Pete, a friend of mine who's name has been changed to protect his identity, recently fathered a baby boy. I wish it were a more happy occasion, but given his stage in life, and his ability to keep a steady job, I'd say that Pete will have a difficult time, since he has chosen to keep the baby. In this particular situation, I'm not so sure how happy I am about Pete's decision. Pete is currently living at his mother's house with his siblings and the mother of his child, Cindy (name also changed). But I don't really want to talk about the particulars of his current situation—rather I want to go back, oh, ten months and talk about the particulars of that situation.
From what I've been told, Pete and Cindy met on an online RPG community. I'm guessing that they both role-played together, and they must have talked and planned about future interactions. Slowly, they moved from online messaging to phone conversations, and I'm told that Pete did not like Cindy all that much. He also did not like Cindy when he visited her in real life (he apparently was visiting the nearby area, and she insisted). However, after being challenged to a drinking contest, Pete slept with her (I have no idea if Cindy had imbibed any alcohol). To me, this sounds like a perfect example of a hook-up. Pete had no interest in Cindy, but after some drinking slept with her with no intention of a relationship forming. Pete vehemently disagrees with me on this subject, but he still dosen't like Cindy after living with her for almost a year, and has had to repeatedly tell her that he has no interest in forming a relationship with her.
One last thing that I found interesting about Pete's situation, is that Pete's decision of whether to keep the baby or to put it up for adoption depended entirely on whether the kid was biologically his. Now, you might be wondering—but wait, it's more Cindy's decision, right? Well, if the baby was Pete's he wanted joint custody, but mostly with him. If it wasn't, Pete wanted to ensure that Cindy wasn't the main caregiver because he thought, still thinks really, that Cindy was not cut out to be a mother (this sounds harsh, but Pete's got a good heart and honest concern for the baby). It turns out that the baby is Pete's, so the joint-custody plan is in action.
Why am I talking about this? Well, I wanted to use this as an example of how some people can be hurt/can't handle the hook-up culture. Pete might be able to handle the part that involves adult-type touching. However, he's having a difficult time with the potential side effects like babies. Cindy, on the other hand, seems to think that baby=marriage—or rather hook-up=relationship, which is not the case. Both of them have the potential, if they aren't already, to be very badly hurt by a night of alcohol, sex that for at least one of them held no particular significance, and faulty contraceptives. So, I'd guess I'd have to say that this is a beautiful example why I'm against the hook-up culture as a whole: it can work for some people, but I doubt that the majority of the current population, especially with our culture, can handle meaningless sex.
Also, I'm very angry that Pete was only interested in keeping the kid if it was biologically his. In my opinion, you can't go halfsies with this sort of thing: either you can care for the kid, or you can't.
Kit
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