Adventures in Tinderland

(clever title, eh? I think it's one of my better ones)

Shh... here I go again, gossiping about online dating. Ha! Anyways, let's get right to it! 

I've been using the app for what, two days? One and a half days? Definitely not that long. There is certainly a large userbase of people in what I've set my age and distance range to. The way that it works means that one has to take a different sort of approach than on OKC. Mainly, there's less information to go on when deciding whether you'd like to accept or reject someone as a potential match, which you do by swiping right or left (but you probably already knew that). The interface is fairly pleasing albeit the features are rather minimalistic compared to the potential depth you can go to on OKC. Partly why I decided to scrap the "PETER SARSGAARD LOOKALIKES WELCOME" notice for this profile, since there's less room for other stuff to balance the... oddness of that out/give it a bit more context. You get up to 6 pictures to put in your profile, and, as mentioned previously, 500 characters to fill out a short bio if you so desire. You can also connect your Instagram account and it'll show recent posts but no captions in your profile. Although it does show the username so if one were really curious, you could just go and look up the username in Instagram and read the captions. Then there's a section where you can choose an "anthem," which I'm not exactly sure the best manner of utilization is (in that I'm probably overthinking what I imagine various song choices would convey about me - for the record, I currently have New Dawn Fades by Joy Division - too depressing and moody?), but that's a feature as well. In addition to the anthem, you can connect Spotify and it'll show your top artists (tracks?) from that. I don't use Spotify so I can't utilize that feature, but if I did, I guess things like Muse and the Killers and such would come up. Most of the people I've seen who have that section on their profile filled out have vastly different music tastes than me, for what it's worth. 

Anyways, of the... copious (even in only two days!) amounts of people whose profiles I've seen and made decisions on, a decent amount of them came across as jerks and/or rednecks/conservatives, neither of which I want to date. There have been actually a fairly decent (compared to OKC) number of people who I thought were actually pretty good looking, although I can't say how good or bad their personalities are. There have been a few repeats so I'm not really sure what's up with that, but whatever. Tinder is certainly a good app for instant gratification, I would say. I am curious as to what portion of the people who matched with me were actually discerning (as I am) in their swiping choices or did they just indiscriminately swipe right on everyone, as apparently some (many?) people do? Also, how many of them might turn out to be conservatives (assuming they didn't take the time to read my "No conservatives need apply" notice, or anything else in my bio for that matter) and it wasn't immediately apparent from their profile (pictures, bio, Instagram)? 

Scorecard of my matches, if we're going to keep track... 2 communists (!), 1 copy editor at a college newspaper, some other boring-ish people... The "Good looking revolutionaries wanted" line actually worked on one guy! Fun, right?! Although maybe that makes me a commie magnet or something... I'm actually... at the moment, I guess, fairly open to theoretically dating a self proclaimed communist. Which seems weird to write out, but... Maybe if I get to know them better I'll object more strongly to their communist leanings, possibly. I do think that socialism has some things to offer, however. Although maybe not full blown communism. My not-that-informed perspective on communism is that in practice it doesn't work (but apparently, at the moment, I'm open to dating commies... go figure).    

In other matters, meaning real life matters, I may possibly try meeting someone to date (assuming nothing pans out with the online dating) in person as the fall semester is upon us. And maybe I'll actually get involved in something and be in charge of something (I would like to be in charge of something) - one tiny step closer to potentially becoming a real writer (meaning, like I've said in the past, that you have a sizable audience and that you get paid). We'll see, regarding both of those things. 

Toodles! That's going to be it for this blog post, but rest assured, I'll probably be back with some new online dating updates in the near future. And the next Postsecret review. And possibly a movie review if I happen to watch any (An Education, perhaps?).  

Still online dating

It's time for another edition of my adventures in online dating! Hooray! (sort of? I guess?)

Anyways, on pretty much the eve of when I thought I was getting burned out again on online dating, I saw something quite surprising: a very good looking guy!! (he doesn't look like Peter Sarsgaard, but he's still otherwise good looking) So naturally I had to go check out his profile and all, which I did, and a couple of days later I ended up giving a shot at messaging him. So that's been a new and pleasing development. Also in the mix are some other people I've messaged, none of which (whom?) have panned out as well as I'd ideally hope. Alas. Some of those people (but not all) got back to me, but they weren't quite as interesting and/or good looking as my ideal. 

Because I thought it might be worth adding some variety in my online dating repertoire, I downloaded the hip, not that new app Tinder, which you can now sign up for with phone number and not Facebook (great!). Since I've never used this platform before, I've been trying to figure out how to do up my profile best. OkCupid has sections, like "self summary" and "message me if" and "I'm really good at" and "I spend a lot of time thinking about" (Peter Sarsgaard, if you wanted to know, which shouldn't be surprising), and so on. Tinder does not have sections and you only get 500 characters for your bio, which is like 3 and a half tweets. Intrinsically Tinder is more superficial but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to at least try to convey that I have and want depth of personality. And I don't want to date conservatives, so the "No conservatives need apply" notice should fit nicely here as well.  Since I'm naturally sort of verbose, fitting everything I would like to convey in an online dating profile into the space of 500 characters is a little bit of a task. But I gave it a shot and here is what I came up with: 

Notice: No conservatives need apply. Good looking revolutionaries wanted. 
 5'0", [ISTJ/INTP]
Contemplating becoming a future starving linguist/copy editor/set decorator. I like to think that I'm an interesting person and I want to meet interesting people. 

At any given time I might be working on a crochet project, reading about murders/serial killers/unsolved crimes, wondering about the etymology of words, or making a piñata but using precious documents instead of torn newspaper.

The part after "No conservatives need apply" is a saying from on a shirt that Jake Gyllenhaal wore at one point. If you google that phrase, the picture of Jake wearing the shirt comes up. I'm not quite sure if I need to/should include my height - there's a section you can fill it out on OKC but here I just have 500 characters to write whatever, possibly including height or possibly not. Same goes for the personality type thing; I did a little research and it seems that some people include that. Maybe for the heck of it I could put my typing speed... I wonder what it is. [a few minutes later...] I just took some quick online typing tests to find out my typing speed (I've taken some in the past I'm pretty sure but I don't remember what the score was), and apparently it's somewhere around 60 wpm, which is pretty good! Apparently the average person can only type about 40 wpm. I guess it's good to have fairly fast typing speed, especially for transcribing things, like when you've recorded your own voice, or, for people who actually have jobs as journalists, interviews. The last (and only) time I tried that, the direct transcription was not very accurate but it was still decipherable and I cleaned it up afterwards. 

Anyways, there's your online dating update from yours truly and sooner or later, ideally sooner, I need to get some pictures of myself that make me seem interesting (which I am, but the pictures I have don't really show that) because I feel like I look fairly mousy compared to the people I've been seeing in my short time on Tinder.. 

Postsecret review 10

A somewhat more timely start on this, as I impatiently wait for people on the online dating website to message me back. 

"My husband took me to a nudist resort just to shock me. I LOVED IT! I go often, and I met my girlfriend there. He's not OK with either." That is... something else! I wonder if the secret writer means girlfriend as in lesbians, or as in platonic friends.. 

"i am secretly married." Straight out of Grey's Anatomy!

"faking it." (amidst smiley face confetti adhered to the postcard)

"I don't want to go to college I'd rather stay home and smoke weed" That's not very ambitious. I doubt this person will accomplish much in life with an attitude like that.

"I'm glad I caught my husband cheating on me so I could finally leave him and our loveless marriage with no guilt and lots of sympathy" That's one way of doing it, I guess. Although I don't really see why one should feel particularly guilty for getting a divorce if they're not happy in their marriage, even without the other person cheating on them.

"my cell phone is a graveyard of failed relationships" That's what the delete button is for. Unless this person means it more symbolically and has already deleted the contacts/text messages from the failed relationships. 

"I always give gay people discounts on their coffee" I wonder how this person knows which people are gay so they can give out the discounts properly? Maybe they work at a gay bar, or something... Needs more context.

"I justify my underage drinking by my knowledge that I always recycle beer cans" ... the question I have is if this person drinks (underage) to excess. 

"I said that the cleaners lost your favorite shirt. I threw it out. It was ugly and embarrassing." Now that's passive aggressive.

"I had cosmetic surgery because my ex made me feel ugly. I regret it every day." This reminds me of an episode of Law and Order; a plastic surgeon had killed his wife but was now dating another woman who he was trying to convince to get plastic surgery.

The secrets this week were again pretty middle of the road. Not the most exciting. There were some that I sort of wanted to review, but also sort of didn't, and so they ended up not making it into the post. Oh well. 

Movie review: Prisoners

I know I haven't been watching Peter Sarsgaard movies like you might expect, but I did watch this movie which starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman. I was debating on which order to list them in and decided to go alphabetically, which then meant I had to spend a few seconds figuring out if G comes before or after J. It comes before. Recently I've sort of gotten a bit into Jake Gyllenhaal in that I think he's a good actor and wouldn't mind seeing more of his filmography. He's not quite at the level of favorite actor for me though. 

Note: after writing this, I realized that there isn't really a lot of context in this review, so it might help to go look up the premise (but not the full plot) of the movie beforehand.

Anyways, on to the review. I don't really want to spoil anything because I think this movie is worth experiencing for yourself to find out what happens, and knowing beforehand would ruin it. I thought this was quite a movie and it hit all the right notes for me personally. There was a decent amount of violence interspersed here and there to keep things interesting, although it wasn't senseless violence (which I'm not really a fan of); it served to advance the plot/develop the characters. This movie was 2 and a half hours long, which is a bit on the longer side but it didn't feel slow at any point.  It was definitely one of those darker movies in terms of subject matter/things that happen in it, so it's not necessarily for everyone, but I happen to like that kind of thing. 

I thought that both Jake and Hugh did a good job in their roles in this movie. It took place in Pennsylvania, and at times, it seemed like Hugh's Australian accent was slipping through a little bit, although if you didn't know he was Australian beforehand you might not have noticed it. For some reason I feel like Jake should have a slightly deeper voice than he does, based on how he looks. Something about his face makes me think that his voice should be a little deeper than it actually is. Regardless, I thought that he talked nicely in this movie. 

I had sort of intended to maybe watch Jackie tonight instead, as part of getting more knowledgeable about the Kennedy family, but I ended up watching this because of the whole 'watching Peter Sarsgaard movies is such a commitment because I feel obligated to pay super close attention' thing. I don't regret watching this movie although now it seems like I should watch a really intense Peter Sarsgaard movie (Boys Don't Cry is what I have in mind; he plays a murderer) next that'll compare to this one, as opposed to something lighter and/or less critically acclaimed. 

To kill or not to kill

A day or so ago, I got a notification from CNN on my phone about a news story that I only got around to reading now. CNN summarizes the article as "Two decades later, a traffic stop on a country road is still teaching police officers about deadly force – and the cost of hesitation." The article is part of a series, the rest of which is also worth a read. 

The article is about the death (murder) of a Georgia police officer back in 1998, which was caught on video from a dashboard camera of the police car. This murder incidentally occurred only two days after my birthday, which is a morbid fact to notice. The police officer was killed while making a traffic stop; the man who he had stopped was apparently somewhat unhinged and started shooting at him. Some theorize that he was trying to commit suicide by cop, which he ultimately failed to do. [As an aside, I enjoy living in a place where most people are not gun fanatics/owners. So you would assume that something like that is less likely to happen here. The most recent local police officer to have been killed was killed by a drunk driver, which is still unfortunate. In somewhat related matters, the local police department hasn't been at the center of any controversies recently, which is good.]  

You can actually watch a portion of the video, interspersed with some commentary from the officer's father and other members of law enforcement. The part where he gets shot is out of the frame of the camera, but you can still hear him screaming as he is killed, which is, to say the least, at least a little chilling. For the more faint-hearted among us, it's probably quite chilling and possibly veering into the territory of somewhat disturbing. As they say on television, viewer discretion is advised.

Then the article goes on to say "Most humans would rather not kill, even when society asks them to," which I thought was sort of interesting, especially in light of having watched the movie Experimenter, which was all about obedience experiments and how far people are willing to go in following orders. I suppose the willingness of one person to kill another can vary according to circumstances; the degree to which people were obedient in the obedience experiments changed when some of the conditions in the experiment were altered. The Nazis certainly seemed willing to be complicit in committing a genocide, which is why Stanley Milgram decided to conduct his obedience experiments. Also, fighting in a war sort of entails at least the possibility of having to kill other people. 

In general, I think that people would be more willing to kill another person if it were in the interest of self defense. Notwithstanding the whole legal (not to mention psychological) consequences of killing other human beings, self defense seems like the most likely motivation that would bring an ordinary person to kill another person. I know I'd kill someone in self defense if my life depended on it. Of course I can only speak for myself.

Interestingly enough, this particular incident would have been a perfect justification for killing someone in self defense, yet the police officer did not. In contrast to recent controversies where police have killed civilians, this police officer was killed by a civilian because he (the police officer) was too hesitant to kill the civilian. The article says "The line between firing too slowly and too quickly can be very, very thin," which I think is a pretty good summary regarding these kinds of incidents. 

The murderer was eventually captured, convicted of murder, sentenced to death, and finally, executed. In his defense, it was argued that he was mentally ill and had PTSD, which caused him to commit the murder, but regardless, the jury convicted him. 

I do think that this whole incident and the aftermath could be an interesting thing to portray in a movie. I'm pretty sure there have been Law and Order episodes based around criminals who have killed a police officer, I just can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head. 

Postsecret review 9

A somewhat less late delivery date on this one. I can't sleep and I think it's because I had a caffeinated soda with dinner. So here we go.

"I think men who order their coffee with cream are sissies!" (written on a coffee cup) That's a ridiculous thing to be judgmental about (and this is coming from someone who's probably fairly judgmental herself).

"When you were hit by that car, I promised God I'd believe in him if you lived. I never knew it was one I'd have to keep." (with the h in him marked with the capitalization symbol and a question mark) Well, this is something... I wonder what kind of unfortunate consequences this person thinks will happen if they don't keep the promise to believe in God? That the other person in question will get killed somehow if the secret writer isn't faithful enough? 

"I like to snoop through other people's medicine cabinets" This is something I can pretty much understand, because I like to look at other people's stuff as well. 

"I don't want to lower my standards just because I'm overweight" I don't want to lower my standards because I think I deserve to date a good looking person. Being overweight or not doesn't really have anything to do with it in my case. 

"being an atheist was boring" I guess if you like feeling guilty for sinning and not being spiritual/faithful enough, being religious could be fun.. I think being an atheist is more exciting because you don't have to deal with religious guilt over things you do that are considered sinful/unreligious. And (in the case of Mormonism), you don't have to pay tithing, which means more $$$ to spend on yourself. 

"My friend buys drugs from people he knows at church!" This reminds me of some article I read in the past about people in Utah (Mormon land) being addicted to prescription painkillers. 

"I steal my neighbor's Netflix movies!" Wouldn't this just have you end up with an assortment of movies you very well might not be interested in? I doubt that the neighbors have the same taste in movies as the secret writer. It would be better (in a way) to steal movies from a store, so you could have more choice in the matter of which movies you end up with. Although maybe it's easier to steal the neighbor's Netflix movies instead of doing it from a store. (if you want to take this as me condoning theft, you're free to, but consider the possibility that maybe I didn't mean it that way.) 

"I tell everyone I'm happy in my polyamorous marriage... ... but I'm not. And I'll lose my husband if I go back now." Ooh, a polygamy secret!! If this lady isn't happy, then why would she particularly care if she loses her husband from the polygamous marriage? I'm sure there are other men out there who she might like and who wouldn't mind having a monogamous marriage.

Anyways, that's it for this week... the secrets were alright, but I think other weeks have been more interesting on the whole. 

More actors, quick movie review of Contagion

It seems that one of my preferred subject matters when I have a lot of free time is admiring the looks of various good looking people, usually actors or models. In that pattern, another post on that topic.. (and a quick movie review)

Oh boy! I was looking at an illustrated list of "50 most beautiful men" compiled by Harper's magazine. There was a decent assortment; some of them were more historical examples like Robert Redford and Elvis Presley, and some were more modern like Jake Gyllenhaal, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Johnny Depp (although they used a picture from when he was young and not creepy looking) and Alexander Skarsgard, among others. Come to think of it, I'm a little surprised Colin Firth wasn't on the list. Anyways, someone else who was on the list... the British actor Henry Cavill. I had been vaguely aware of him in the past and I think maybe I kind of associated him with Hugh Jackman for some reason, but anyways, they chose a really nice picture of him for the list and I thought "Wow, his face is so... even." He sort of looks a little like Ian Somerhalder. By 'even', I mean that his facial features seem to me to be really well balanced between more masculine and more delicate. His face sort of seems like one of those things where they overlay a ton of different pictures of people and it comes out with an 'average' face. That's a compliment, by the way. Anyways, it's too bad he hasn't really been in any other notable movies aside from playing Superman. I'm not really that into superhero movies/tv shows. Nevertheless, I can still appreciate his appearance.  

And, while we're on this topic, Trevor Noah of the Daily Show recently interviewed Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III. Who, I must mention, is pretty nice looking. I wonder if he will ever run for president. As it stands, I'd vote for him. He might be too young to run though. I think the Kennedy family on the whole are/were all pretty nice looking, at least in their youth. And I should get around to watching the movie Jackie, where Peter Sarsgaard plays Bobby Kennedy.. Also, I thought it would be worth a mention here that perhaps the initial catalyst for Peter Sarsgaard becoming one of my favorite actors was when I took the AP Psychology class in high school. In the second semester, we learned about social psychology and touched on the topic of some unethical psychological experiments, which possibly is what caused me to think that Experimenter would be an interesting movie to watch. So, thank you, Ms. Sabet, however tangentially she is related to Peter becoming one of my favorite actors. 

I think a relevant concept that can apply here and to my similar past blog posts is that of the 'female gaze', a counterpart/opposite of the male gaze, which is summed up nicely by this quote from a LA Times article:  "You don't have to be a women's studies major to be familiar with “the male gaze,” a term coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975 to describe film created through the lens of a heterosexual male, a gaze so ubiquitous in Western media as to be self-explanatory." 
So, my blog posts here are sort of an example of the female gaze, I'd say. The difference between the female gaze and male gaze has to do with what is focused on/the perspective in which something is cast/seen (this is my simplified interpretation of the concepts, from my understanding). In the interest of feminism, I will continue to shamelessly admire the appearances of various male actors/models (and blog about my thoughts regarding such). However, I don't think that my appreciation of these various actors counts as objectification, which google defines as "the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object." I don't treat these actors as nothing more than pleasing things to look at, although perhaps it may seem that way. Objectification is inherently degrading to the people being objectified, and I wouldn't consider my views on these various actors to be degrading to them. Maybe I should take a class in women's studies where I would assume these types of concepts are explored. Out of curiosity, I wonder if there are many male professors of women's studies?? [Honestly, look at me/this! I could totally write for some website...]

Quick movie review: Contagion

I watched this movie because I was looking to watch something else Matt Damon has been in, aside from the Bourne series and Good Will Hunting/Saving Private Ryan (both of which maybe I should rewatch and pay specific attention to Matt's performance, although SPR was quite a brutal experience to watch and I'm not sure I want to put myself through that again). 

The movie was alright; it wasn't bad although it probably could have been better. It wasn't exactly a stunning role/performance from Matt, but it wasn't horrible either. A pretty average/decent movie, I'd say. I think it could have made more of an impression than it did; it was one of those middle of the road movies. Not a waste of time though. The premise is about a virus that is quickly spreading around the world, which eventually leads to a lot of chaos/problems as normal society begins to break down due to the disease. It was sort of an interesting thing regarding what could possibly happen if a virus were to occur like that in real life. Matt Damon plays a guy whose wife is the first person to die from the virus. He had a really awkward length hairstyle in this movie which didn't really look good on him, but I guess maybe they were trying to convey an average family man type of person (he had a son and a daughter). It also seemed like he was a little pudgy in the face/chin area. At first I thought he was Mark Wahlberg. Again, I guess they were trying to convey him as a pretty normal kind of guy who just happens to get caught up in things regarding the outbreak of a virus. I think I was used to seeing him with short hair due to watching the various Jason Bourne movies (which I should probably rewatch, but in order this time). 

 As a closing thought, I'll leave you with this sentiment, which I've expressed in the past but I feel is worth repeating: Online dating is such an ordeal... ugh. I think I'm probably just better off staying single.