The Internet is a Second-Rate Lover
Getting your eros in order
Featuring O. Alan Noble in the Fiery Philosophies series.
LIFE CHANGED FOR ME the day my dad came home from work and told us that his boss had generously given him permission to use his AOL login, granting us access to the wonders of dial-up internet.
But from that day on, I could log in during the day to enter chatrooms and ask A/S/L (Age, sex, location?) and meet girls. In retrospect, this was kind of creepy behavior, but at the time, almost everyone was doing it, and nobody knew what they were doing, including me. I just knew that I was lonely, insecure, and desperate for romantic validation from girls, even if it only came through chat, even if it was on someone else’s account.
Eventually, we got our own internet. So I started sending and receiving emails from multiple girls, some of whom even wrote me physical letters. But it honestly never felt like enough. I always wanted more attention, more assurance that I was attractive, interesting, and desirable. So did they. It was like a mutual reassurance society.
When we think about teenage romance, we like to think about sweethearts and love letters and puppy love, even if it’s juvenile. But for me, there was nothing really sweet or cute about it. Instead, my experience felt more desperate and consumptive.
The same could be said for my teenage bedroom walls, which were covered with images of women I found attractive. I had a particular obsession with the star of Nickelodeon’s The Secret World of Alex Mack, Larisa Oleynik, so I would spend hours searching the internet for (tasteful) images of her and women like her. Then I would print them out and staple them onto my walls—which quickly became a shrine to ’90s female movie and TV stars.
What I couldn’t see back then was that behind all these images was a desire to be affirmed by someone beautiful and interesting: a need for existential validation, attention, and belonging. I’m not going to tell you that lust played no role in my AOL chats or my walls of ’90s stars, but it was only secondary to something deeper and something actually closer to eros—a longing for a human face.
THERE ARE TWO STRONG TEMPTATIONS that pull contemporary people toward intimate and romantic relationships. In his phenomenal essay “Love,” Thomistic scholar Josef Pieper describes them as “sex” and “eros:”
The man who is merely lustful does not, despite the usual phrase, want “a woman” at all. It is eros that wants a beloved woman and wants being together with her. Sex, on the contrary, seeks a neuter, something material and objective, not a “you” but an “it,” the thing in itself.
“Sex,” we know. It is the basic act itself, without any love, relationship, commitment, or vows. We might think of this category embodied most perfectly in modern pornography, where humans are reduced to body parts for consumption. The human face gets lost. Or the human face becomes a mere instrument for sex, not an image of God.
“Eros,” on the other hand, involves the individual as a person. Erotic love, in this way, draws us in desire toward the whole human because, through it, we recognize their personhood. Eros, when understood as a longing that acknowledges the personhood of the other, is clearly superior to sex, but it can still be a temptation—a form of covetousness and idolatry that turns us away from God.
When I chatted with those young women as a teenager, there was still something eros-like about it—I wanted their affirmation as whole people. In Pieper’s language, I wasn’t after merely “the thing in itself”; but instead, “being together” with them as people. In fact, the more relational we were, the more I felt like I understood who they were and the more it meant to me when they confessed they “liked” me. The same was true about the pictures on my wall.
I had a parasocial relationship with Larisa Oleynik before I knew what a parasocial relationship was. The more pictures of her I stapled on my walls, the more I could imagine that she would affirm me if she had the chance. Sure, I found her attractive, but I believe it was her personhood that could justify my personhood, and that was what I truly wanted.
I LOOK BACK ON my teenage years in the ’90s and thank God that I didn’t have today’s technology to explore my desires. Today’s teenagers are no less insecure and lonely than I was 30 years ago. In fact, if studies are to be trusted, they are much lonelier and more anxious. While the amount of pornography on the internet has exploded, suggesting that “sex” as a temptation remains a serious problem, I think the crisis of eros is the root problem here.
Pornography promotes dehumanization, sexual violence against women, and outright lust. It’s wholesale bad and a pressing problem. But it is also the case that, for a great many people, men and women, their temptation stems from desiring romantic and erotic love, even when it turns pornographic.
Take OnlyFans as an example. Secondhand sources tell me that this pornography site has a popular service that allows subscribers to chat with “performers” for a price, giving them the false sense of relationship beyond porn consumption. Behind this expensive service is the desire for companionship, connection, and belonging, and it mirrors the desire for affirmation I had in chatrooms. Thirty years later, it’s just as sad and pathetic and desperate.
As the US grows less social, parasocial relationships will continue to become outlets for eros. Greedy marketers will take advantage of this basic human longing by offering more frictionless services that mimic the human face and human affirmation.
It’s a chilling future we are facing, a future where lonely, insecure people are offered erotic affirmation by things like OnlyFans, smut, or lifelike AI companion bots. Tragically, many people will take up the offer, because it’s simply easier than the work of loving humans.
IN A HEALTHY romantic relationship, there is a special kind of affirmation that happens—a special claim of love, a healthy eros—where you delight in the particular being of another because God has made them. It is important to hear from other humans that they love us, that they are proud of us, and that we belong. While you don’t need their affirmation to make you secure, you can rejoice in their words of affirmation because they are also God’s words of affirmation for you being channeled through them.
Behind my chats and my walls of ’90s stars was a very insecure kid trying to find validation through a disordered form of eros. My hope was in a romantic partner, however distant or unattainable it felt, who could justify my existence through their personhood. This is a very old and tired story: taking something beautiful and making it an idol. We might call it The Great Gatsby condition, and it’s known to be deadly when taken to its logical conclusion.
Part of what’s so sad about having a disordered view of eros, of trying to make it do what it’s not capable of doing, is that you cannot enjoy what it can do. It’s a beautiful and good thing to look at our spouse and desire them as a full human being, delighting in their love. Instead of an idol, we are given a gift. In return, we give ourselves as a gift to them, just as God came and gave himself to us in love.
That’s what virtuous love as eros is supposed to look like—a gift that encompasses the whole person, echoing God’s love and affirmation of us. We just need to stop settling for shabby substitutes on the internet and on our walls.
💌 INKWELL POETRY COLLECTION: What better way to linger on romance than through poetry? Sarah Jane Souther has curated a collection for this series from our submissions inbox. Enjoy more fiery philosophies here!
O. Alan Noble
Author & Professor
Dr. O. Alan Noble is Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and author of four books: To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times. Dr. Noble has published articles at The Atlantic, The Gospel Coalition, First Things, and Christianity Today. He writes regularly at You Are Not Your Own Substack.
📸 Imagery from Elizabeth Sanders
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Great essay! Think you may have the same Pieper quote twice by accident though?
This was so good! Will there be more parts to this series? This article did a great job of showing what the smaller/distorted Eros looks like. But I wanted more! 😄 What does the alternative/true form or Eros look like? How can it be shown, not just told?