is romance dead and gone?

According to a recent article I read in the paper, it is. In this the age of new technologies and texting people are becoming very disenchanted and detached. Texting has enabled our culture to have many options going for us at once. ''Booty texting,'' as it was referred to in the article has made us, particularly our youth, into people that are constantly hedging our options. The article was talking about this strictly in the dating world, but I believe it can be applied to our entire lives. We live in a world where everything is constantly vying for our attention. So ''booty texting,'' can be applied to terms of simple conversations. While texting Nancy or Chad, they are keeping our attention for a moment, but once Andrew and Casey start texting you it becomes a game of seeing which one you want to give your attention to the most, all while trying to make yourself sound vaguely interested in all the other texters. We like to keep them as our ''back-ups,'' while we our self become someone's backup. And to make this all the more confusing, and potentially extremely painful, we don't speak of these back-ups or even this new set of social rules. But we all apply to them. We make our nicknames for people behind their backs that help us to compartmentalize our options. There is the ''extremely annoying one, who is only to be texted out of dire boredom,'' the ''I'm looking to have a wild time one,'' the ''extremely emotional one,'' and of course there is the ''one who takes forever to text back so you end up having to text the extremely annoying one, who is only to be texted out of dire boredom.'' You may find yourself laughing at these names, and I may have made them a little drastic to emphasize a point, but when you really stop to think about you know that it completely applies to you too. I admit that I have all of these plus more, but honestly that's why I am blogging about this. Because it just doesn't seem right, to have these types of names that we call people that we also call friends. But who knows maybe I'm just crazy, and I'm just supposed to sit back and accept this, and wonder what name I am on someone else's list. Well I don't know about you, but I think that sounds entirely crappy. What's more is, where is the heart in any of this? Where is the love and affection. I'm not talking about romantic, intimate love. I'm talking about the brotherly love we are supposed to be showing everyone. It's so gone. When was the last time you hung out with someone one on one, and didn't check your phone, or at least think about what else you could be doing, or who else you could be doing it. Honestly, I can't think of a time. I really can't. That just makes me sad. I don't think this is texting's fault. I don't think it by any means. It's our fault. We are just becoming this huge detachment deprived world that is dying for the next big thing.
The sad thing is I don't know what there is to be done about it. It's what our world is becoming and it's too hard to fight an entire world population. So we just succumb to the detachement while we try to hold out for love. It's quite ironic. Cruelly ironic. It sucks but it is.

Side note: I sound very cynical in this blog. I'm never really cynical about things, but I can't help feel very downtrodden about this. I promise, I'll try not to sound so cynical again for a while. That's the last thing our world needs is another cynic. But perhaps that in itself is a cynic's remark....