“The dating scene,” a term that is almost as unreal in tangible existence as “the matrix,” takes on a particularly cartoonish in its laughability bent when one finds herself amid the inexplicable tableau of New York City. And sure, while every major metropolis is prone to having issues under the very specific umbrella that comes with having “too many options” (which belies none at all), New York is of an especial masterpiece with regard to just how bad bad can be in the pile of alleged humanity called “the single male” (compounded when another modifier, “white,” is added to it).
Ah but wait, bad is being postulated as becoming much worse with the influx of tech bro types that buried any remaining trace of the San Francisco you might have once thought of as an “arts community.” Like the tech companies that brought in personalityless basics into the (once) “golden city” by Google bus in droves, Amazon offers a company (anti-)culture that is roughly sixty percent male. Many packing six-figure salaries where their dicks and according bedroom skills should be. With CEO Jeff Bezos as the pied piper of the bifurcated genres of tech bro that consist of the awkward, socially inept one and the arrogant, “your little woman brain is too feeble to understand my job” one, there shan’t be enough room on the requisite helipad to ever ferry them all out again once they’ve infiltrated.
And yet, any seasoned (female) New Yorker, properly jaded enough by years of living a worse, less glamorous version of what they watched as youths on Sex and the City, is immune to just about any additional filth and waste of air the proverbial corporation throws their way. “The man” does not know who he’s tangoing with, in truth: the last of the “tough old broads” still holding it down for every other pussy who left claiming there’s a whole world outside New York (which, yes, don’t tell, there is) and the present wave of ingenues who have conditioned themselves to either 1) be lesbians within the framework of pansexuality or 2) know better than to expect anything other than a void with dollar signs that might be shared should a nuptial agreement be reached. So no, there is nothing any entity can unleash upon Gotham that will really affect it at this point, least of all an army of men who have never read anything by Dostoyevsky, let alone James Frey. And as they mark their very specific, tailor-made territory of Long Island City (and any surrounding area unfortunate enough to be deemed a playground for “after hours”–that means you, Greenpoint) in the Amazon logo, pissing it out on the sidewalks with their pissant wangs, women and the various dating profiles intended to represent them on manifold apps will not quiver or shake in their boots over it. Because this is simply what New York has always offered in terms of men and “romance”: complete and utter bullshit (then again, isn’t that what it offers in the housing and job markets as well? So why shouldn’t it be a complete trifecta?). It is nothing that the females of NYC still attempting to preserve heteronormativity and a plucky belief in the formerly presumed rom-com happy ending cannot handle. We’ve handled worse, after all. Like any of the events of 2012. Or harboring all the major real estate of a rapist in one of the highest positions of power in the world. So no, this is really nothing as cataclysmic as “what happened in San Francisco.” Also because San Francisco is so small in comparison that every worsening corporate plot point is felt with far more intensity by all walks of life in that town.
Plus, these tech bros simply won’t know what hit them when they come into direct contact with the very nexus of gender fluidity and touting political correctness when it comes to pronoun usage. It will be enough to solidify the already rather cemented “straight” male phenomenon of asexuality or, in a greater and more unexpected turn of events, proliferate more jobs for women in terms of reinvigorating the prostitution demand. Perhaps the underlying business and job boom to the city Bezos has been promising all along.
