Remember the days of telephone calls and pre-planned dates and letterman jackets? When the “Dear Abby” column made sense and men asked a father’s permission to initiate courtship? Nope, neither do Jessica Massa and Rebecca Wiegand, the girls behind what could be the world’s first crowd-sourced relationship advice blog, WTF Is Up With My Love Life?! “We don’t think the ‘conventional’ dating literature/self-help literature out there in bookstores and the blogosphere is actually speaking effectively to women now, because for the most part it assumes we’re living in a ‘dating’ world that no longer exists,” says Wiegand, referring to how the digital sphere – among other things – has completely turned the romantic realm on its proverbial head. When folks are breaking up with each other on Facebook, and a text message equates a love letter, it seems that we actually are quite primed for a romantic reboot.
That’s what prompted Massa and Wiegand to launch what they call a “multimedia project,” which includes an upcoming film, a book deal in the works and a highly creative, interactive website. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Every blog has its creation story, and this is theirs.
The Story of WTF?!
It all began in summer 2009, with Massa and Wiegand, who befriended with each other at twelve, being the protagonists. While Massa had left her old job in the music field and was planning to move to Brazil and earn her living as a bartender, Wiegand was working for New Line Cinema. Wiegand was back from a company party and the moment she got home she started grumbling about the unfortunate love affairs she had. Her friend Massa could not understand it at all, for she had been seeing her friend mingling with her ex boyfriend, a stranger at the bar and a newly met guy here and there.
Their girl talk had come to a conclusion, that there are ten types of men around women. They are the ex partners, those who boosts our ego, sex partners, boyfriend potentials, so on and so forth. The executives of New Line Cinema totally guy the idea and is going to make it as a refinement of its He’s Just Not That Into You.
Blog For More
Although they had a movie in the works and were prepping a book proposal, the pair was not content to just wait around for the film and book to come to fruition. Books and movies take a long time, and they wanted to formulate the concept in the meantime. Also, they didn’t feel exactly qualified to dispense with the advice based on the Gaggle concept alone. After Wiegand left her job at New Line in April 2010, the two started J&R Creative Media, LLC, a company through which they could develop the Gaggle idea further across media platforms and start developing other, unrelated multimedia projects. The film deal was signed, sealed and delivered in January 2009, and the WTF?! blog went live in beta in Feb 2010. “We had these ideas and wanted to get them out there now,” Massa says. “And we’d been talking to a ton of women, but we weren’t in a place yet where we could be traveling all over the country, talking to women, because we were building this idea. We wanted to start getting stories from other women, broadening the scope a bit. The more I talked to women, the bigger the idea got. It started as a gaggle and then it became WTF is Up With My Love Life?!, which is much bigger sense of: For our generation of women, how do we deal with this frustration, this exasperation? It’s not just the guys in your gaggle; it’s non-dates, technology, what are you doing with these guys in your gaggle if you’re not dating them?”
Digital Romance
As Massa and Wiegant put, it is an after-dating era we are in. The tips from our grandmothers, accordingly to them, cannot help us figure out the messages behind those text messages we have got. And flirtation is penetrating online media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, causing much more confusion.
Neither men nor women can really figure out this new form of dating and romancing. Nobody is sure when to do what to do on those digital portals. Massa and Wiegand are against those guidebooks written by some well-educated elites who had graduated thirty years ago. They wanted to build a forum which would allow exchange of ideas, and not some top-down nurturing of, like transforming yourself to get the guy you want.
The result is a compelling site where both men and women can explore their various and sundry romantic woes. And, bonus, it is great source material for their upcoming book and film. They plan to use user-submitted stories to give their creations weight and depth. “Dating is ambiguous,” says Massa. “That’s the idea of the website. Through recognizing this and talking about it, we’re hoping that it will be a step forward for all of us who are just stuck in the He’s Just Not That Into You, The Rules, The Handbook rut.” Amen to that. Intrigued by Massa and Wiegand’s concepts and want a taste of what’s to come? Check out this list of apps they put together for us. (P.S. A non-date is that dude/chick you’re about to hang with, but who has not specified his/her intentions.)
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