Dating : Dante’s ‘Inferno’ = Online Dating

Online dating is hell. It can eat away at your self worth, make you settle for less than you deserve, and potentially land you in a relationship with a partner who is so cold that you rename your apartment’s Wifi network to ‘Abode of the Damned’.

It’s a book that you probably read in college and promptly forgot about unless you pursued a degree in Theology or Philosophy.* The TL;DR version of the book is that Dante (the character, not the author) is guided thru the various stages of hell by the ghost of the poet Virgil (versus Virgil Earp as played by Sam Elliott).

Hell, as it turns out, is a complicated place with different levels and the deeper Dante and Virgil venture the worse it gets.

There are nine circles of hell, according to Dante: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. Many of the circles have sub-circles that hone in on the extent of the sin committed by the damned. Oh dip! Hell, just like dating, is complex af.

All of this sound eerily familiar? You start out on OkCupid and match with nice people only to have them ghost you so you switch to Bumble. Bumble turns out to be a total wash so you rejoin Tinder. Tinder turns into a revolving door of mayhem and before you know it you end up in the dark corner of the Internet known as Reddit.

Here’s an example: You match with the boo-jawn of your dreams. They flatter you, inundate you with gifts, spend time with your family, and then out of nowhere they have completely iced you out of their life. That tremendous human being belongs to Circle 8 (Fraud), subsection i: panderers and seducers. Dante was ahead of the curve when it came to acknowledging fuck-bois!

Virgil, the poet-ghost who escorts Dane thru hell, is all of us, as is Dante. Virgil represents logic, reason, and offers protection to Dante during their journey thru hell. If we are to survive on this particular journey into (dating) hell the only person that we can count on is ourselves; we need to remember who we are, that we are awesome and to have faith in ourselves to the point of lunacy since according to Virgil, “reason is powerless without faith.”

To quote another great prophet George Michael, “I gotta have faith.”

Virgil often times expresses annoyance with Dante over missteps, essentially reminding us that we are all Dante at four am when we’ve had four glasses of wine and texting all the douche-canoes that haven’t responded to your messages in two weeks. Virgil is the voice that gently reminds you that you need to have some water and go to bed. Those people are jerks and they don’t deserve you.

MULTITUDES, DOG; WE CONTAIN THEM.

So, here we are, ready to enter the abyss and enter the first circle of Online Dating Hell: Limbo. Like/subscribe/stay tuned.

___________________________________________________________________

On a personal note, your fearless author has been meeting people from the Internet since the mid 90’s (SORRY MOM!) and has experienced many fresh dating hells over the past 20 years. To those of you who haven’t had a hard time internet dating, GOOD FOR YOU, YOU LUCKY DUCKY.

This is an on-going series born out of sheer frustration and amusement; quite frankly it’s wildly entertaining that Socrates (CORRUPTER OF THE YOUTH!) is stuck in purgatory, at least according to Dante. Socrates would definitely be the dude who would text you ‘wyd’ a week after a terrific date and when confronted about his horrific behavior would give you a 20 minute lecture on what constitutes a date.**

*shout out to those of you brave enough to stick it out in the academy, which is a fresh hell unto itself. May you inherit the Earth and secure tenure tract positions at the University of your dreams.

** tyvm to R & J who contributed to that joke; the both of you are tremendous.