December 13th, 2012
I’ve always thought that while marriage is fabulous and can be the best thing to ever happen to a person, it only works so long as you’re married to the right person. If not, better to be single. Because no matter what, being single is pretty awesome. You can read as much as you want, work as much as you like, and go wherever, whenever, without tending to other responsibilities.
But this essay might as well have been written by Brad Wilcox and Maggie Gallagher: It’s the single most depressing view of singlehood I’ve ever seen. Yikes. Instead of making an intellectual argument for marriage, pro-marriage groups should just send copies of this thing to everyone in America.
Exit question: Back when the virtual world didn’t exist and everyone was fully engaged in the real world, being single was a blast. Has the internet made being single less fun?
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That article is actually about urban anomie (one of the many predictable problems resulting from the diversity/college/feminism/globocapitalism conveyor belt we’ve constructed)–she is just dressing it up as a critique of the dating scene for pageviews, as any good egotistical LRB writer worth her salt knows how
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By halfway through I couldn’t take anymore and, for a moment, considered making my wife a widow.
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After reading that I couldn’t decide if I should run and hug my wife, or text all my single friends to make sure they had somewhere to go for the holidays.
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Internet dating tip: Stay away from women who identify with Joan Didion.
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My only conclusion is that Emily Witt takes herself way, WAY too seriously. She is clearly a boring person who attracts other boring people, or on the odd ocasion that a NON-boring person comes by, she turns them boring.
Ugh.
She is writing a book on “female sexuality”. Oh the irony.
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The author’s problem is she is a self-centered boor and a snob. As such that is also who she attracts, hard to look in a mirror. How about going to a hospital and hug orphaned drug-babies? Or donate some of your miserable time helping the elderly? Or maybe try dating a conservative and find out the universe is larger than the insufferable snobs of San Francisco and New York City.
And now I want the 10 minutes of my life back I gave reading this pity festival, as I was suckered into thinking it might be interesting from the first paragraph, but it was all downhill from there.
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She’s probably a fan of Sylvia Plath and Joyce Carol Oates, too.
I’m guessing she graduated from an English Lit or Fine Arts program at a private school. Maybe one of the Seven Sisters. She therefore has been ruined for life, since that is one of the most unreal worlds imaginable. And I love the way she oh-so-casually slips in the Britishism ‘maths’ majors [or students or whatever]. So twee. So precious.
I have a male friend [much older than 30] who has a similar problem. He never meets a woman who both fits into his world view *and* interests him romantically. Gosh, I wonder what could be wrong?
This is the predictable end result of too many decades of allowing young people to be convinced that somehow “the world” will make them happy with no effort on their part. How pathetic.
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Ha! Got her. I was close.
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Who could really be a match for a rarefied pedigree like that? Btw, your comment hit close to the knuckle since, as a foolish youth, I was an English major at a private college (not 7 sisters). Fortunately, a flood destroyed all my critical theory texts shortly after graduation, I got a real job and, against all training, dated and married a conservative.
But Emily, there but for the grace of god…. -
So, she spent years in Miami and loved sleeping with lots of hot Brazilian/Cuban guys who enjoyed her for the short-term moved on, but she’s still stuck on them, and can’t figure out why now that she’s older that guys aren’t interested.
I hope that semiotics degree works out for her, truly. And how dumb do you have to be to look for a single straight man in San Francisco?
Nedward December 13, 2012 at 7:31 pm
I predict ace psephologist “Michael Tracey” will associate your post w/ conservatives’ sudden interest in single white females