Will digital courage replace liquid courage in the 21st century?
By Tom Miller — Written on Apr 30, 2010
Sometimes guys, like criminals in the Batman's universe, can be a superstitious, cowardly lot. We'll say so-long to shaving to keep our favorite team from losing in the playoffs, we won't say "Macbeth" in a theater and we'll wear an undershirt past its expiration date just cause we've gotten some tail with it. But more importantly, we sometimes aren't as brave as we'd like to think we are, particularly when it comes to relationships. Getting our lights punched out is generally less scary than being rejected by some broad. For this reason, God invented alcohol.
Liquid courage has inspired many men (and no small amount of women) to make a move, ill-fated or no, in the romance field. But this time-honored tradition may be going the way of the petit coat (or is that petit fours?) as the net (we're talking online dating and social media, here) is replacing the bar as the third-best place for meeting a spouse (after work/school and friends). And as we go from one augmented reality to another, liquid courage is replaced by digital courage. It should be noted that sometimes liquid courage leads to digital courage which leads to lots of "what the hell did I do last night" anti-courage. Read: 21 Twitter Pick-Up Lines (er, Tweets)
In addition to being "kids in a candy store," as many women describe men making moves online, theres very little downside to getting frisky digitally. A dumb-ass pick-up line can't suck the air out of a room. The awkwardness that ignoring someone would evince in real life is consequence-free, digitally. Even dropping the hammer on dude's noggin can be ignored, or else incite a flame war that most people would be too meek to belly up to in real life (IRL, hee hee). Periodically, these electronic hornballs will strike a nerve but are generally pretty harmless. Though, as everything online appears to be a numbers game, sometimes they succeed.
I was reminded of all this while cruising the webnet and bumping into a viral video series for Microsoft's phone, The Kin. The product is aimed at young adults and their social media habits. The series follows a gal, Rosa, as she meets her social media buddies IRL. The premier episode has a digital Don Juan, Matty G, who turns out to be a decent guy in the flesh, after overcoming a little awkwardness. Read: Top 10 Facebook Etiquette Rules
Is there a lesson? Maybe, it's that plenty of dudes (and chicks) will erect (heh) as much buffer between rejection and themselves as possible. Maybe technology will help, a little, but at the end of the day, someone has to take his (or her) clothes off first.