The Desire Question

Is it better to desire, or be desired?

08 Feb

Daisy Alioto’s new conversation starter. 💘

I have been playing around with a delightful new app called Oom. Oom is a way to get to know someone in your life through a series of prompts and multiple choice questions. At a time when dating apps are failing badly, Oom feels like it could be part of what’s next. 

The app was made by my friends at Fini, which is like a universe of digital creatures. The Fini team just exhibited at a London show called CUTE, about “the irresistible force of cuteness in contemporary culture.” Ed Fornieles, one of the co-creators of Fini and Oom, made a short film called Adventures in Symbiotic Love Tyranny that really captures the playful morbidity of the whole brand. 

Is it better to desire, or be desired?

I became a little obsessed with one of the prompts in Oom: “Is it better to desire, or be desired?” So much so, that I ran a poll on my personal Twitter that was deadlocked for most of 24 hours before “to be desired” squeaked ahead.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, it seemed as good a time as any to crowdsource responses from a range of people in our orbit. I started with Ed Fornieles himself, the author of the question, via an Oom (of course) conversation with co-creator Sam Spike.

Ed Fornieles (Oom)

With the help of my interns Becky and Walden, we got 60+ people on the record. We asked everyone from Agnes Callard to infamous matchmaker Sima Taparia to my little sister. 

Throughout the process, I was full of questions. Every time the scale tipped in one direction I wondered if we were asking too many professional creatives (famously tortured), whether the answers were obviously gendered and whether people were admitting what they really thought. In the end, I think we’re all just living out the Leonard Cohen lines: “I prayed that you would love me / and that you would not love me.” 

As for Oom, even its creators disagree.

Sam Spike (Oom)

To desire 

“If I love you, what business is it of yours?”

Desire for sure more active

One option: Untold suffering. The other option: Flattering awareness that you represent a world of possibilities in the eyes of someone else. I think the choice is clear.

To desire for me. Desiring and being desired feel inextricably entangled to me. I read somewhere that a lot of women derive pleasure, narcissistically, from being desired. I think it’s more universal than that. Everyone wants to be wanted. But I have also learned to associate being desired in ways I can’t reciprocate with painful, embarrassing situations it’s hard to extricate myself from. Being desired feels cheap sometimes, easy to provoke in mindless ways. It’s kind of the negative of feeling, being looked at, being felt for, being made up in someone else’s imagination. I’d always choose desiring because I desire someone who is better than me, a sure route to disappointment, ok. But also because that feeling is the craziest thing in the world. There’s nothing I can say about desire that won’t sound really cliché, but there is absolutely nothing else that feels that good.

I think to desire. i think it’s very romantic to be alone with your desire and live in all the potential of what could be as opposed to being anyone’s object of desire you get to be in control of all the imagining and wanting

to desire - because you can control and direct desire, and often desire is an end in itself, so in that regard you have what you want.

To desire!

ugh... I'm going with "to be desired"

Being desired gets embarrassing fast. Desiring, less so. There's this gorgeous old theater nearby which has been closed for many years. The marquee says, "NOT FOR TODAY, BUT FOR ALL TIME." Kinda like that.

Being desired gets embarrassing fast.

I think that we all desire to be desired, but the desire with which we want to be desired is that same desire, namely, to be desired. If A wants to be wanted by B, and B fulfills this desire, wanting A in just the way A wants to be wanted, then B will express the desire in question by saying, "I want A to want me." So in my view desiring and being desired are not separable from one another.

If you want to write beautiful poetry, or even bad poetry, it's better to desire. If not, probably better to be desired.

To be desired. It is because of your goodwill people desire you.

Life is pointless without both but if I had to choose one, being desired. You ever love someone that didn't love you back? It sucks way more to never be desired, especially by something or someone you want, than to have no desires at all. If anything I wish I had less desires, and I think most people would probably be happier if they had less desires too.

The promise of Ozempic is that it is better to be desired, even if it comes at the price of becoming a hollowed-out object with no desire of your own. To me, that sounds like a horror story; I’d take a thousand years of unrequited longing any day. On the flip side, I can’t imagine wanting someone with no desire of their own. Other people’s desire is usually the hottest thing about them.

Other people’s desire is usually the hottest thing about them.

To desire, all the way.

To desire!!!!

Neither.

I'd say be desired

Desire, I think people who desire know how to appreciate the things they can't have which makes for more gratitude over what they do have

Do you want to ask Chlo?

To desire, it’s a good practice to not always have what you want. And to be desired can be an imposing force where you’re having an idea put onto you that belongs almost entirely to someone else.

desiring sucks 

being desired sucks a little less as long as it's not stalker vibes? 

they both seem awful tbh 

how r u

Call me narcissistic but I'd pick be desired every time

Desire for sure

I think desire, I am a real yearner

haha react 

This is a serious survey 

Be desired 😔

I’m going to go against what my younger self would have said and say it is better to desire. I think desire is a kind of beauty that you get to hold inside you. It’s the state of being filled with desire that generates heat. Being desired is just having a reflective surface.

I think desire is a kind of beauty that you get to hold inside you.

Gotta go with the former

We KNOW this Daisy. We don’t even have to ask anymore 

“If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.” —Auden

it's so funny you ask because i'm literally processing this with my therapist lately lmao. i think i have always preferred to be desired because it makes me feel like i have power!

I mean … my answer is … as the attendee of two classes on Freud at the Brooklyn school for social research I am forced to point out that desire is widely misunderstood… 😂

Desire

I used to think it was better to be desired but now I know it's better to desire. There are more possibilities in desiring/yearning.

better to be desired 

desiring someone sucks, u feel crazy

being desired is great

u dont have to do anything

Second 100p

even the desired desire but better to desire

the only thing worse than desiring is not desiring

Desire 

Purpose

You can be desired and still feel numb. It’s better to feel something than feel nothing so x = -b plus or minus the square root of…better to desire.

Both or neither. I kind of hate being wanted by anyone I don’t want back — it feels like a waste of desire, which is a sort of tragedy. And as much as I have a masochistic tendency to yearn, I really only like to yearn in situations where I know there’s someone on the other side, yearning right back, where the mutual desire is inhibited by something out of our control like timing or distance or some other factor beyond control. I think I only like desire when it feels it isn’t wasted on one party or the other. Missed connections are sad, but always romantic.

I think I only like desire when it feels it isn’t wasted on one party or the other.

I would say it's better to desire, because I think it's generally better to choose the active thing, or to be active in some way. I mean, if you're desired, you may not know you're desired—you may just be stuck in some gray everyday rut without a clue. But, to desire, is, as the kids would say, something that gives life. It's additive.

a very hard question, but at this moment I'd say I would prefer to be desired, that's the season of life I'm currently in

To be desired, for sure! Desiring is for losers, and it will drive you insane.

Desiring is for losers, and it will drive you insane.

Desire

Depends on how you prefer to suffer 

Me I go for desiring

Desired! 

Does that make me a bad person 

Desiring gets tricky quickly

Well, I was raised to believe the latter was better. I'm learning to prioritize the former.

To desire.

To be desired is to have someone mythologize you, which is pretty disturbing and weird though it can be flattering and fun, depending on how they go about that and how you feel about them. But to desire is to mythologize someone else, which gives you agency rather than taking it away. And it makes time pass faster, it gives you a reason to wake up, and it gives you something to think about before you fall asleep.

It makes time pass faster, it gives you a reason to wake up, and it gives you something to think about before you fall asleep.

To desire, but many people will think it’s the latter 

Former is a richer experience

it feels better to be desired but spiritually the reward for suffering through desiring is greater

I love attention so I’m going to say the latter

but they’re both torturous in their own ways

Desire :) 

Desire is feeling and active while being desired is passive, boring. Often annoying!

I asked Keiran but he didn’t respond maybe he is in the studio

Yes he’s painting!

Didn’t respond

To desire

I think it varies by phase of life! By phase of life I don't mean linearly, I mean that they take turns

To desire is a kind of fulfillment; to be desired is a kind of power

I say desire because I find it way more inspiring

I think we are most alive in the desiring state, of course it’s best when the desire is mutual. 

What does Richard say?

Ask him [Richard’s phone number]

Hi Richard it’s Daisy

I am doing a survey for Dirt and I was wondering if you think it’s better to desire or be desired

Definitely, desire.

​​i would say to desire

i know many people who are desired but they don’t really recognize it

bc they don’t desire those ppl back

desire is what gets u out of bed in the mornin

I say it’s better to be desired 

That’s my gut response — you never know what you can milk out of someone else’s desire for you. And its existence depends on never being fully satiated

[44:00 minute phone call]

Before I let you go, is it better to desire or be desired?

Be desired, I know that’s not a popular opinion but it’s mine.