stereotypical single woman

A few nights ago, for a little bonding time with my baby sister (who is 23, a RN, and makes way more money than I do) I went home and played the Sims2 for a couple of hours. It’s our dirty little secret. We know it’s sad, geeky, and juvenile. But we don’t care. We love playing this game, but it’s only fun if we’re both down there screwing with these characters’ lives. We’re like a tag team of merciless deities.

We build perfect little families and then get the teenage daughter knocked up by the neighbor and kicked out of school. Cleanliness is not encouraged. We encourage pyromaniacs and sims with low mechanical skills to fix electronics. Ghosts are always on the lots. We always have a town floozie that seduces and then has illegitimate children with the maid, the fireman, the paperboy, the grim reaper, etc… Fights are encouraged among our sims, and jealousy is constantly provoked. We enjoy watching sim men get abducted and impregnated with alien spawn. None of our sims have jobs, or at least they don’t until they have children, and we decide that the best way for the husband to meet and then have an affair with social worker is to leave the kids unattended for eight hours. I’m sure this says something about our subconcious and relatively squeaky clean Midwestern lives.

But last night I discovered something new about the game. In the Nightlife expansion pack you are given the option to buy a man. Actually, you can buy any blind date, male or female. Isn’t that wonderful? And the more you pay the better the match is! How convenient is that? You work hard, save up you money, and then you buy your soulmate when you’re ready for them! No more looking, waiting, or guessing. No insecurities – you just call up the matchmaker, pay your bill, and poof, out of thin air he (or she) materializes. This is a wonderful innovation, with more options than the traditional matchmaker and fits right in with our consumer orientated society. If this sort of service was available in real life I can’t say that I’d be calling the matchmaker at the moment, but it certainly would be a nice option to consider in the future.