Love in the Time of the Internets for 15 January 2007. 12 Cynical Lessons on Love Derived from Watching Court TV.

Watching court TV will make you cynical, but also much smarter and more pragmatic. 

If you watch long enough you soon find that everywhere there are middle-aged people of both sexes being beguiled by younger ones who take expensive gifts or enormous loans and disappear; nice young girls too embarrassed to say no to lending substantial sums of money to guys they've been dating for five minutes; and guys who jointly go into debt for expensive  living room sets and stereo equipments to furnish the next they are building with their loved ones, only to find that she's flown away along with all the furniture and audio gear.

I'm not sure whether men or women are more often the victims.  In the end, many of them end up losing the money they've "invested" in the relationship.  "Just because things didn't work out, it doesn't turn into a loan," Judge Judy will tell them. And also, "Find someone more age appropriate!"  Judge Joe Brown puts it more poetically:  "If you pay to play, don't weep and moan and call it a loan!" he intones. He tells the older ones that it's the risk they assume for taking on a "young trainee." 

You have been warned.

If you watch court TV long enough, you soon learn that caddish and amoral behavior is not confined to those unfortunates who sign up to go on Springer.  It occurs in all walks of life and in all contexts, and often in circumstances that should have acted as a big, flashing red light to the party---call him or her "the plaintiff"---who was too trusting.  And there are other signs as well---most in evidence in the much longer hearings that parties receive in The People's Court in front of Judge Marilyn Milian.

It's notable that every single person in the audience except the plaintiff can tell just by watching and listening to the other party that Plaintiff was gulled partly out of sheer willful blindness and wishful thinking and unwillingness to look the facts in the face.  And most of all, of course, by that "romantic" state in which people seriously believe that their love is special and different from all loves throughout the history of the human race.

You're not special in that way, my friends.  Don't let bad love happen to you.  Instead, read these 11 cynical rules derived from long experience watching court TV.  Read 'em, and weep.  And then show the bastard the door.   JUMP TO LOVE IN THE TIME OF THE INTERNETS.