MODERN LOVE
A look into the world of dating and relationships in the 21st century age of technology. By Loana Solis, Courtney Echerd, Jamie Medina, Julia Fife, and Maria Nunez.
LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS
TO ROME, WITH LOVE
An Italian-American long-distance couple discusses the importance of technology in their relationship
THE STORY OF JEREMIAH & BRITTANY
He was laying around in his UT Austin dorm at after a night out, scrolling through his Twitter feed when Jeremiah Fitzerald stumbled upon a string of inspiring tweets from an anonymous account. The twitter account gave no personal info as to who was behind it, aside from a profile picture of a dark silhouette of a girl standing on the beach, but that was enough for Fitzerald to know he wanted to be with this girl.
.
“When I read her tweets I was like ‘wow! this girl is awesome,’” Fitzerald said. “In fact, I even told my roommate at the time that this was the girl I was going to marry, and I didn’t even know her name yet.”
After sending her a direct message saying he appreciated how uplifting her account was, Fitzerald soon learned that the silhouetted girl in the profile picture was named Brittany McDonald from Midlothian, Texas. It wasn’t long until the friendship that sparked from this conversation quickly developed into deeper interest and later love for each other.
McDonald attributes their ability to get to know more about each other to social media. Despite the fact that they lived in different Texas towns and had no preexisting connection to each other, McDonald and Fitzerald started catching feelings after learning about each other through things like Snapchat and Instagram.
“The one picture I remember from his Instagram was one of him with makeup on,” McDonald said. “I could just tell he was really funny and I liked him.”
Getting acquainted with potential significant others through platforms like Facebook and Twitter is something people only started doing within the past few years as social media has become a bigger part of day to day life; but it has allowed those wanting to date to gain better impressions of people they are interested in.
“You can get to know someone through their social media first rather than going on a date with someone you don’t really know anything about. You can't get to know them fully through it , but you can kind of see their likes and interests and see if you want to keep getting to know them.
Although the couple acknowledges the way they met is unique in that they did find each other online, the couple believes their love story is not that different than any typical boy meets girl story today.
“It's not that different than if you went to a coffeeshop and you saw someone there cool and just started talking,” Fitzerald said. “It’s just online. We weren’t looking for anything. We just found each other.”
THE WORLD OF DATING APPS
ONLINE DATING:
what people really think
A match made in Tinder heaven
After six months of swipes to the left, one-sided conversations, and matches that didn't bear any fruit, Zachary Sanders finally stumbled upon Taylor Choi's Tinder profile in the summer of 2015.
"She had this picture of herself with a sunflower and I thought 'this is the best person I've ever seen on here,'" Sanders said. "I knew I wanted to talk to her from that picture alone."
It wasn't long after he and Choi matched on Tinder that the Georgia Tech graduate and University of Texas junior decided that they liked each other. In the time since their initial meeting in their hometown of Southlake, Texas, what started as two thumbs mutually swiping right has grown into a committed long-distance relationship of one and half years.
THE STORY OF ZACH & TAYLOR
Choi and Sanders' match made in Heaven is just one of 12 million matches that occur on the Tinder daily. Every day, ten million users log onto the mobile app and view profiles of other Tinder users in their area- swiping left on pictures of those they are not interested in and right on those they are hoping to get matched with.
An initial match between two people might not necessarily mean that a pair is meant to be, however. Users swiping away on Tinder in search of love often encounter a number of users who simply want to hook up or who will not interact with them even after matching.
“I think they're just using it for the ego boost,” Sanders said. “They just want to see how many people think they're attractive and they won't actually talk to you.”
Despite the potential for disappointing matches and discontinued conversations, both Choi and Sanders agree that using the dating app is worth it if you can know what you’re looking for and have an open mind.
“The best thing to do is go into it with an open mind,” Choi said. “You have to see what kind of person peaks your interest and what kind of person you enjoy having a conversation with.”
CATFISHING
A conversation
OLD VS. NEW
