Joyce Wadler, “No! There’s Something About Me You Haven’t Googled?” New York Times, June 2, 2016.
I was scheduled to go on a first date with a guy I’d met online a while back, and wishing to be helpful, a friend sent me everything she could find on him. His résumé, a speech he gave, pictures of him and his ex-wife in a magazine. Everything, really, but his I.R.S. files. There should be a name for this kind-of sort-of online dossier. “Webssier,” maybe? It sounds like the beginning of that kids’ song:
Ta-ra-ra webssier,
I know your take-home pay,
I know the books you’ve read
And that your dog is dead.
I see your partner Mort
Will see you soon in court,
Your ex-wife seems quite sweet —
My God, she looks like me.
Not that I wasn’t planning on Googling the guy myself; I just wouldn’t have been as thorough. I save that level of diligence for after the breakup, when I hope to see him reprinting stories he did 40 years ago for The East Village Other and posting links to melancholy Platters songs at 3 a.m. Prerelationship, I like a little mystery.
I know I’m in the minority with this one. Googling before a date is now so ingrained in the culture, it’s practically hygienic, like using mouthwash. Not Googling, on the other hand, is like getting into a car with a guy you just met at a party: If they find you floating in the Hudson a few days later, it’s on you.
Sure, when you Google you may learn that a date has been arrested for drunken driving or is not entirely divorced. But it also removes the delight of surprise. This is especially troublesome on first dates, where it is essential to look cool. I have made a study of this, and I have discovered that people have exactly three cool things each.
One of my cool things is that I once lived in Paris, working on a book about a French spy who had a child with a Chinese opera singer who turned out to be a man. This is harder than you might think to slip into conversation, but believe me, I manage.
The coat that woman is wearing reminds me of the time I lived in Paris, in a little apartment in the Sixth. You’d never see a coat like that in Paris …
If I try that these days, my date already knows that I lived in Paris because he read about it online. I haven’t even finished my drink and I’m down to two cool things, one of which is my car, so I’m not sure it counts. And I know my date’s cool things, like that Gilda Radner used to go to his loft for leftovers and that he introduced Bob Dylan and Norman Mailer. We’ve known each other an hour and we’re already sick of each other’s stories, which isn’t supposed to happen until after we’re married.
It’s a spoiler, the dating equivalent of somebody telling you that Harry Lime is alive at the beginning of “The Third Man.” On the other hand, since everybody does it, if a date hasn’t done a cursory search on you it’s also a bit insulting. He’s already standing there at the bar with his cellphone, looking at baseball scores; how hard would it be to say, “Siri, check ‘Wadler,’ ‘arrests,’ ‘New York City’”?
You know how romance used to be in Greenwich Village, back in the ’70s? We’d pick each other up in the street. The neighborhoods were more peaceful then because you didn’t have the cellphone screamers. If you wanted to hear someone fight with a partner, you had to go back to your apartment and wait till you had fallen asleep.
Bars and restaurants were also good places to meet someone because the acoustics were such that we could hear one another. We didn’t have OkCupid to tell us beforehand if someone A) believed in astrology, B) did not believe in astrology but thought it was still kind of fun, or C) covered every electrical device in his home with aluminum foil; we operated on conversation and chemistry. I once met an architect at an all-night burger joint called David’s Pot Belly whom I saw for several months and it was lovely.
I also once got picked up in the West Village by a city councilman. He was smoother than the scruffy reporters and photographers I usually went for, but charming. We exchanged numbers and I met him for brunch at the Riviera, a sidewalk cafe on Sheridan Square. I have no memory of what we talked about, but not long after we sat down, an attractive, dark-haired woman leaned over the railing and said something to the guy along the lines of “I’d just like you to know that you put me in the hospital with a ruptured gallbladder.” And to me, “You should know that you’re sitting with a guy who likes to hit women.”
Then she walked away.
I was out of that cafe like a shot and raced after her on the street. When I caught up with her she was embarrassed and started apologizing, saying she should have never interfered.
Are you kidding? I said. What she had done, confronting that creep to protect another woman, took nerve, and I was grateful. It seems to me that we walked together a few blocks; maybe we said we should get together for coffee, but we never did. But sometimes when I’m in Sheridan Square I think about what happened. The shock of the moment when she confronted that guy, his denial to me as I got to my feet, her nerve. Thehumannessof the exchange.
Then again, had she not come along, there might have been the very real humanness of an assault.
There may be something to be said for Googling.
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