Five days before I started writing this essay, I felt something—something strange enough to make me flare up at work and start documenting my thoughts.
As Kaiti and I drove home, listening to heavy metal Gregorian chants while we talked about the misappropriation of historical periods, I flashed back to our conversation in the bookstore. “So, what do you think about the essay?” I asked her as she continually stroked a cat that had curled herself into an adorable ball of comfort on her lap. This question became the starter of another round of conversation that lasted for roughly an hour before she ignited the car and drove me back to Fourth Street while we listened to Gregotechno singing in heavy metal Gregorian chants and nodded our heads as if we were in a concert. What made me flash back to this conversation is not only because I love this woman; rather, it is because every time we get to talk, it is always obvious how and what a good, I mean an extremely good, conversation should look like.
In order to explore the variances of my conversations and knowledge of others, this essay is essentially set in the United States, focusing on the nuances of conversations, addressing the title, and a couple of other chains of modern thoughts. I do not intend to sugarcoat the truth; rather, I want to let you know that the art of conversation is (I guess) dead, and what only matters now is questions of sex. Not that I have anything against sex, my intention is to pierce one of the most brushed-off topics, speak on the reasons, rant about experiences I have personally and those of my friends, whom I have mocked them over, and probably bore you with an ending that caves everything in.
“Hey handsome, nice to meet you. Are you open to friends with benefits?”
Some questions will make you wonder if the asker knows how it sounds, but this one particularly shocked me, and I wonder when we have degraded to such animalistic tendencies. For some minutes, I stared weirdly at this message before replying. Let me even waive the unconcerned security thought that seems to have been flung across the room. My question was, are you that sex-starved that you do not bother to know who you are texting, but rather desire to be fucked almost at the point of the first message? This, my friend, was my first personal shock, and while I thought it would be the last, the more I tried to have conversations, the more I saw similar patterns, so what could be wrong?
I do not have theories to analyse this, or perhaps I do not want to go down the academic road; rather, all I have accrued is concerned with sociological tendencies. First, why have conversations dwindled? Second, what are the factors that contributed to the dwindling of conversations? For those of us who still care, these two questions rage in our minds every day as we try to interact with strangers and acquaintances; however, before I dive into these reasons, I want to briefly digress on what I have noticed when you invite people in the U.S. to a date. Don’t lose me now; it’s all connected.
“Can we go out on a date?”
A host of cultural differences will leave you shocked from your point of entry, but if you enjoy good conversation like myself, you should add more months of being perplexed—why? Because going on a date in the United States (to some people) apparently means different things, especially if you are just meeting them. When I began my social explorations, my main intention was to go on dates with people, learn more about them, and call it a day. However, a few months in and after my conversation with Theo, I now understand that to invite someone to a date is to undertone it as a romantic date. Shocking!
The truth is, when I think of dates, I think of a series of outings you go on with either an acquaintance that you want to turn into a friend or a friend you want to learn more about. However, it becomes romantic when it is specified by the asker saying, “Can we go on a romantic date?” When I think of dates in Nigeria, I flash back to each time Tawakalt and I hung out, which is now enough for her to know the taste of the food I prepare without knowing that I was the chef. I think of the movie date I have gone with Gbemisola and a couple of others, which I went with friends without a romantic undertone. However, when an acquaintance rejected a date offer by saying, “They would rather be friends,” I began to ponder: wasn’t a date meant to be a friend thing?
A year ago, a Reddit user asked the same thing I am now struggling with. Their question reads, Can dates be platonic or are they always romantic? to which they expand by saying:
So I am an aroace person and in my opinion “dates” don’t have to be always romantic, unless you make it a romantic date (So you can go on a date as platonic friends).For example I sometimes go on a “date” with a very close friend of mine (That I don’t have feelings for) as a joke sort of(?)Well I’ve met this person and they asked me if I wanted to do smt and he asked if it would be a date.I told him what I already wrote in the post(That I don’t really see dates as a romantic thing unless you make them a romantic thing) So my question is wether platonic dates are actually a thing and if other aro ppl do this? 🙂
Another user replied:
dates and hangouts are the same to me. a date is only romantic if you consider it that way, there is no actual standard for it. i think people just made up rules or like a set list of things people would do on a date and that has become the norm (e.g: handholding, kissing, idfk dude)
im romance positive so i dont really care either, i just love spending time with the people i care deeply abt.
The nuances this post generated, which are seen in the polarisation of the comment section, would later become a confirmation of Theo’s standpoint, which states, The majority of the dates you go to in the United States are romantic. This, coming from a close friend who had been in this country for months before me, will then become another basis to explore the next stage of action: dating apps.
“So, do you use sex toys?”
When I think of the dearth of conversation, I think one of the reasons for its rise is the use of dating apps. The truth is that on dating apps, the attention span is shorter, you are prone to doomswapping (a term I heard first from Theo), and it’s a hunting competition. In other words, if you match with a girl, as a guy, you are certainly not the only one in her DM. Perhaps what sets you apart is not about you asking her favourite meal after her workout session, or sending her lines from Nizar Qabbani’s Arabian love poems, or retelling her lines from Shakespeare’s Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Perhaps what sets you apart is when you are straightforward, talking dirty. Perhaps it is the negligence of the small talk. Perhaps it is a question like, So, do you use sex toys?
I do not intend to water down the efforts of those who have found either the love of their life on dating apps or the spouse of their youth; what I intend to understand (despite that I am the one writing) is why the essence of dating apps seems to be what Nigerian pidgin English refers to as “Mekwe”, meaning sex. In a conversation with an anonymous person, they recalled their encounter with dating apps and lamented how they even struggle to hold proper conversations again.
“…on that same day, I knew the size of her bra, the color of her pants, and she even showed me several of her sex toys.”
My issue with this is with the other party, who has chosen to reply to such questions. There are some things you hear and you take a step back, but when I heard what they did, I was shocked as to why we have degenerated into an abyss of senseless talk.
I grew up without dating apps, and if I loved a girl, what this meant was that I had to spend countless Naira in purchasing airtime just to speak to her. Sometimes, I had to text her from other people’s phones just to know if she had eaten. I had to send texts like this:
My sunshine, I hope you are good today. I missed hearing your giggle, and I miss your face more. Wishing you a good night, my damsel. P.S. Don’t reply, this is my Mom’s phone.
I remember a Twitter thread I read last year, a few months into my arrival in the United States, speaking in soccer lingua on what you should expect when you migrate to a new country as it pertains to romantic relationships. The endpoint is just like what Poseidon said to Odysseus after the latter had boasted to have won the war himself without any gods’ help: you shall suffer. In order not to suffer, therefore, the inclination towards dating apps quadrupled. What makes this interesting is not only the realisation that you now have to compete for attention, it is that you have to sell yourself through your bios.
When I opened an account on Tinder, I indicated that I enjoy reading a lot, enjoy walking in the park, enjoy art activities, including museum visits, enjoy watching and rewatching The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and enjoy long and great conversations. But with many unsuccessful matches, I spoke to Theo, who now opined that to be on dating apps, you have to choose an alter ego. In one word, nerdy won’t get you a match; only being fun will. So, I altered my bio and indicated that I can bake in satires and serve in puns. Instead of citing museums and art events as my happy place, I cited Movie Theatres and Dancing as fun things I do. I even included that I knew a good Taco spot. You would think what I did was magic as I began to get matches. Apparently, just as Theo had said, being nerdy won’t get you a match; it is about being fun.
When I started texting, I would ask questions that seemed opaque but deep, questions that I thought would spiral into a rabbit hole of knowing each other. Questions that let me know if this person enjoys watching the sunset or if they prefer to rather spend their time alone, to know this person’s favourite ice cream flavour or even if they like ice cream at all, to know what they thought of when they saw a movie, or to know why they said they enjoy listening to Omah Lay, Naira Marley, Asake, and Fireboy even though they are Americans and they struggle with the heavy accent they sing with. Then—stillness or, better still, ghosting (if we are to break the crescendo with the modern parlance).
“Hello, are you there?”
When you are being ghosted, if it is ever your first, you struggle with the idea of being ghosted and contemplate sending another text, given the fact that you were raised with love and attention back at home. In a group conversation I recently had with friends, I narrated one of the most hurtful ghosting I received from a known person. This wasn’t even the person I met on a dating app, which would have lessened the hurt; we knew each other well. When I think of the idea of ghosting, I see it as a form of inability to properly communicate, to properly tell the other party that you want them to stop texting, or that you do not think they would work out with you. To me, ghosting is like leaving a corpse in an open space. It becomes harmful to you as well as the people in the environment.
I recently interacted with someone for three days before I called it off. After matching on a dating app, we began to talk. We talked about our choice of music and what we enjoy doing on days we are free, but I knew that I could not continue the charade. To some, it may be the best, and while I find it repulsive, mainly because they bore me, I told them plainly, as opposed to ghosting:
Hello D, we have had great conversations so far, but I do not think we are a good match. I wouldn’t want to leave you on read because that will be disrespectful and hurtful without you knowing what went wrong. In other words, our conversations will drastically reduce, but it doesn’t mean that I do not respect you.
What ended this was a blocking from D. I felt at peace, not because of the blocking, but because, rather than just leaving, I highlighted the reasons. And as I recalled the pain I felt when I was ghosted by an acquaintance to my friends, telling them how I struggled to sleep because I was concerned about this person while they were certainly home rebuffing my texts, I realised that to be ghosted is never different from being an unburied corpse on the street and the only way to keep the city clean is to bury the bodies. We know what we intend to have; it is no calculus. If you find someone’s company repulsive, I think the best you can do is to let them know that you find it repulsive and, to save the sanity of self-respect, give them the exeat to leave, but how can you do this when people now export messages to AI models to analyse the reply and when you cry to it for therapy, it suggests that you leave for the sake of your personal peace?
“If you feel like you are not flowing with them, you may leave them. Would you like me to help you write a message for them?”
Arguably, one of the reasons conversations seem to have dwindled, lack human interaction and affection, and generate erratic reactions is that we have chosen to give AI tasks that can help us talk rather than talking to ourselves. I recently came upon one of those esoteric parchment quotes, hoping to earmark romantic intimacy that reads, I have told my ChatGPT about you, and I wondered why we have to come down to this level of robotic communication, despite other things that the technology can be used for. Then I recalled Sophocles’ quote:
Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.
What this quote signifies is that even grand achievements and advancements made by humans can carry a hidden drawback or a tendency towards destruction and an advancement of humans, which in this space is no other than AI.
I therefore think that the most obvious heartbreaking shift is not just that people ghost or that conversations are dry—it’s that we’ve begun to outsource the most human part of ourselves: how we talk to each other. Now, before crafting a simple reply, many turn to ChatGPT, asking, “How should I respond to this message?” or “What do you think they meant by this emoji?” What used to be a gut feeling, a spontaneous spark of connection, is now filtered through machine logic. While I do not have anything against AI, the tragedy is not AI itself, but our reflex to consult it before consulting our hearts. That we no longer trust our instincts. That, before we even say “hi,” we want a robot to script it for us. In trying not to fumble our words, we’ve lost our own voice. And in doing so, we’re not talking anymore. We’re consulting. We’re strategising. We’re optimising. We have lost touch with conversation. So what happens when a generation forgets how to speak without asking permission from a machine? We risk becoming fluent in perfect replies and illiterate in sincere ones. We risk ghosting not because we mean to be cruel, but because we don’t even know how to say goodbye on our own.
And maybe that’s the saddest part—we’ve made conversation so mechanical that even heartbreak comes with a prompt.
“Yes! Yes! I love black color too, especially when you match it with grey.”
One of my favourite lines in William Blake’s poem, The Four Zoas, is when he announces that “the sweet Science reigns.” The basis of my love is not Blake’s refuting of religion; it is his futuristic declaration of how science will save the world. Yuval N. Horari noted in one of his books, 21 Lessons in the 21st Century, that we have not scratched what science and technology will bring for us in the 21st century and I think similarly too but how do we cope with a world where people don’t go to park to look, where people rarely walk up to another to talk to them? How do we cope in a world where we are glued to our phones and, like puppets, we follow almost the next suggested thing on our timeline?
On a call with Idowu, I told him I had recently deleted my accounts on dating apps, not because I don’t want to enjoy the moment, but because people rarely meet; we only connect. We do not have conversations because, according to Lyrica, they are small talk; we only talk about what we want to do, and this has marked the beginning of dwindling conversation.
When I was growing up, 2go (a social messaging app in Africa) was popular. Just like Instagram or Snapchat, you have to know the person’s username to add them. This is never the part that intrigues me; what I enjoyed about it was the small talk. It was the bits I know about someone I like. It was about knowing that they like black being paired with grey, that they know Arnold Schwarzenegger, that they watch Indian movies, that they are going back to school the following week, that they’ve never been in a genuine relationship, that they have played XIII, Mission Impossible, or Assassin’s Creed, and that the closest you can come to announcing to your friend list that you love them is when you use their picture as your profile display picture.
As Kaiti and I drove to the parking lots of my building, I chuckled, not only because we just had another round of what she once called a “nerdy conversation,” but because even though we agreed that it won’t work well for us being in a relationship, we still have the best conversation, and that is what I imagine when I think about friendship. Conversation. Meeting.
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