing on the human equivalents of junk food when what we really need is someone who’s not going to leave us feeling hungry an hour after we’ve eaten them. OK, so that last metaphor got a little weird but you get the general idea. Having used online dating sites on and off for the past five years, I’ve met some entirely awesome individuals. I’ve also met people who didn’t work where they said they worked, whose “social drinking” was actually “routine kegging” and whose good senses of humour were actually bad reliances on punning. A few even turned out to have undeclared affiliations with spouses, offspring and unneutered pit bulls (surprise!). By far the biggest gap I’ve noticed between online representation and offline reality, however, relates to visuals. Thanks to high tech advances in digital cameras and duckfacing, the Venn intersection between our real selves and our selfie selves is becoming sliver thin. It’s reminiscent of those comparison shots of fast food in advertising versus fast food in reality. In the former, the lettuce is always crisp, the cheese stands to attention and the bacon rashers snap, crackle and pop. The latter, in contrast, are an apocalypse of greyish ham, leprous sesame seed bun and non-descript gristle drowning in a flaccid ooze of fluorescent cheddar. Again, apologies for the out-of-control imagery, but somewhere beneath all that cheese is a serious point. In short: wouldn’t you rather people said “oh, yum” when they first saw you unwrapped rather than “but in the advert you looked like you came with fries”? Ethical incontinence may not be as obvious as the physical variety but it can still get messy. In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit that my online action plummeted the moment I owned up to having entered the Bermuda triangle of “over 40 and female”. Yet so far I’ve resisted the urge to join the many women I know who make a point of remaining eternally 39 online in an attempt to avoid mysteriously disappearing off the romantic radar. Call me kinky, but I’m only interested in hanging out with people who are OK about outrageous activities such as normal human ageing. Also I’m approaching an age where I’m keen to hang onto any form of continence I can. Dr Emma A. Jane will be part of a panel discussing the ethics of online dating at the St James Ethics Centre in Sydney at 6pm on 17 March. |