“It’s Okay to Look.” Only in certain contexts and situations could this slogan be construed as a truthful notion in the dating scene. In everyday conversations this phrase gets tossed around by men and women in relationships talking amongst their friends about the “hottie” they saw the other day in the parking lot. “Hey, it’s not cheating. It’s okay to look.”
There’s a fine line, however, between the hottie you saw by happenstance in the parking lot the other day and the hotties you’re looking at on the internet via dating websites. I’ll give you an example and we’ll see if you can distinguish the difference. To embody yourself into a setting, I was in a seemingly steady relationship for a year already. Ostensibly things were heading down the path of taking things to the never-ending “next level” and the sensation that I found “that one” was embedded in my thoughts.
Let’s take it a step further. For the purpose of openness, the two of us decided to share personal information with each other such as email passwords and what not. Although there isn’t a trust issue (don’t jump to conclusions), one day I decided to look into what she was up to and I checked her email. Rightfully so, she asked me to because she was expecting an email and wasn’t around a computer. While looking for the expected email I come across emails from a website known as Match.com asking her to finish filling out her “free profile”. I said nothing.
On my own time, I researched into the matter further. I logged onto her Match.com profile only to see that everywhere was written how she was “ready for the ‘man’ of her dreams”. The only place that I was mentioned (not by name) was in the segment where people are allowed to say anything they please about themselves. Ironically, the only way she could define herself was by demeaning and degrading me!
When I finally decided to confront her about this, her response was apathetic and robotic, “…but it’s okay to look.” Of course, in retrospect, I realized things weren’t perfect but my wondrous perplexing never-leaves-your-thoughts of, “If Match.com never said that, would she still have thought it?” droned itself on and on and on.
So back to the start – parking lot looking versus online dating. The line gets drawn by intent. While gazing off at the hard body in the parking lot, intention of pursuit is never established until the very moment you act upon your contemplations.
Looking online is different in a considerable amount of ways. Browsing on an online dating site is never harmless. There is no medium. There is no parking lot between you preventing you from confronting the person, from making your intentions clear. Browsing dating profiles signifies intent from the start. If there wasn’t some sort of intentions of meeting up with someone or looking to see what else is out there (grass is greener syndrome) then why else would you be on that site? There is solely one purpose to sites such as Match.com – to connect people on a romantic level! If you aren’t seeking a romantic connection, then you have no true business browsing the profiles.
Intent online is blatant, cut and dry. All that’s there is black and white, gray simply does not exist. So how does Match.com promote infidelity? It’s simple. The slogan that “It’s Okay to Look” puts out the message to it’s viewers that the rule that applies to real life personal human interaction of “looking” (parking lot hard body) also applies to the constituents of online dating and it simply does not.
Some will argue that people will find a means to lie or cheat or deceive regardless of what an advertisement has as a slogan. There is truth in that statement. However, the questions must be raised asking if companies like Match.com didn’t use slogans such as “It’s Okay to Look,” would that person have ever had the idea to be deceptive in the first place? If the “looking” rule that applies to real life wasn’t promoted as an equal edict to online dating, would people clearly recognize the difference? It feels as a never-ending cycle, sort of a chicken-or-the-egg complex. To be cliché, the world may never know…
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