The Decline of Effort: Rally Tingwood’s Text Messages [Infographic]

Since I have abdicated my throne as a bachelorette contestant on an online dating show, I have started to draw in a shadier crowd of men who prefer to run their dating lives in the digital world. I think I have given guys the wrong impression and would like to clarify. As great and as solid as my relationship with Kent has been in the internet realm, I usually don’t prefer to date in a virtual reality. Yes eHarmony.com that includes you. It also includes the greatest threat to real-life classic dating of all time…the text message. There is one guy’s digital dating style in particular I feel is necessary to address. To protect names and identity, we will call him: Rally Tingwood.

Enter Rally Tingwood

Imagine the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials with a cell phone. Now imagine every text message you got from that cell phone had a winky face to make you believe the 60 characters before it. Now imagine never actually dating the man behind the texts and receiving messages just far enough apart to believe there is nothing going on, but just close enough together to think there may be something going on. Brilliant. The timing is flawless and a text usually appears after you post a good-looking Instagram of yourself or run into him for 5-seconds at a party. You have met a “Rally Tingwood.”

Over the past few months I have received messages similar to this one from Rallywood:

The emoticon placements are flawless and he has me in the palm of his iPhone. I usually reply to these texts with a “Let’s go out,” followed by at least three exclamation points to show I am serious, followed by a victory celebration fist pumping the air. The thrill lasts a total of t-minus 3 seconds before I realize…Rally Tingwood has out-smarted me again. His typographic charm has temporarily blinded me from the reality that, like many other men, he has no intention of taking me out and that two weeks from now I will still be spending Friday night by myself watching reruns of Downton Abbey snuggling a body pillow.

It has also blinded me from an even harsher reality that most guys these days rarely put in effort to seduce women beyond predictive text and abbreviations.

In an effort to illustrate to Tingwood and men everywhere why I am currently becoming desensitized to my buzzing phone, I have created an Infographic:

Enter the Infographic

My girl Carly Rae Jepsen said it best when she made a hit pop song and had Abercrombie models sing it shirtless, “Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number….so call me maybe?”