Here's what appears to be the New York Times's view of the dating world: Really rich folks from elite universities eat expensive food together and discuss stuff like whether the woman should work and where they should keep a summer share. The various revelations about exciting new trends in the relationship world are provided in the form of anecdotes from ridiculous people who sound like close friends of the writers. In the most recent iteration of this theme, we learn that for some people—hold the phone—the type of apartment that their date keeps can be a real deal-killer.

The central thesis comes in the form of this thought from author Joyce Wadler:

Spring is here and the restaurants will soon be filled with anxious and hopeful couples, ordering wine, dusting off their most luminous lies, thinking they might finally have found love. Then they will see their dates' homes for the first time. And suddenly some of them will realize that they cannot be with this person a moment longer—or at the very latest, because that wine was not cheap, beyond the next morning.

Wadler collects the requisite anecdotes—including ones about two gay couples, for representativeness—and cobbles together a story about how various things like stuffed baby seals, high-tech marijuana equipment, and stuffed animals can snuff out a budding romance.

Of the last of that list, Wadler tells us the experience of Jason Bunin, whom she describes as a "bad-boy chef." Bunin says, "You see it more in younger girls, like between 21 and 25. Pink, purple, teddy bears, unicorns, all over the bed. I'd just whack 'em off with my arm."

Maybe Wadler realizes that her article is full of masturbatory prose, after all.