"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken"

-Oscar Wilde

When they met for the first time, he always said comments that failed to be witty or funny just to be liked. When they met, she laughed outrageously at every bad joke he made just to be liked. They went to the restaurant in their own cars. The restaurant they decided to go in formal attire, but not formal enough for a wedding or a funeral. They had a dinner full of redundant commentaries that tried too much to sound intelligent and uncomfortable silences. Every time they opened their mouthes, they had to be careful to use any word that could be considered offensive, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, elitist or insulting. So they could only ask yes or no questions. She ate a light salad without trans fats, sugars, gluten or carbohydrates with a sugar-free mango juice with almond milk while he ate a fatty burger with French fries and a huge glass of Coca-Cola (registered trademark) . They ate quickly while listening to the most trite and repetitive Korean boy band of the moment, singing over and over again how much he loved his girlfriend, followed by the same repetitive and trite reggaeton song. They did not look directly in their eyes, partly because they were stuck to their cell phones, playing Candy-Crush (registered trademark) or seeing the same profile again and again on Facebook (registered trademark). They spent the whole afternoon in a constant state of panic, sweating a lot and trying (and failing) not to seem odd, whether the other person liked them or not, but they were too embarrassed to ask. Almost at the end of the "date", they finally managed to almost establish a conversation between them about the most anticipated and blockbuster superhero movie of that month, but just before making any real interpersonal connection between the two, they brought the account and obviously he paid for everything with the tip included. Then they got into their cars, he helped her up, even though he told her he didn’t needed help to do it, and they went completely alone in exactly the opposite directions. They arrived at their house, with the same grimace of distaste on their faces, they messaged everyone telling them how much they had liked the appointment - lying all the time - before sitting down to eat ice cream directly from the pot watching the most popular, fake and easy to produce reality show of that season as they cried when contemplating their loneliness. Then they fell asleep.

Without a doubt it had not been a good day. In truth, they did not like the person they met so much. To begin with, they did not even like the person who arranged the appointment so much. And to make matters worse, not even the person who had arranged the appointment liked either of them so much. But even so they all pretended that everyone liked them, perhaps out of fear that they did not like them or because of the worry of not having good relations with everyone and being classified as 'someone cold' or 'distant'. After all, you never know, right? right?

right?