The Internet era partly to blame for rise in STIs
“The best thing about making love is walking up the stairs.”
So said Oscar Wilde, prolific 19th century writer of what was then every genre possible, including what might now pass as columns. Wilde was a brilliant idea-teller, the Beethoven of words, a sexual and social provocateur and master of the pithy one-liner. One can only aspire …
In that opening poetic line, Wilde was referencing that delicious appreciation of anticipation, an under-valued emotional esthetic that the Internet has wholly and cruelly destroyed.
And that brings us to the revelation that rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Alberta have swelled to the point of explosion. This bacteria-palooza is, to put it tenderly, an epidemic. The gregarious gonorrhea has seen an 80 per cent increase in Alberta bodies since 2014. Its pal syphilis doubled its habitation last year alone, the highest rate in the history of syphilis in North America (that would be 1492, when Columbus sailed it over the ocean blue).
The most-increased category of this prize includes women between the ages of 20 and 24, indigenous women and men who have sex with men (a quarter of these men also tested positive for HIV).
Senior medical officer of health Dr. Gerry Predy blames the sex-availability of social media for the wave, saying: “We will be using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and whatever else comes along,” to deliver some health education on the topic.
The “whatever else” Predy may want to check out is Tinder, euphemistically referred to as a dating app, but more commonly known for matching people for meaningless sex. All Tinder requires is a photo, age and first name; no awkward “soulmate wanted” paragraphs needed.
GPS tracks when potential lovebirds are in
One can only hope there will be backlash to this hook-up culture.
the vicinity of like-minded pheromones, and notifies same. This lazy excuse for human connection is used an average of 11 times a day, for a total waste of 90 minutes each, by 50 million people. Oh what Oscar Wilde might have done with Tinder.
The news about the STI outbreak raised barely a peep, easily solvable one supposes with a bout of penicillin. But these infections can also: kill babies; cause blindness; create heart and nerve problems; mental illness; and even death.
What’s more, STIs are the original viral medium — they just keep on paying it forward, spreading the love to the unsuspecting. What does this have to do with anticipation? We just don’t do it anymore, and may have just bred a generation that has never experienced its nuanced titillation at all.
We send a text at every impulse and expect an instantaneous and equally thoughtless response. There’s nothing left to say at the end of the day. We check emails constantly, so no surprises there. Remember letters?
The use of online porn is so ubiquitous, that researchers can’t study the effects of it on relationships because they can’t find a big enough control group of college-aged men who haven’t perused it. In Vancouver, barely disguised online offers of rooms for sex flow freely in the ozone without the asker having to look anyone in the eye.
The excitement of eyes meeting across a crowded room, flirting, and the tentative, frightening but also exhilarating first-impression conversations, have been downloaded to an app, the latest degradation. This hook-up culture cheapens the endorphin rush of courting, never mind what is earned through an actualized relationship, cutting instead right to the money shot.
STIs are just a symptom of the larger problem of instant gratification offered by the vehicle of the Internet; we may have only started to see the resulting social problems that ensue.
One can only hope there will be backlash to this hook-up culture, and that anticipation will be the next gratitude. Maybe anticipation will be rediscovered as a lost art.
Who better to offer the final caution on this topic than Wilde himself: “I can resist everything,” said the prophetic wordsmith who ultimately died of syphilis, “everything except temptation.”