Apologies for the hiatus; I guess I’ve been a bit slack of late. I blame the process of uprooting my old life, transporting as much of it as I could fit in my tiny car across the border and trying to establish a new one for myself in a different city for preventing me from recording my thoughts in any meaningful way. Let’s call it my ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday‘, shall we?
Enough of that.
On to today’s topic: Internet Dating. This has been floating to the surface of my brain quite frequently over the past couple of months, mainly because I decided to bite the bullet and try it out for the first time in my twenty-four-and-a-bit years of existence. I think this came as more of a surprise to myself than anyone else as I have always held the opinion that internet dating was for creeps, geeks, losers and the desperate. Despite hearing numerous success stories about friends of friends who had met their significant other through internet dating, I was still skeptical.
Image courtesy of debaird
The idea was initially conceived over a few drinks with one of my housemates. We agreed that it would be an interesting social experiment to give it a go for ourselves. Would we have trouble finding any normal, respectable, non-stalkerish and generally suitable men like as suspected or would we be surprised by the quality of young men gracing the world wide web with their profiles? There was really only one way to find out.
The purpose of this entry isn’t to share my internet dating success and/or horror stories (I will save those for another day) but more to share some of the things I have learnt in the process.
My Observations:
- Although there are plenty of creeps who think that posting a photo of themselves with their shirt off/leaning on the bonnet of their sports car is appealing and sport obsessed guys are a dime a dozen there are also plenty of decent guys with interests beyond ‘watching the footy in the pub with my mates’ on there, it is just a matter of taking time to find them.
- No matter how much ‘chemistry’ you have with someone over email this may not translate when you come to meet them face to face. In light of this it isn’t wise to spend weeks on end emailing back and forth before you finally arrange to meet. I acknowledge that it is important to carry out initial serial killer vetting but it isn’t necessary to know someone’s life story before you share a coffee.
- The more time you spend emailing back and forth before you meet the more you will feel that you have personally invested in the relationship and will be reluctant to admit that you don’t ‘click’ in person. This largely follows on from the above observation.
- Internet dating can take some of the mystery out of the process. In traditional dating it is likely that you would know very little about a person before your first date (unless you’ve decided to make the risky transition from friends to lovers, but that’s a topic for another day). On the one hand this can be a positive thing, allowing you to discover things about each other throughout the dating process. Conversely, this can mean that someone who you were initially attracted to in the pub or at that party last week actually has very little in common with you leaving you to struggle through an awkward date’s worth of stilted conversation.
- Internet dating can work for those of us who don’t feel comfortable approaching that hottie at the bar/pub/party/gym/bus stop. As my friend so appropriately put it the other week there are those among us who constitute the ‘upper echelons’ of the dating game. They include those people who are so intimidatingly attractive that they cause us mere mortals to stare in open-mouthed awe. They spot others of their kind from across the room and glide effortlessly towards one another to engage in witty banter and exchange phone numbers. For the rest of us things are rarely as easy as this. Internet dating lowers the stakes, allowing you to test the water with prospective dates in a relatively risk free situation. It’s difficult to have more than a slightly bruised ego when someone fails to return your email but the same isn’t true if you are so unlucky as to be turned down in front of a room of people, many of whom are likely to be friends of yours and therefore unlikely to let you forget about your unceremonious rejection any time soon.
We are willing to trust the internet to purchase goods from strangers, find a place to live, connect with new housemates, recommend a restaurant, find a new job and tell us what music to listen to so why not trust it to help us with the difficult task of finding someone to start a relationship with? Although internet dating can be contrived, the use of the internet has become so pervasive in our lives that we may as well be willing to embrace this and use it to our advantage. I am in no way implying that internet dating is the perfect way to meet people or that is it necessarily suitable for everyone but I would encourage anyone who is even the slightest bit curious to give it a try. You might be surprise by what (or who) you find.
I’d like to say that I’m not so shallow that I would judge a prospective boyfriend based on the books he reads but that would make me a liar. Apparently book snobbery when it comes to choosing a mate is not so unusual. Although it would probably be stupid to split up with someone because they hadn’t heard of your favourite obscure Russian poet, taste in books is a decent way to test your general compatibility with a person.
For me, it is not so much about which books you have read or which authors you like as it is about which books and authors you dislike. I am highly likely to immediately disregard anyone reading a Dan Brown novel. In fact, if I see another person reading Angels and Demons I may scream. Maybe, just maybe, I am being an intellectual snob and maybe, just maybe, I refuse to read his books because I have seen so many others reading them but there is also the distinct possibility that his books are absolute shite and people should have the backbone to venture past the first table they stumble upon in the book shop and buy something which is not number one on the best-sellers list. Any individual caught reading one of the Twilight novels also falls into this category.
THOUGHTS: Internet Dating. Is it just for creeps and losers?
11 OctApologies for the hiatus; I guess I’ve been a bit slack of late. I blame the process of uprooting my old life, transporting as much of it as I could fit in my tiny car across the border and trying to establish a new one for myself in a different city for preventing me from recording my thoughts in any meaningful way. Let’s call it my ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday‘, shall we?
Enough of that.
On to today’s topic: Internet Dating. This has been floating to the surface of my brain quite frequently over the past couple of months, mainly because I decided to bite the bullet and try it out for the first time in my twenty-four-and-a-bit years of existence. I think this came as more of a surprise to myself than anyone else as I have always held the opinion that internet dating was for creeps, geeks, losers and the desperate. Despite hearing numerous success stories about friends of friends who had met their significant other through internet dating, I was still skeptical.
The idea was initially conceived over a few drinks with one of my housemates. We agreed that it would be an interesting social experiment to give it a go for ourselves. Would we have trouble finding any normal, respectable, non-stalkerish and generally suitable men like as suspected or would we be surprised by the quality of young men gracing the world wide web with their profiles? There was really only one way to find out.
The purpose of this entry isn’t to share my internet dating success and/or horror stories (I will save those for another day) but more to share some of the things I have learnt in the process.
My Observations:
We are willing to trust the internet to purchase goods from strangers, find a place to live, connect with new housemates, recommend a restaurant, find a new job and tell us what music to listen to so why not trust it to help us with the difficult task of finding someone to start a relationship with? Although internet dating can be contrived, the use of the internet has become so pervasive in our lives that we may as well be willing to embrace this and use it to our advantage. I am in no way implying that internet dating is the perfect way to meet people or that is it necessarily suitable for everyone but I would encourage anyone who is even the slightest bit curious to give it a try. You might be surprise by what (or who) you find.