LOVE AND LOS ANGELES: WILL THE TWO EVER CROSS PATHS AGAIN?

A quick question. What’s common in Love and LA? Well, just the initial L and that’s about it.

I know reading the first line is heart breaking and a tear jerker for some, but that’s the harsh truth of today. Digitalization and technological boom, while it transformed the way people function today; it ended up doing just as much harm, especially to LOVE. Los Angeles is the very city in California which is well known for its beautiful people amongst other things. However, these ‘beautiful people’ are having a hard time bringing true love into their lives.

Who’s conspiring against them? What’s coming in the way of love and Los Angeles? The traffic? Could be one of the reasons, but as far as love is concerned, it does not see time, distance or boundaries, assuming it’s true. Then who is the villain? The answer is simple, just look up your phones and if you have an app that starts with T and ends with R or other any application that promises to be created just to be uninstalled, then trust me you’ve murdered your love life with free dating apps in LA. Yes, you read that right darling; love is not crossing paths with you.

I know, what I just said basically crushes the legit reason for which dating apps were made. The sole purpose of dating applications is to bring us closer to that longing romance in our lives. In fact, Los Angeles is the birth place of the first ever dating app, amongst the other so called “best dating apps in Los Angeles”. BUT THAT ROMANCE IS LONGING! And will stay to be if people continue to date the way they do today. Back in time, dating was not even a concept because LOVE EXISTED. People bumped into each other, and things happened. Most of the time it wasn’t even planned. Probably that’s why our grandparents have their own love sagas because people in their time actually MET.

Being the Gen Z, what we really do today is swipe left and right, sometimes just right only to find the right match. But that’s not it; you need to have endless textual conversations with more than one person at a time, to bring things closer to a real time date. You’d be lucky to find someone to go out with because either you ghost people or end up being ghosted. What’s this concept of ghosting? Its, one of those most “polite” ways of telling people that I’ve found someone better. To be honest, driving through Santa Monica freeway is easier than going on a real date in LA.

Dating online has played with our minds brutally. The sugarcoated profiles, the Photoshopped pictures and one of the 10 best pick-up lines googled have set unrealistic expectations in everyone’s mind.  Constantly chasing something that’s non-existent, called perfection has ended up with more people single and depressed forever. Single, because this search of something better never ends and depressed because rejections make you constantly question yourself, while you end up considering yourself to be the problem. It is aptly said, that you can’t love someone unless you love yourself first, but if dating apps are making you hate your mirror image, then how does one expect one’s Mr. Right to walk into their lives.

I’m not solely blaming technology for the agony and crises of today, nor do I feel that dating apps are totally useless, because some did find love on them. But dating apps have been overused now and so much so that they have stopped working for us. Imagine having something that works for today and its people, something that compliments fast moving lives and commits a “real meet up” instead of love. That’s because getting there depends entirely on our efforts and not the app. I mean, had algorithms been successful in finding love then mathematicians would have been the best love gurus. Right?