Looking for a Man in Finance...
the apotheosis of rising expectations is shopping for love
Not since the 1990s release of “Ice, Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice has a vapid pop song made me laugh out loud instantly. Unlike Vanilla Ice’s deadly serious yet trashy pop hit, 26-year-old Megan Boni’s viral TikTok song from earlier this year is highly intentional, musically efficient satire of dating in her generation. I feel for these kids. They have too many dating tools we never needed.
Have a listen on Spotify if you’ve missed it:
Click HERE to play on Amazon Music or HERE to play on Apple Music.
Note: I am NOT morally responsible for this song ‘appearing’ in my Amazon Music feed this Spring, despite ALL the muffled snickering I hear from you immature people.
OK. You’re back.
Women individually pursuing high-status men to date/marry without family involvement is very new in urban societies. The cross-cultural history of marriage I’ve consumed suggests that intentionally seeking high-status mates was mainly a practice of aristocratic and wealthy merchant families in prior centuries. And strict class endogamy (i.e., in-marriage among class peers) has dominated most of recorded urban history. The more dependent individuals were on family networks for their income, the more they could not flippantly cross these unspoken red lines. Cinderella was a popular fairy tale in Europe because it was so unlikely to ever happen.
Then came the modern labor economy, which emerged with late industrialization in the early 20th century, based mostly on jobs unrelated to one’s family network. Families might suggest matches, but that’s about it. You could wake up one teenage morning and aspire to date or marry a total stranger who was also unknown to your parents. As long as you could derive your income independently.
After World War II, America then pioneered human history's most open, free-flowing dating scene. With the advent of birth control for unmarried women in the late 1960s and legal abortion in 1972, dating rapidly became an extended period of young adult life (that never ends for some). By extending the feasible dating period so much, young people can experiment with multiple relationships before making a big commitment. In some pre-literate societies, a shorter but similar practice called “trial marriage” also occurred. Honestly, it’s super intelligent NOT to force young people to commit for the rest of their lives to the first sexual partner they choose. Most of us are NOT that lucky. And, most of us are NOT self-aware enough to make a great first choice either. So, the idea of ‘trial’ relationships makes absolute sense.
Yet, the issue Megan Boni’s song points to is a more insidious outcome of this more open, free-flowing American dating scene in the 21st century. Once you free up dating, mating, and marriage choices from traditional constraints enforced by family (e.g., religion, race and class), individual lifestyle preferences your parents do not even understand will now enter the cognitive fray. Fast.
And this is where modern commerce and dating have created an unholy cultural love child we didn’t need.
New Podcast Appearances for My New Book!
Meredith for Real - Episode 260 - Is Individualism Overrated? - Live links are HERE - We covered the impact individualism has on our work, mental health, friendships & romantic relationships:
The playground of autonomy
How he navigates the pull towards individualism as a person with Asperger's
The prison of privacy
The optimism that drives us to bankruptcy
Friends as recreation vs interdependence
2. Friendship IRL - Episode 85 - Is Individualism Costing Us More Than We Realize?
How American society often values personal autonomy and freedom at the expense of responsibility and obligation
Things that have affected communal interactions in America, from societal norms that prioritize achievement to the rise of modern media and entertainment
Having meaningful conversations and sharing skills with friends instead of using friendship as a source of entertainment
The need for community members to observe and inquire about the emotional well-being of others
Dating as Shopping For Premium Goods
Enter the 21st century dating site/app. Generation X was the first age cohort to use dating sites during their increasingly desperate, horny single years. Match. Eharmony. Nerve. OKCupid. Yes, I was also one who also made this temporary error in judgment. In 2003, I quickly saw how dating apps take an open dating scene with remarkably few rigid boundaries and turn it into a creepy marketplace by placing sexual partners into a rental storefront of sorts.
On ‘date’ after ‘date,’ I met someone whose interactions IRL seemed pretty far off from the non-interactive persona I had seen online. We were all trying too hard and failing miserably. You don’t want to marry someone with an ‘attractive’ profile who then behaves exactly like their shallow, B.S. online dating profile when you first meet in-person. That’s really creepy, folks. Shudder.
Placing humans into an online, 2D catalog activates a modern shopping mentality. This was true long before online shopping became normal, because a dating site is just a digital version of a classic mail order catalogue template as old as the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Shopping for dates encourages us all to focus on all sorts of ‘features’ and status markers that are easy to notice quickly in a picture and profile description. It is very easy to obsess about all the bells and whistles when the ‘person’ online is not interacting with us - when the non-interactive human is acting like a ‘product’ in a catalogue. Then, there’s the issue of simulating interaction with ‘chat features.’ Don’t get me started about how unnatural that is in the human history of matchmaking.
But online matchmaking (as some used to call it) also encourages us to look at dating like trading up. When our brains go there, we aspire for the Rolex of mates, when there is no evidence whatsoever that this will make us happy. We all become Cinderellas of sorts. Even the straight men.
Conversely, dating as shopping encourages the profile creator to perform according to idealized versions of herself that lives primarily in the murky realms of half-assed, malformed aspirations she barely understands.
We bullsh*t others and ourselves on dating sites. And the matches fail again and again. My favorite bullsh*t aspiration in the 2000s was social tolerance - “I really enjoy meeting all kinds of people.” No, you don’t. You just haven’t met Walter White or my criminal friend, Ravi, from Tamil Nadu. That’s why you’re writing this un-self-aware nonsense in your profile.
My favorite example of this from the early years of online dating was Nerve, an early hookup site for straight people. A whole bunch of people who used it aspired to hooking up but actually did not have the nerve to do it when the sexy profile was sitting next to them. Pretty easy to see how this would happen, right?
Lack of self-awareness in front of a bewildering array of dating choices leads to lots of goofy, aspirational misfires. Looking for a man in finance…really? Have you spent one platonic evening with a man who has been in finance for more than five years? HINT: the good ones bail early.
My awkward point is that America has conjured up an ultra-loose, socially de-regulated dating market that has turned dating into a form of frenetic shopping with a Costco-like return policy.
FLASH NEWS ALERT. Human relationships do not function like my ‘relationship’ with my overpriced VariDesk. Trading up to a motorized, variable height desk does not require the desk's consent. My VariDesk also does not pack up and leave my office when it discovers that I have no intention of standing a lot for my physical well-being and that my stated aspiration for a healthy desk was Instagram-fed bullsh*t. My VariDesk does not tease me for being a poser each time I use it.
I have not spoken with Megan about her song, but one interview with her suggests she knows exactly what I’m trying to communicate here.
Dating in 2024 is … miserable. Online dating has made me far too picky. You keep X’ing people over just one trait, even though they’re great.1
Turning dating into a two-dimensional catalog shopping activates a ridiculously classist, ‘trade up’ behavior where even the slightest ‘flaw’ gets a hard ‘no.’ This happens even though, in real life relationships, people will stay happily with a partner who bites his own toenails! That was NOT in the profile! I printed it out and graded it according to my preferred attribute mix.
Oops.
If you only interact with potential mates you shopped for online, you will show up on the first date with an unconscious desire to ‘inspect the merchandise’ for, among other things, truth in advertising. Do the profile elements match what I see?
Of course, your date will NOT meet your shopping standard because people typing a profile have no incentive to be honest when they know they are being shopped like a fancy watch. AND, your poor date has no access to the fantasies you’re projecting onto their profile bullet points! Come on, people! Why did we think this would ever work?
Growing up in the United States in the late 20th century, when local community was rapidly declining before an onslaught of the noncommittal Leisure Industrial Complex, I and others were handed enormous autonomy to set our standards and expectations for anything.
In the absence of rules enforced by local communities of real people, consumer capitalism simply stepped in and encouraged us to transform matchmaking into a bizarre form of luxury goods shopping.
My brief experience with online dating convinced me quickly that the only possible way to meet someone you want to partner up with is to…
…take a deep breath…
…make friends by doing things with real people that you both enjoy doing!
And then let the rest happen on its own timeline.
Just be a happy ape. And your happy ape partner will appear…and yell at you for eating your toenails! Gross!
Civilization has remarkably little to add to this ancient process of pair bonding.
://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/06/21/megan-boni-girl-on-couch-tik-tok/
Great article. I’m still a fan of ‘chemistry’ + getting to know each other. Keep doing what you love (as long as it gets you out of the house) and when you least expect it…magic.
I like everything you write, James.