Cyber Flirt: Online Dating, the beginning

My sister recently found a new boyfriend after joining a dating site. He seems like a nice guy.  ‘What’s the harm?’ I thought. An experiment commenced.

This is to see how using a dating website differs from meeting someone face to face as an overall experience.  Among a few questions I wondered, is it less romantic or does that not matter these days? Is it just a big [long winded] hoax to extinguish us in the event of a zombie apocalypse? Are the people you meet on this anything like the people you habitually date?

Days 1 and 2

The questionnaire you fill out to create a profile for prospective ‘dates’ took two hours to fill out. My first thoughts were why would anyone feel the need to use this facility? Understanding of course that online dating is far less taboo than it was just three years ago, there was still the knee jerk reaction ‘what psycho can’t get a girlfriend the normal way?’ In this day and age, how do you define a normal way to meet someone?

So far I’ve been matched with men in their early to mid thirties, mainly living in America (which I am not) and for some unknown reason to me, all seem to be either Engineers or Accountants or something similarly technical and completely different to what I do. No matter, opposites attract and oddly Engineers and Accountants are in my top five attractive jobs for a man. That's right women list these things.

My first impressions therefore are that these men aren’t that compatible with me on the surface i.e. lifestyle and situation. At this stage of my life, like so many people my age, where you are in your career, how often you like to go out, or even just having the desire to travel can turn out to be important factors in who you do or don’t date. However, when I looked at these Gents profiles’, they all said they’re energetic fun loving guys with a thirst for life and laughter and enjoy making people smile. Sounds promising if only my internal cynic would believe it (a recessive hand-me-down gene).

 “As if! ” the radar announced. “They’re all just saying what they think women want to hear to get in to our [cyber] knickers.” I reigned in the radar long enough to remind myself this is an experiment and as it’s online it’s most likely harder to get played [see urban dictionary's definition, my personal favourite was: A certain class of low-rent, slack-jawed fuckups has decided that backstabbing and misogyny are totally radical, so the word is sometimes used as a compliment or term of endearment between male friends, as in the greeting "what's up, player?"]. Maybe. 

Which proposed another thought. Does it not take out the spontaneity and romance of meeting some one face to face by discussing terms online? Body language, a blush of the cheeks, intonations of voice, without which seems a bit mechanical. Jane Austin would turn in her grave at the lack of courting and hiding behind fans. That said, it’s all quite honest and this is the modern world so Jane Austin doesn’t live here. If she did Elizabeth Bennett would have a career and a coffee habit, and Mr Wickham would have Chlamydia.

Day 3

I am so far thoroughly convinced that this website knows nothing about the kinds of guys I’m attracted to. I am being matched with gents, but  gents who non-the-less I have nothing in common with, for instance, men in their early thirties who don’t drink and want to settle down. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, but I did state on my profile that I enjoy going out and am not ready to settle down. To better explain myself, I think it’s a rather unrealistic expectation to assume that attitude to going out or readiness to settle (I hate that word) don’t matter when you meet someone on a dating website, or anywhere for that matter. This is a place where your personal and basic information is displayed and therefore linked to expectations of a partner and would be assumed to coincide.

I’m sorry if this makes me look shallow but I also maintain that you aren’t going to go to bed with someone if you don’t find them physically attractive; though I do understand that these things sometimes come after a while but I imagine that happens a lot more with friends than inter-web dating.

Taking the above, and that I was being fairly resistive to the whole process, in to consideration, I decided it couldn’t just be the site that had a problem. I finished completing my profile to elicit better matches. Someone soon showed interest who at the time I thought was a better fit than previous matches.

On the site, you have the option to get in contact with people via ice breakers, such as sending them smiley faces, asking them to answer certain questions or just sending certain ready-made sentences. After sending my reply to, ‘I’d love to chat!’, with, “I think it would be best to respond in a controlled way’- again, such romance! I was sent some of the questions on offer, which, were quite serious in his choice for a first time chat. For example,  do I want to move for a relationship? What’s my attitude to work? Personally this seemed a bit much. Most people you meet wouldn't ask that after meeting them only moments before. However, I suppose it shows that there are people who use this service in the business of romance that it's for.

Upon answering the ‘questions’ I ask some of my own. I decided on a lighter tact with maybe one serious question, to see if he has a sense of humour. One of my questions was, ‘What quirk would most annoy you in a partner?’ Out of the options of ‘being too clingy in a social situation’, ‘is not familiar with current events’ ‘superstitious’ and ’poor grammar’, he chose ‘poor grammar’ as the most annoying ‘quirk’ in a partner. Really? Out of those options that’s what this guy chose. I wonder more what that says about him than anyone with bad grammar.