bradofarrell:

I didn’t want this to show up in the reblog notes for this picture but I also wanted to give credit to the artist because it’s really good art. But I see this picture on my dash all the time and it’s really upsetting because it’s promoting and glamorizing behavior that is really unhealthy. It needs an additional 8 panels where they try to talk but they don’t have anything to talk about in person and they have no chemistry and they can’t kiss without it feeling weird and then it takes less than 4 hours for them to decide they’re better off being just friends.

When you talk to someone online for years and meet them for the first time in person you’re basically setting yourself up for an extremely awkward but extremely well researched blind date. Almost everything that matters in a romantic relationship is not something you can gauge by an online relationship. Things like how a person holds themselves in conversation and how they smell and how tall they are and how easy it is to hang out on the couch with them and how a solid week of hanging out together would unfold are all things you can not know from talking to someone online for years and they make up like 60% of what a relationship even is.

Pretending a relationship is “all mental” and assuming that if you get along on chat you’ll get along in person is really juvenile and unfair to yourself. Even if you’re gay. Even if you’re a sexual minority. Even if you think there is no one in your home town you can date, and even if you’re right, it’s still not smart to put all your stock into someone over the internet.

I mean it makes sense if you’re young and in high school because it doesn’t matter as much as your friendships with class mates don’t matter. But please please please don’t, like, not date people in your real life because you think you’re dating someone online or god forbid move to their city without spending several weeks with them first.

If you’re in a place in your life where you think you need to be in an online relationship the healthiest option is to tough it out until you can change your situation to the point that real life relationships are available to you. But by letting yourself fall in love with someone online (which is SUPER EASY when you don’t have to deal with the very real barrier of “chemistry”) you’re setting yourself up for this weird thing where one of you has to make a big move to live with a stranger, which is always a bad choice, or for the thing to just fizzle out anyway.

Don’t do that. Move to another city. Go to a queer bar. Meet a nice real human being.

Also I’m not going to actually argue against anyone in this post because I guarantee if you’re getting mad about reading this you’re going to realize I’m right a few hours after your awkward airport hug because I’m speaking from both personal experience and the aggregate experience of every one of my friends who’s tried to do this.

It doesn’t work, man, the internet is a venus flytrap for your heart.