The penny press offered a new idea on love, or more often, gossip as it relates to love. Dr. Burt described that with the invention of a newer, cheaper way to gather information on a local and then on a national and finally a global level, it changed the way we love and how we think about love. Headlines about young girls running away to elope with a lover may have swayed those reading it to pull the reigns in tighter with their teenage daughters, or may have encouraged these girls one way or another. One may read this article and think of the public shame and embarrassment that may surround her decision once everyone had found out what she'd done, and not run away with her boyfriend. Another, liking the attention that was devoted to the subject of the article, may decide to follow in her footsteps, fueled with the need to have this attention or courage through what she did.
This idea of gaining attention through the media may have changed love in a different way. Now, since it was popularized and the "new thing to do," people may be "falling in love" just because it would draw some focus to them. Scandals sold well, it was the thing that everyone was talking about. Love affairs with married individuals, large age differences, many partners, pregnancy, divorce, all those things sell and that's why it happened. None of it was real, much like reality shows today, it's just the fights, the drama and the repercussions of watching it. And the feeling that the viewer might have by thinking, "Well, at least my life didn't turn out like his/hers." It's a sort of voyeurism that we like in seeing people use love as a commodity instead of an actual relationship taking place with merit and value. When we commercialize love, it stops being real.
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