A subject which has been on my mind a bit lately has been online dating. No, not actually engaging in it, but thinking about how it works and how people interact with each other when they are meeting others on a dating site.

In the real world, we meet a fairly limited number of people in our daily lives. We have the people we work with, see at the grocery store, the gym, school, etc. We can increase this number in a few ways, by going to clubs, for example. The more people we meet, the more choices we have and the greater the chance we will get noticed.

Online however, on a lot of dating sites, there is a virtually unlimited menu of people we can interact with without leaving our homes. I am thinking mainly of the sort of websites that allow free access to speak to other people. We can choose who we wish to speak to, and then decide how long to continue the conversation. But there is never any reason to actually choose someone, because at the same time as you are in a conversation with the person you can be "shopping" for other people. So it is possible to be getting to know several people at once, and not one of those people has any intention of getting to know you.

A hypothetical Adam and Eve would have had no other options but to be with each other. So they would have taken their relationship seriously, because it was the only one possible for them.

A person living in a small hunter-gatherer village of 10 adults (5 male 5 female, in 5 marriages) would have technically had options, but would have had every reason to want to choose and stay with one mate for life because in a village that small there is not a very high likelihood of another mate becoming available.

The greater the number of people available to you, however, the less reason you have to choose and stay with a mate. In our current society, despite the limited number of daily contacts we have, there is a virtually unlimited number of potential mates out there. The only limiting factor once again, is that we can only meet so many of them in our daily lives. So the only reason to stay with someone is love, as long as that lasts. (I could write another essay on that topic).

So to return to the topic of online dating, and the ability to surf for mates from home, we get an extreme case, where people spend so much of their time in the very initial phase of a relationship, the meeting and initial assessing, that often people don't learn how to actually carry out a relationship. So you end up with people starting conversations and dropping them at the drop of a hat, and becoming serial daters, rarely reaching the second date because one or the other has found another potential mate within days.  ¶ 2:50 p.m.

  Like a lot of people from this city, I left shortly after work on Friday to head up to the cottage for the long weekend.
Actually that's a fiction Torontonians been telling for decades now. What really happens in the summer on weekends is that all the cool people from Toronto all get together up in Peterborough, where we hang out at Artspace with the artsy crowd. So when you see the traffic backed up on the 400 going north Friday evenings, we're not headed out to "rough-it" for 2 days. We're going to party without the losers who we leave back in the city.

I mean, who in their right mind would want to spend their summer weekends with the mosquitos, doing nothing but fishing, relaxing by the lake, where all the convenience stores within 100 miles are closed by 11pm?

But it's a secret. If anyone asks, just say you caught some pickerel and yummy were they ever good.  ¶ 10:11 p.m.

  Toronto Drivers

One of the pleasures of living only 2 blocks from my office is that I can walk to work.
Being a pedestrian in this city can be scary sometimes though. Drivers in this city have some bad habits, and walking can be a real adventure. My complaint today is with stopping at stoplights. We all know the line from the movie Starman, "Red light means stop, green light means go, yellow light means go very fast". In this city they seem to have their own motto, which is "stopping for pedestrians means go slowly".
What I'm referring to is the situation where a pedestrian is waiting for a green light to cross, with a car at the same intersection waiting for the same green light. Cars are supposed to give pedestrians the right of way, and let them cross first, but the reality is that a smart pedestrian gives the car the right of way unless the driver motions the pedestrian across or gives a sign that he is aware of the person on foot.
But when a driver starts to ease out into the intersection, with their head craned around and away from the pedestrian, it is impossible for the pedestrian to judge the intentions of the driver. In this city, drivers don't like to remain stopped at intersections, they like to creep out into traffic then hit the gas. Which leaves poor Mr. O'Pedestrian in a real quandary as Mr Rubberneck Driver may not realize there is a person crossing.

And to add insult to an already difficult situation, once the driver finally turns their head back to look where they are going, and realize they are essentially blocking the pedestrian lane, they tend to impatiently wave the pedestrian across with a look of "Come on, what the hell are you waiting for?"

I fully expect to evetually be hit by a car walking to work. I only ask drivers to please pay attention to the pedestrians in the intersection.  ¶ 10:44 p.m.

  Life in Toronto. Like most people who didn't grow up here, I never wanted to live here. I grew up in a small town, moved to Ottawa when I was old enough to start making my own mistakes, and somehow 6 years after that I woke up one day and I was living in Toronto. I've been here ever since.

More later probably Tomorrow  ¶ 8:00 p.m.