Is “Human Surfing” Another Effect of the Internet Age?

A friend and I were discussing the relationship between social-milieu and dating. He mentioned that his friend had been in the singles capital of NYC Friday evening. As is “customary” there, following the evening service everyone exits the ordered chapel into a mass of mingling singles. My friends friend wished a women good evening and as she shook his hand her eyes instinctively shifted to another man. This man in turn was shaking another’s hand and staring at a third person.

My psychology inclined friend explained that these individuals had taken their individuality so far that now they resemble a collective of the highly superficial and selfish. Which explains the tremendous success they have at the office were individualism is prized, and the dearth of more than one-night-stand-couples.

I agree that the pervasive state of singleness that exists there is underpinned by an extreme of individualism –selfishness. Yet this does not explain their inability to focus on one person for any appreciable amount of time. Thus beyond the uniformly negative opinion outsiders have of this little island of loneliness, and the close minded bubble that many of the insiders live in, the whole episode rings a familiar tune.

It seems that the above vignette, reflects an unexplored tributary of a much discussed phenomena. Surly we have all heard the doomsayers and observers postulating the ramifications of the age of internet surfing: short attention spans the rewiring of individuals and societies brain paths etc. Is it possible that my friends friend encountered the first waves of “human surfing”? People who exist in an individual bubble may see the other as just another page to be surfed and then forgotten, if the platform is bursting with pages – as the singles capital bursts with singles –then there is so much to be surfed and so little time…

Of course very few people living in this “area” would assert that a person should be treated like an interesting-but-common internet page. Except, if their individualism doesn’t allow them to recognize their actions. If everyone is selfish then selfish becomes the norm, just as if everyone is single then single becomes the norm. Like the internet surfing era, if everyone is rewired to think in a certain way then there is no one to ask “why are you surfing for relationships, (jdate/e-harmony is one thing), but in person?”

So I ask, is “human surfing” another effect of the internet age?