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Does It Even Matter If You’re FBO Anymore?

Temps

Gather ’round children and children at heart, let me spin you a tale. It’s a story before Snapchat and when Instagram was just starting. People didn’t even use it as social media, just a way to filter photos if you can believe that. Myspace (#tbt) was just fizzling out and Facebook was everything. Despite the fact that we didn’t have to worry about sending out cool stories and reaching triple digits on photos with clever captions, there was one thing infinitely more stressful back then:

Being Facebook official. Hell, we even shortened it to being “FBO.”

And at the time, being FBO was everything. It’s what you would obsess about from the second you started seeing (read: sleeping) with a guy. It was the reason for the “where is this going” conversation, and changing your status from “single” to “in a relationship” was like a modern version of announcing your couplehood to the world.

And then? Well, and then things got casual. Being in an actual relationship was lame and being ~unrestricted~ was cool. So somewhere along the way, it became less and less common to declare our love on Facebook. I mean, if you never had *the talk* you’d never have to have a relationship status update, right? That, combined with the fact that only moms and racist uncles go on Facebook anymore it’s like, why bother?

Well, I’m here to tell you why — because being in a real, so-real-it’s-FBO relationship is freaking great.

It really is. Yeah I know the casual shit is in. But there’s something to be said for having someone who holds you when you’re feeling bad, love you when you don’t love yourself, and doesn’t make you wonder if he’ll stop talking to you, just because you had a fight. And you know what? If you’re at the point where you agree to only see each other, I think it’s fair for your social medias to reflect that. I mean damn, we spend most of our lives on those apps anyway.

What are the cons to putting your relationship out there? Why did we stop doing it? Because doing that means committing. And in a world where we swipe someone away away one glance at their pictures and we just stop talking to someone without explanation if we decide we just aren’t feeling it anymore, commitment isn’t ideal. It’s sad and it’s gross and it makes cheating or lying or giving up on someone a hell of a lot easier.

But yeah. Let’s just stop putting our relationship statuses out there. I mean, we hate having our lives scrutinized on social media, right? So what’s the problem? Well the problem is that even though a lot of us have stopped expecting them to take us on real dates, stopped hoping that talking every day means anything, and stopped hoping that things might become serious, it doesn’t mean that some of us don’t want it. It doesn’t mean that some of us don’t want the guy to stand at the top of a mountain and shout that he actually likes us and whats to be with only us.

Or, you know. Declare it on social media.

It’s freaking exhausting. And confusing. And frustrating AF, and in our new movie, Temps (yeah, we have a freaking movie), we dig into everything involved in “dating” nowadays. From casually hooking up, to really liking him, to wondering how to play it on social media, this movie is hot, hilarious, and covers it all.

I’m not telling you to watch this movie because you can download it for like, $4. And I’m not saying this because it’s climbing the charts like crazy and is officially the #1 romantic comedy on iTunes. And I’m not saying it because it’s one of the few romcoms that aren’t predictable as hell. No, I’m telling you because it actually makes you sit back and look at your relationships. It makes you think about dating nowadays. And it makes you ask the hard questions concerning love in the modern age. You know, like whether or not to be FBO.

So what are you waiting for? Grab some wine, download Temps, and change that relationship status. Thank me later.

To watch Temps on iTunes, click here.

Does Being FBO Even Matter?

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Rachel Varina

(yeahokaywhat) Aspiring to be the next Tina Fey, Rachel spends her free time doing nothing to reach that goal. While judging people based on how they use "they're" vs. "there" on social media, she likes eating buffalo chicken dip, watching other people's Netflix, and wearing sweatpants way more than is socially acceptable.

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