Scanning the wall posts of my Facebook friends can be a pretty good gauge of what people are doing for fun.   It is also a daily soap opera of “Days Of Our Lives” proportions. People expose their personal lives and inner most secrets to a level that would make people blush in the real world.  I constantly see relationships started, ended, and hearts poured out into the Web 2.0 world on a variety of subject.

Today’s Facebook  scan tells me that Sarah is no longer in a relationship and ready to get out with her single friends.  Amy thinks her guy is stepping out on her with a girl on his friends list.  She is thinking of creating a fake profile to trap him. (It’s not a secret now if he or any of his friends are on her friends list)  Lauren is “re-formatting” after having her heart broken.  Debbie changed her status from married to single. Her friend Jen did not even know her marriage was in trouble.  I also came across the following post on the wall of one of my friends.

“So evidently there is this new pick up line that guys are using it goes like this: ” hey so i would like to see you again” Me?  Yeah you! Want my number or do you have Facebook I can find you on there? I  laughed! That was the worst pick up line! it is sad that social networking has denigrated into  chickenshit dating! How sad! What is this world is coming to? WTF! “

Doesn’t her statement pretty much sum up Generation Y dating? For much of my dating life we did not even have cell phones. You had to ask for a home number. You took the risk of nosy parents, brothers and sisters answering the phone. You had to be on your game from minute one. How in the world did our parents get by?  Isn’t it amazing we are even here?  God forbid we should actually have to look someone in the eye when asking them out.

Now we are not even asking for phone number. We are asking for email addresses. We are asking for Facebook and Myspace pages. We are “texting our way to love“  For evidence of this look no further than my real life friends Monica and Hollywood movie star Alan. She live in Manhattan and he lives in L.A.  I recently wrote about my attempt at a “Facebook hookup” on their behalf.  You can read about their “textlationship” in the premiere episode of “Text In The City”.

We are advertising to the entire social networking world that we are on the market. We have started and ended and relationships on these same sites. We used to break up in restaurants so there would not be a scene. Now we find out for the first time when we see our boyfriend or girlfriend’s Facebook relationship status suddenly set to “single and looking” We try to contact them(on Facebook of course) and find we are now “blocked”. Relationship death by Facebook at its best. I would bet that within the 18-35 crowd there are almost as many relationships started and ended by text, email and social networking announcements than by an actual phone call. God forbid you have the guts to actually meet someone in person and talk about a future or lack thereof.

In my day, if you met a girl in a bar and she thought you were a total geek loser, the phone number she gave you was actually the phone number to Blockbuster Video. (I rented a lot of movies) For Generation X you got a phone number from The Rejection Hotline.(see video below) They have pre-recorded “rejection phone numbers to cover just about any scenario. Today, your blow-off is a girl giving you an address to her Facebook or MySpace page entitled:

“AMY’S MYSPACE REJECTION PAGE DEDICATED TO THE TOTAL LOSER GEEKS DOUCHEBAGS SHE MET IN BARS LAST WEEKEND.  IF YOU ARE VIEWING THIS PAGE YOU ARE A DORK! GET LOST!

When are we going to start seeing “wiki” personals and social networking sites where everyone who knows you basically creates your profile.  Would you have the guts to turn your social page into a “wiki” and let the masses collaborate on what your page should say?   A social wikipieda not geared at the facts of your life but at who you really are.  I envision a Linkedin type of dating where you solicit recommendations from your friends and they post them on  your profile.  For each verifiable recommendation you get a “date rate”.  The higher the “date rate” the more dateable your are.  The key would be that once you ask for the recommendation you can not change what they put on your profile good or bad. Of course like recommendations for any job interview you would probably not ask anyone who was going to put on your profile that you are a:

“mac-daddy” 30k millionaire with delusions of every one else’s grandeur” .

We have gone from “Dear John Letters” to “Dear John Phone Numbers” to “Dear John Texts” to” Dear John social networking pages.

I am definitely not naming my kid John. The odds are against him meeting someone right off the bat.

When all else fails, just Date or Dump Web 2.0 Style!

©2008 Brian Cuban