Say you’re single and looking for a relationship. You meet a person of the appropriate gender for you and they’re single and also looking for a relationship. The two of you have a clear connection and this other person has all of the qualities on your checklist.
But there’s one issue: this person has a significant public presence. And more to the point, their public presence is based on very open discussions of their life - including their relationships. It could be a number of different things but let’s say as an example that they have a very popular YouTube channel.
The result is that if you start dating this person, a lot of the details of your relationship will become known to millions of people. Pretty much anything is open; the person might discuss emotional issues, sexual issues, family issues, or financial issues. Basically figure your life will become an open book. And it won’t be you doing the revealing; everything will be presented from the other person’s viewpoint.
Keep in mind that while the relationship is looking great now, things don’t always work out. The two of you might end up breaking up and if there are negative feelings these will also be expressed publicly.
How would you feel about this? Would you find it impossible to have a relationship with somebody under these circumstances? Would it be something you’re indifferent towards? Would you enjoy the situation?
If we are talking Kate Beckinsale dating me, I could respond to a lot of scrutiny with a mix of sheepish grins and knowing winks, but anyone else? Nah, I am too shy for that lifestyle.
If I don’t know the person yet and it’s just presented to me as ‘here’s your perfect mate but…’, I’d take a pass. Remember, if anything goes wrong, people tend to take the side that they hear first. Also, the court of public opinion is notoriously awful and tends to have exactly zero interest in the full story*.
Think about any youtube/blog story that starts out with “he/she didn’t want to…” and there’s going to be little you can say to defend yourself even if it’s “Sorry, I took three day vacation with you and worked 12 hours to get caught up, you’re right, I didn’t want [whatever it was]”. All the public is going to hear is 'you aren’t making her/him happy and that’s emotional abuse".
FTR, on the flip side it’s just as easy for the youtuber/blogger to the be the one saying "We took a three day vacation, then I worked 12 hours to get caught back up at work and now they’re mad at me because I was tired and didn’t want to [do something or another]’ and have the public mad at them for, more or less, the same reasons.
In the end, some people thrive on the drama and attention and that’s fine. We, the unwashed masses, like to watch that, so it’s good that there’s people out there that like to do it. I’m just not one of them. I prefer calm, collected and less ups and downs in my relationships.
*There’s a woman around here nicknamed Front Row Amy that’s has front row seats at all the Brewers games. She’s been slut shamed like you wouldn’t believe. Accused not just of trying to score a husband, but of sleeping with half the team or just there for the attention. Someone finally did an article on her and she said that while she is proud of her body, she’s also been into baseball since forever and if you actually watch her she’s one of those people that spends the entire game jotting down stats in a notebook (not holding up ‘marry me’ signs). Also (not that it always means something), but she’s happily married and not looking for anyone else.
But, like I said, the public decides something and that’s that.
I always hate it when people say ‘everyone wants to be rich and famous’. Yeah, no. I mean, I’ll take some extra scratch, but I have no interest at all in being famous. Not even a little bit. When people say ‘everyone wants to be rich and famous’ what they should be saying is ‘I want to be rich and famous’.
Worst case, I get a platform to air political and social views and piss off some paparazzi before returning to the life I have now. If I end up with a hatedom, I do the cruelest thing imaginable: Refuse to be a lulzcow, ignore the trolls, and fade back into nowhere. Believe me, even fucking 4chan will leave you alone if you don’t do anything when they poke you. Serious stalking and harassment isn’t from trolls, it’s from relatives, friends, and the completely goddamned insane.
Best case, I actually get to have a relationship with someone with my sense of humor and use it to engage with the rest of the world.
This is kind of a circular hypothetical, because an attention whore is NOT going to have “all of the qualities on your checklist” if you’re not the type who likes getting attention. That aspect of the personality will creep into everything else, and apart from the attention, it will make the person unattractive in other ways. It’s like saying, “She perfect for me! The only problem is she bugs the shit out of me.”
I guess for me it would depend on how fair, balanced and rational they were about it all. If I felt these issues being discussed were not being fairly represented and the public presentation of them was just large-scale relationship bitching, that would be quite off-putting. Also if the things being talked about were not also talked about within the relationship (or if they were verboten in that context), that would be pretty dysfunctional and I would not like it.
I guess that amounts to ‘it depends’. There are circumstances in which I would not find public discussion objectionable.
There’s actually a good aspect to it: vloggers are often more open with their webcam than they are with their loved ones. Sometimes it’s easier to say things to a camera than a person.
So, while a bunch of other people will get the inside knowledge of your relationship, you will too. You could learn the ups and the downs and the things she’d never even think to say to your face. (Think of how much easier dating would be if you actually had a play-by-play recap of what worked and what didn’t, straight from the horse’s mouth…)
If it were me, I’d ask two things before jumping into the relationship:
No visual images of my face on the videos
Refer to me by a code name, instead of my legal name*
If she’s a decent person and the connection is real, she shouldn’t have any issues with those requests. If she did, I’d have to rethink any potential relationship, though, depending on her reasoning, I might be willing to do what I could to work toward a compromise.
I value my secrets and my privacy with regard to the public at large, but if nobody knows it’s me being discussed, I don’t really see the harm in it.
With any new relationship, I’d have to trust her before I really let her in, lest she spill my secrets all over town (that’s a mistake you don’t make twice)–this is ultimately no different, except the potential audience is larger. The same trust would still be required.
*My old boss’ second wife works in radio; they met in an elevator at the office, so she calls him “Otis” whenever she talks about him on the air, in order to avoid any issues arising in his personal/professional life and keep her personal life slightly private.
In a way, it would be self-limiting, because the most salacious details of my personal life are about titillating as the phone book. She starts sharing, and the subscribers to her YouTube channel would drop off like a escort’s knickers.
That having been said, her willingness to discuss my finances is a deal-breaker. It would be too much trouble to keep the details away from her, especially if the relationship became serious. One of the things I love about my wife is that I have absolutely no defense against her - if she wanted to ruin me, it would be almost trivial for her to do. Vice versa as well, but the fact that I trust her absolutely reinforces the relationship, because she doesn’t do it. The trust, IOW, is reinforced almost daily.
Someone who is going to blab everything about my kinks and balance sheet isn’t someone with whom I talk about my kinks and balance sheet.
No, not a relationship breaker. I’m not a public person, so the public wouldn’t care about me anyway. And if it goes sour, it’s surprisingly easy to not read what people say about you online.
^ This.
She’s too young for me & I’d probably never get a chance to meet her to even have the opportunity, but I’d never want to date Taylor Swift…once we break up, I’m getting trashed in a song.
I figured “this other person has all of the qualities on your checklist” was less awkward than writing “this other person has all of the qualities on your checklist with the possible exception of the following quality I am about to describe which may or may not be a problem for you.”
Deal-breaker. I tend to stand out in a crowd but more in a “who was that strange fellow” sort of way; I like a certain level of namelessness that I don’t ever want to give up.
