SINGLE? COMPUTER literate? Hey, we’ve got a lot in common. It turns out that the Internet is good for more than porn and get-rich-quick schemes; a cursory glance at any Web directory turns up personal-ad sites with names like AmericanSingles, Udate, Kiss, OneAndOnly, and, of course, the ubiquitous Match.com. Combining the infallibility of computers with the customer satisfaction found only on the Net, these sites bring together more lonely humans than office Xmas parties and natural disasters combined.
Browsing through the online profiles of these lonely humans is addictive in exactly the same way digital cable is: Each click brings material more horrifyingly banal than you’d imagine possible, with rare exceptions of something interesting to keep you looking. Most sites let browsers look as much as they want and maybe post a free profile, but touching (in the “reach out and touch someone” sense) costs. Twenty-five bucks buys a month’s worth of anonymous communication with thousands of little Match girls and boys. How can anyone resist?
I couldn’t. A few years ago, single and curious, I joined Match.com, and I’ve drifted back every time I’ve found myself uncoupled. It’s a simple way to ease back into the world of dating, even if it feels a little weird to learn that a woman has a kid and loves Jeunet films before seeing her smile. I’ve had several dozen first dates; pleasant enough, but obviously hopeless from the first minute—chemistry still can’t be digitized.
But we do our best with fuzzy pictures, checklists of physical characteristics (are you slim/slender? Athletic? A few extra pounds?), and often vague written descriptions. If someone looks good enough on virtual paper, it’s easy to dash off a message inviting them to check out your profile and, maybe, write back. In practice, of course, it’s more complicated than that. Women, especially straight women, are less likely to respond to profiles and are generally more discriminating. Some straight men will spam every woman they can find with a boilerplate “Hey, good-looking” message. And then there are the Russians.
Yes, it seems that some of the savvier foreign-wife service bureaus have latched onto Match and other personals sites as lures for men who don’t know any better. These profiles are pretty straightforward and tend to provoke sadness rather than romantic interest. Those in search of mystery are well advised to check out one of the dozens of profiles of young Catholic girls with photos that make them look suspiciously like models and vague descriptions looking for men from 18 to 55 with money who want a good time. One or two might be legit—why not?—but in aggregate they’re profoundly creepy.
MOST OF THE PEOPLE one finds online are what they say they are, more or less. Whether that’s a tragedy or a crime depends on your worldview, but it’s true: Most people just aren’t as vibrant, endearing, and articulate as you. Once you get used to that, spotting interesting profiles becomes as easy as finding your best friend in a crowd.
After winnowing the field down to a few candidates for primary love monkey, sending out carefully crafted messages both flattering and sincere, and (maybe) getting responses, Match etiquette demands a period of e-banter that lasts from a few days to a few weeks. Here you ask probing questions, devise modest replies, and slowly ramp up the flirting, if that’s your inclination. After a while, a phone number is offered, voice and wit are evaluated, and, most likely, a date is made. Coffee? Beer? Dinner? Weekday? Weekend? Subtle clues give the observer some sense of the date’s significance to the other.
Then we steel ourselves for the meeting of the flesh and its nearly inevitable disappointment. Even if s/he looks exactly like the photo (it happens), even if the voice is perfectly seductive, even if you both like cats, the odds are against sparks flying. Personals get the mating process perfectly backward: First learning that someone likes crossword puzzles, then that he or she smells like your father, is less helpful than confusing. That they are so popular—and that they often work—is a testament to human desperation.
And they do work. I know several people (you probably do, too) who have met lifelong partners through online personals, and I’ve met two people who passed my chemistry test, even if we eventually flunked out. We don’t hear much about these liaisons, however. There’s an odd sense of shame associated with personals, especially online, though it seems to have paled over the years as the Net has become more profitable and, hence, respectable.
So now that looking for love is nearly as easy and satisfying as online shopping, can we look forward to a world of perfectly matched couples? Not if humans are involved—if anything, technology will enable us to make more horrible mistakes with nightmarish efficiency. But with great risk comes the chance of great rewards, as they (annoyingly) say.
