Whilst looking for something on TV to throw my slippers at the other week, (I don't actually WEAR slippers BTW, they are literally just for throwing at the TV at things that get on my nerves, it's a better substitute for a coffee mug or a whisky glass at least anyway, it certainly saves money on television sets) I came across Channel 4's romance simulator programme "First Dates".
My god, what a loathsome programme, and like most of these shows, the emphasis is typically NOT on not so much if any permanent couplings or happy-ever-afters emerge, but on how the woman feels about the misguided imbecile across the table, promptly followed by a polite description about how she 'only wants to remain friends', based purely on the standard of his stomach muscles, and no, I don't mean the ones used to digest the horrible poncey, overpriced food he'd just forked out for in the vain hope of only being rejected half as badly as the last time he tried this massive waste of time.
In the episode I watched, a woman was so unimpressed by her date, who was doing absolutely nothing wrong other than trying to match up to the impossible standard he was being set, whilst being judged solely on how many inches his trousers and wallet packed respectively, that she spent 10 minutes in the toilet and even plotted her escape in such a way I'm surprised Charles Bronson didn't suddenly burrow his way up from underneath the pseudo-vinyl flooring armed with a bunch of gardening tools.
Having re-entered the restaurant for her date, she spent her time telling the poor dopey sod that was losing a day's hard-earned wages in the vain hope of being allowed near her pelvis on a sub-rental basis that would have Blockbuster Video sobbing into their cornflakes, that she was looking for the opposite of him , before eventually being won around and agreeing to meet again.
This got me thinking.
Generally speaking feminists seem to want to encourage women to date and have sex casually from 21-28 ... while they focus on their 'career'. The trouble is that when these women do decide that the grind is too hard and start looking for an out, at 28 they are doing so at exactly the point at which it is perceived that their market value is passing it's peak and heading into terminal decline as the 'biological clock' starts ticking and they need to start dropping sprogs.
Bull.
If men who are 28 were to realise that 28 wasn't a good 'time to buy' as far as women are concerned, the game would be up. Women wouldn't be able to leap off the career ladder in their late 20s and early 30s with the ease that they presently can.
In addition I have always found it fascinating that when an older woman dates a younger man it is celebrated by everyone these days. It's a subgenre of both film and adult entertainment all on it's own, yet when a 46 year old man dates a 21 year old woman, it is still mostly demonised, it's made me think even more consciously about what minimal age of the girl I could potentially engage with is, as I'm knocking on the door of pre-middle age. I even have second thoughts about the age of girls I add to my social media accounts these days.
What I find funny in both of these situations is the fact that nobody seems to question that maybe both people actually like one another, or if the younger girl is manipulating the older man. I hear all the typical shaming that goes along with older men dating younger women. Co-incidentally it happened to someone I know a while back, and it actually sounds she was damn lucky not to have joined the ranks of single parenthood as a result due to his global philandering.
All this flashed through my mind as I read about Hatr, the very latest 'hot new dating app' that launched last week and promises to bond potential lovers over the things that they loathe. Overturning the traditional cheery positives (“Love the cinema, ice skating and anonymous sex behind a bin ?? Meet Maisie, 34, from Bolton … ”), Hatr allows eager singletons to form relationships based on their mutual aversions instead of what actually floats their boat.
Boy, oh, boy, that sounds right up my street. Romance through ranting, dating for the post-Brexit, Trump era, let’s really get that negativity out there, more openly expressed misanthropy in the world might just be what we need. Brendan Alper, the ex-banker who founded the app, says: “What we hate is an important part of who we are, but it’s often swept under the rug.”
Sounds interesting, as this very blog is founded on the principle that I think that rolling up your sleeves and having a damn good rant on everything is a key part of a modern, civilised society. I have always said if there's one thing I know to do, it's how to moan about things I don't like very much.
I actually, and somewhat ironically, hate the principle of online dating itself from a start, seeing as it would be perfectly possible for me to use a profile picture of Ryan Reynolds and tell a load of complete and total lies about myself to the point where anyone logged on to my profile, they'd be gobsmacked if they met me in real life that I'm not a gay 1970's pornstar-cum-astronaut.
But to be able to set up a profile based on the stuff that really grinds your gears and really, REALLY gets up your nose ?? Brilliant. I can now legitimately use my dislike of reality TV, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, environmentalists, the EU, the Green Party, people who vote for Jeremy Corbyn, people who think Comic-Cons are for nerds, ham hock, horribly overpriced coffee, gym wankers, girls who are obsessed with guys with six-packs, burnt toast, cosplay snobs, Aston Villa Football Club, Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, internet pornography, Simon Cowell, Jean-Claude Juncker, the E! Channel, late trains, cauliflower cheese, shoe shops and fashionistas to potentially find a romantic partner.
Nothing could be more destigmatising.
And yet, and yet, it fails to escape the fact that is one of the key dangers of the internet; this irresistible hobby of giving everything a verdict. A judgement, a thumbs up or down. One minute you're giggling as you hate 100 concepts in a minute on Reddit, the next you’re giving a hotel no stars on Trip Advisor, roasting a friend’s wedding photos on Facebook, trolling columnists on the Guardian website and voting down all the solo songs from the members of One Dire Erection.
Again, just a typical day for me.
It’s easy for the first thought on anything to be negative. It's something I face at work everyday. It takes a small effort to push through into kindliness. With a five-minute pause, you might wonder whether the lady who forgot to put a syrup shot in your coffee at Starbucks was feeling a bit lonely, or suffering a bereavement you didn’t know about, and choose not to damn her business in public for all eternity, just in case.
I have quite a serious crush at the moment on a seriously pretty barmaid at the pub me and my colleagues go to on a Friday night, not that I'd ever tell her, but also because she can be quite comically bad at what she does (she's a true Penny from The Big Bang Theory in every sense of word), but that doesn't stop you from planning what University your kids are going to go to.
Ironically, that's what stopped me from actually making any further progress with the only girl I ever snogged, at the old pub we used to go to, almost three years to this very day. She's now going out with a Norwegian man-mountain who looks like he eats raw hippos for breakfast and could chop down a tree with his bare hands.
Why ??
Because at the end of the day women as a species are still amongst some of the biggest absolute sheer f***ing hypocrites you'll ever meet. A few years down the line, you’re welcoming your beloved through the door with an exhaustive chorus of everything they’ve found annoying, depressing or loathsome that day, dumped at your feet like so many litres of old bin juice, transforming the evening into one long, grim, joke-free episode of Room 101.
Maybe I should mention that when I set up my Hatr profile …