I’m just saying: Valentine’s Day exists. And the only way you can change that is by getting off the Internet or moving to Macedonia, and since those are clearly not real options you’re just going to have to deal.
Some people deal by finding a short-term intimacy fix: I hear that Grindr, the social networking app that helps gay men meet for hookups, sees unusually high levels of activity on Valentine’s Day. Based on a quick survey of the Craigslist personals section … well, let’s just say it’s abuzz with singles looking to mingle IRL. Nothing says “love” like OMG EW.
For the sake of journalism writing this blog post, I paid a visit to Chatroulette to find out what the vibe was, whether it was more like “Dudes Not Wearing Pants” or “Dudes Strumming Sad Songs On Their Guitars.” I hadn’t been on Chatroulette since it first became a thing, so I was disappointed by how much has changed. Management’s been trying to clean it up, which means you can’t chat on webcam until you’ve verified your account/sanity by sustaining three 10-minute long conversations. Such high community standards for a website which traffics in streaming penises.
I chose a photo of Raf Simons as my avatar because #dreamboy. Within a couple minutes, I was chatting with “Valon” from Macedonia. He claimed to be 25, like me. He was nice but the exchange was depressing: They do celebrate Valentine’s Day in Macedonia. Talk about shattered illusions.
Valon reallllly wanted me to be his Valentine, simply on the basis of my female gender, age and Raf Simons avatar. I’d say it was totally creepy but to be fair, if I met someone on Chatroulette that had a Raf Simons avatar, I’d probably ask them to be my Valentine too.
