recipes

Dating Advice from a Blue-Footed Galapagos Bird

Dec 15, 2022 Admin

The idea for this story came to mind after watching a documentary about the Galapagos. Through it I learned that the male blue-footed boobies participate in a courtship dance to attract partners, flaunting their blue feet as a signifier of sexual prowess.

That same week I’d read Azis Ansari’s book Modern Love, wherein he’d written a bit about cross-cultural dating profile etiquette.

If boobies were to develop both humans’ intellectual capacities and an interest in our customs, how might they fare in the online dating milieu? it made me wonder. What would we see if we were to place smart phones under their wings and download Tinder to their phones?

Come along with me as I envision possible answers to these questions.

Handing the pen over to my booby friend now.

1. Have a back-up supply of phones.

I learned this the hard way, many botched attempts and water-logged devices later. Swiping doesn’t come easily for us, as our fingerlessness places significant limits on our ability to engage in it. A lack of tactile dexterity leads to absence of grace in the left-to-right sliding motion that humans seem to perform effortlessly.

This is just a reality — nothing to be ashamed of. Just make sure to keep a stash of replacement phones on wing.

2. Use discretion when posting blue foot pictures.

Many a male booby’s profile focuses predominantly on our (seemingly) most important asset: our feet. Zoomed-in shots of our equivalent to the human species’ penis photos at once abound on male profiles and deluge the inboxes of our female counterparts.

I recommend against adding to that deluge. If you want to be a classy booby, highlight instead your prioritization of mind over meat and spend more time honing your self-descriptions.

You might consider writing something like: “Able to fish. There to hold your wing during hard times. Equal parts lover and fighter.”

Note the absence of blue foot references in the above description. In this booby’s opinion, capitalizing so heavily on a single body part encourages objectification. If a quality and enduring union is what you seek, putting forth a more comprehensive view of your values and overall character will likely aid you more in that goal.

3. But if you are one of those boobies with admittedly impressive blue feet…

… Humility is still key. There is a way to highlight this asset without coming across as conceited or inappropriate. Simply include a photo of yourself taking part in an activity, wherein your feet just happen to be visible (perhaps while the light is shining down in a way that accentuates their blueness).

4. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

For a number of reasons, boobies who use online dating come to find that it’s unwise to do this, especially before meeting the prospect in bird, but also even after one, two, or as many as five good dates.

Sure, you may feel like you have hit it off quite well with a booby, and in earlier eras, this may have stood as a reliable indicator that the two of you were headed into relationship territory. In modern times though, too many variables are at play to be able to come to this same conclusion.

For instance if you’re LGBTQ, maybe despite what they tell themselves, in their heart of booby hearts they just don’t see committing to a member of the same sex as part of their life plan. Even though they may not tell you this directly, it’s possible that they are just noncommittally testing the waters.

You’ve got to really trust this bird to put those eggs in their basket, and since trust takes time to build, until it’s in place: spread those eggs, boobies. Spread them far and wide.

**Directly communicating with the prospective booby to see if you’re on the same page is also an option.

5. Don’t swipe in front of your date.

When I say put your eggs in different baskets, I don’t mean during the date. I mean any time but. Contain all mate browsing to the off hours. If for whatever reason you’re finding it really hard to restrain yourself though, at least leave the table and resume swiping on a bathroom break.

6. Brush up on the paradox of choice and see how it applies to your dating life.

Those human movies where two are stuck in an elevator? And maybe they hate each other at first, but by the end, they’re madly in love? Online dating is not conducive to experiences like that. I would even say that its structure facilitates the exact opposite — providing you too many options, an entire buffet of them.

Two random boobies alone in a room together —> Initial reluctance gives way to profound connection

Room full of boobies —> Attention scattered, interactions superficial

In his book on Homo Sapien courtship practices, human author Aziz Ansari wrote about the paradox of choice, which basically states that when surrounded with options, we are less likely to focus in depth on any single one of them.

Ansari writes: “Many studies have demonstrated that a large degree of choice can overwhelm people. In a famous illustration of this principle, supermarket shoppers encountered a tasting booth that displayed either 6 or 24 flavors of jam. Although shoppers were 50% more likely to stop at the tasting booth with the larger array of jams than at the booth with the smaller array, they were 10 times more likely to purchase one of the jams from the smaller array than to purchase a jam from the larger array.”

The totality of options makes it so that you can always have one blue foot out the door. You may select one of these boobies as your mate based on the charismatic behavior of their representative (and some of us have more charming ones than others ) without really getting to the deeper stuff beneath. Which is ultimately not too helpful for your quest, because that deeper stuff, i.e. the real booby, is who you’ll ultimately be in a relationship with — while their representative exits swiftly after a few dates.

There may also come a time when you’ll say “a surplus of boobies only gives me a surplus of things to find wrong with each of them.”

7.Another problem with buffets: the dishes that look the tastiest aren’t always the most satiating.

A booby friend of mine was sitting at one the other day. The creamy decadent risotto instantly beckoned him. He chose it over the plate of brussel sprouts. At first bite, he thought to himself, “This is it. I’ve found it. Fill my plate up with this and only this.” And then after a few more bites, he started to feel sluggish, dizzy, and over-stuffed―yet not sated.

The brussel sprouts, conversely, at first bite were un-enthralling. But as he kept eating, he began to taste the subtleties. And more importantly, he felt gradually nourished. There was no high followed by a crash.

When we take our time and are willing to look at the more substantial qualities, we might experience the same positive effects with the boobies we choose.

8. Pay attention to what your mind does.

Our impulses aren’t always intuition, even though they often masquerade as such. The message they deliver isn’t always wise. Sometimes unhealed trauma clouds your ability to tell threat from friend.

My booby friend did this the other day. A suitor had a speck on her lip, which reminded him of one that a predator who’d once destabilized his life had also possessed. All he could focus on was that speck — not any of the wonderful conversations he’d had with this booby, not the calm and patient way she took him in, not how they’d watched the sun set over the ocean, the blue of their feet contrasting with the brown of the jagged rock as the the light sank beneath the cresting waves.

Sometimes the message is just, “You’re afraid right now — so you’re going to throw all this away rather than unpacking it critically.”

If this is true for you, consider seeing a therapist before you begin your quest.

9. Keep in mind that it’s a dynamic; what you put in affects what you get out.

A booby friend of mine once rejected a date because she didn’t make him laugh enough, even though he had basically sat there the entire time without saying anything or offering much in the way of laughs in return.

Think about what you yourself are contributing to the interaction, boobies. In my humble opinion, the role of a partner isn’t to keep you entertained 24/7. They don’t owe you a performance or a show while you just sit there expectantly. Like you, they’re also trying to find out if you’re dating material. Like you, they too have needs and preferences.

I suppose what I want to say to you boobies, now that I’ve reached the end here, is that maybe online dating, fancy as it seems and ubiquitous as it may have become, isn’t all it’s quacked up to be (I took my own advice and broadened my scope of attraction by going on a date with a duck last week. Can you tell she’s rubbed off on me?).

Maybe we boobies would be just fine meeting the old-fashioned way. I mean, it’s not like we don’t come into contact with each other out in the wild pretty much constantly.

Maybe it’s best to leave the swiping to the human race. Maybe we should protect ourselves from this swirling vortex wherein we expend so much time and energy into an endeavor that promises no return on our efforts — that often, in fact, leaves a booby more depleted than before.

A booby swims by on a sunny day. She spots another booby on the rock in front of her, blue feet outstretched. His beak gently taps at the stone beneath him.

The two of them lock eyes.

They lock eyes and then she joins him on the rock, where they dance.

Though simple, their love story belongs to a timeless script that’s played out since the beginning of our days. And maybe, if we boobies put down our phones and look around at all the beauty and potential connections surrounding us, it can continue to.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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