‘The School for Lovers’. That was Mozart and Da Ponte’s alternative title for Così fan tutte – an opera as much celebrated for its nuanced depiction of love as for its glorious music. But in a world where apps like Tinder and Grindr amass millions of users each day, it’s hard to imagine how a classical idea of a lovers’ academy could bear any similarities to the seemingly shallow world of modern dating.
It’s within this world – and, you’d be forgiven for having missed this story back in 2008 – you’d find Amy Taylor of Newquay, and her husband Dave Pollard. They had married after initially meeting online in the virtual-reality forum Second Life, but then divorced three years later after Amy discovered that Dave’s avatar had been cyber-cheating with someone else’s avatar back on the web. (Do keep up at the back). The story was accompanied by profiles of the real Dave, who bore little resemblance to his chosen online avatar, a 13 stone, six-foot-four hunk with long streaked hair and improbably huge pectoral muscles, living in a ‘sprawling three-bedroom detached villa.’
Anyone who has ever told a white lie to impress someone, or bigged themselves up in front of a potential date, or posted an ‘enhanced’ picture on a dating website, should pause before they cast any stones at poor Dave and his optimistic online double.
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