Screw the Stigma

Imagine you're sitting at a table having lunch with a group of colleagues or fellow students.  Valentines Day, or Singles Awareness Day, whichever you prefer, is creeping closer and closer, being about as subtle as a gun.  The giddy, lovestruck girl sitting across from you is babbling on about her plans with her boyfriend.  The guy sitting next to you mentions how Valentines Day is a great way to get an easy lay from a single girl.  Another guy sitting with you is texting, or sexting, under the table, oblivious to the conversation.  From the dopey smile he has, it's obvious he's texting his girlfriend. Normally, you can handle girls giddiness, guys dogish comments, and those who are physically unable to stop texting their significant other for more than two minutes at a time - but not today.

Maybe it's the sea of pink and red decorations that blind your eyes whenever you walk into a store, or the unfathomable amount of Valentine's Day e-mails flooding your inbox, but today, being single is just too much to handle.  It's time to start thinking of a way you can "get out there" and start dating.  Meeting people at church is way too old school.  Meeting people at work would probably get you fired, you know everyone in all your classes - and there are definitely no viable options there - and you don't have the raw courage to go up to a random person at Starbucks.  

You've heard of online dating, but never thought you needed a website to find a person to date.  Only the socially inept must resort to finding love through a computer screen, right?   WRONG!!  The stigma against online dating isn't helping any of the lonely Valentine's Day souls, which there are many of.  Think about it: meeting someone online not only allows you to pre-screen potential mates for compatibility, but opens you up to people outside of your social circle whom you would never meet otherwise.  

Our society had progressed in ways that I cannot even begin to list.  Everything from the corporate world, to banking, to networking is all done primarily online.  Yet our culture tells us that if we need to join an online dating website, we must be undesirable through normal ways of dating.  This is as ridiculous as saying that if you network through the internet, you are undesirable in the working world.  The internet is a tool which we all use everyday.  It is providing you with the means in which you are reading this blog post right now.  Why not allow the internet to provide you with more relationship options?  You, my friend, are the one who must do all the work, the dating websites just open the door.  So I present a challenge: this Valentines Day, screw the stigma and join a dating site.  Join the conversation at the lunch table -- if you aren't too busy trying to hide your cell phone and texting through it.