A newspaper columnist has described witnessing a heated debate inside a WhatsApp group of young professionals after several women accused a male member of repeatedly sending them insinuating and provocative messages. The columnist used the episode, recounted in an opinion piece, to reflect on how social media has changed courtship and romance.
The group was described as a community of well-educated men and women with a good socioeconomic standing and a shared interest in social causes. According to the columnist, more than a dozen women in the group reported being targeted by the same member, who was then flagged to the group's administrator and removed from the community.
A second dispute followed among the remaining members over what the columnist called a lack of empathy from men toward the women who had been targeted. One woman sent a voice message complaining bitterly about a remark from a male member, who suggested, apparently as a joke, that what upset the women most was that the man gave cheap gifts and repeated the same message pattern with all of them, rather than the fact that he was married or had a girlfriend.
A man's dilemma
The columnist argued that men who witness this kind of dispute face a difficult position. Confronting the accused man risks being read as personal interest in the alleged victim, which could create problems with one's own partner, while staying silent and saying nothing risks being seen as complicit by omission.
Unwilling to remain a mere spectator, the columnist phoned one of the women directly and asked what a man should do when he witnesses a harassment complaint from a female colleague, acquaintance or WhatsApp contact. She replied that men should simply show empathy, respect that women feel offended and disrespected, and stand in solidarity rather than siding with other men to criticize women.
Comparing eras of romance
The columnist framed the episode against Gabriel García Márquez's novel "Love in the Time of Cholera," which follows a decades-long love triangle between Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza and Dr. Juvenal Urbino. García Márquez, a Colombian author, won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the novel is counted among the columnist's own favorites of his work.
The piece asked what García Márquez would make of today's courtship rituals compared with those in his novel. Poems, phone calls, letters, chaperoned outings, visits to a family home and formal requests for a father's blessing have given way, the columnist wrote, to flowers bought mainly to be photographed for social media, with cash such as two thousand pesos or one hundred dollars replacing a handwritten card.
Courtship in the age of apps
The columnist argued that many men today are not gentlemen and many women no longer command respect or carry themselves as ladies, producing a mutual breakdown in empathy between the sexes. Good manners and romantic courtesy, the piece said, have been swapped for immediacy, financial interest and blunt speech. Many women do not want to be strung along by flattering words they assume are false from the start, while many men prefer paying for sex specifically to avoid emotional commitment. Both sides, the columnist wrote, would rather pay or be paid than risk their feelings.
Social media accelerates this shift, according to the piece. Poems have been replaced by direct messages, printed photographs by Instagram posts, and written declarations by a single "like" or an emoji. Some women post photos of themselves mainly to be seen and to boost their self-esteem, the columnist wrote, while some men resort to digitally stalking and harassing women in the hope of eventually meeting them in person.
The columnist stressed that this does not describe all women or all men, but said the pattern is common among younger generations and is increasingly shaping the conduct of older men too, regardless of whether greater age brings greater maturity.
A warning drawn from fiction
Closing the piece, the columnist recommended that readers pick up "Love in the Time of Cholera" and draw their own conclusions. The columnist then cautioned against offering solidarity or empathy to a woman too freely in the era of social media romance, pointing to the novel's plot, in which Florentino Ariza visits Fermina Daza to offer condolences after the death of her husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, an encounter that reopens a lifelong romantic pursuit.
