Frosty Pink Me, Now with New Flavor Crystals!

A Starbucks I used to frequent with occasional regularity has posted a big banner announcing its "Grand Re-Opening." I don't get the whole "Grand Re-Opening" thing, except when a place has made a dramatic night-and-day change, which this place hasn't. I always think "Grand Re-Opening" is just an artificial marketing ploy to get new people to check out the not-new. Those words -- Grand Re-Opening -- seem like a marketing euphemism for "Yoohoo! We're still here selling coffee like we do every day. Oh, and we have some new chairs that are just as uncomfortable as the old ones." When I saw the banner, I snorted at how maddeningly difficult it must be for the marketer tasked with making a Starbucks seem new and interesting when they're on every corner and across the street and down the road and at the airport and in the grocery store -- as ubiquitous as fake boobs and yoga studios in LA.

Going back to online dating feels like it would be my own personal (not very) Grand Re-Opening. Reactivating my old profile at the dating website would be the equivalent of posting a banner that reads "Yoohoo single men! I'm back. Same old me. Just single again. And a year older!" When I had an online dating account, I noticed that a guy would sometimes go offline and then reappear with the same exact profile a few months later. Presumably, the promising relationship that had prompted him to deactivate his online dating profile lasted a while, but ultimately didn't work out. Those guys who later resurfaced always seemed a little stale to me, as if their failed budding relationships implied that they were not guys worth keeping, and therefore they were guys not even worth trying.

If I were to go back to online dating, would I have to resort to phony-baloney marketing tricks -- me, now with new flavor crystals! -- to make me seem new and exciting and worth trying? My goal is not to sell me to the masses. I'm just trying to find that one guy for whom I'm the perfect local coffee shop in a vast wasteland of Starbucks.