Online Dating: The Discussion

I'm about halfway done with what will no-doubt be a ground-breaking, Pulitzer-worthy post regarding couple's therapy, but football playoffs and the company retreat are intervening. In the mean time, why don't we have a discussion about online dating?

Karol--who, like Dick Morris, has a great deal of knowledge but still always seems to come to the wrong conclusions--informs us in comments on the previous post that she finds the whole thing sad.

I'm not cool enough to be up on internet lingo like LMFAO but I stick to my original comment that internet dating is basically for losers. ... I agree with Autumn that a grocery list of requirements in a mate isn't the way to find true love. There's nothing romantic about online dating, it's like looking for a job. I dunno, maybe this is the one thing I'm romantic over-- that eyes should lock across a room, that friendship should suddenly develop into more, that it'll all feel like fate that you ended up in THAT bar on THAT night.

Actually, Karol makes some good points about the overall feeling of "dating." Which is suprising as in almost all of her writing prior to this post, she seemed to be about as romantic as a mechanical engineer living in a Dilbert comic strip. (And please realize that Karol and I are taking polite, friendly jabs at one another in this as well. We like each other. We respect each other. Okay, well I respect her. She might think I'm an idjit, but that's fine).

Online dating doesn't necessarily feel romantic. That could be because of the catalog-type nature of the whole ordeal. It could be because there are so many people simply looking to get laid. And, also, the sites are a refuge for people who have either temporarily or permanently given up on the spontaneous thing. But you know what else isn't romantic? Going to the Young Democrats club, not because you have a boner for Howard Dean, but simply because you have a boner and you figure anyone dumb enough to fall for his line of shit, is certainly open to yours.

But if we want to use "fate"--a bullshit concept, if you ask me--I can point out that a million little things have to happen before two people run across one another on an online forum and actually connect.

Fate, though, is a pretty stupid concept. But not nearly as stupid as our own desires and first impulses. We all know about how "smart" our first impulses are, right? We've all seen the 45-year-old guy "fall in love" with the 20-year-old. We've all seen the young woman fall in love with the "musician." We've all seen the pain.

And for every person who sees another across a crowded room and makes that connection, there are about one million others who make that same connection, go home, get laid, get crabs, get dumped. And twenty million more who THINK they make that connection only to be trapped in the Friend Zone. And thirty million more who get rejected.

And online dating is different, how? In reality, it's not all that different. People meet, they hook up, they think they make connections, they give each other sores, they break one another's hearts. I would say, though, that the Friend Zone trap happens less in online dating. And you don't meet WHILE you're a drunken ass (instead, you 'meet' online, have some faux overly witty banter THEN get drunk on the first date).

To be honest, I think it's pretty much all the same. And what makes it the same is that dating sucks. This isn't college--where a lot of people meet and get married. It's a game of odds and for those who are even the least bit romantic, those odds start to beat you down. Some people get pissy. They get desperate. They get tired of one loser after another. They get tired of their own bad instincts. They get tired in general.

Or, they just want to try something else for the hell of it. They simply want to increase their odds.

And sitting in front of a computer looking at online profiles isn't necessarily any more loserish than someone going to a bar or a party every weekend, getting drunk and making passes and getting rejected. It isn't any more sad than joining up for all sorts of social and professional events--not because you're interested in politics or books or bowling--but because you just want to meet someone, and when you show up and find a) that all the "keepers" at the even are taken which b) leaves you being chatted up with all the other folks in your position, you suddenly realize you're not all that interested in Fourth Century Roman Law or whatever.

Sure, there are some folks who have been online--and only online--for five years, using the same profile, barking up the same wrong trees in the same dark forest. But there are also people who hang out in the produce aisle. There are women who go to service every Saturday or Sunday expecting God will deliver unto them a doctor. There's a guy right now hanging out in strip clubs, convinced that Candy is really working her way through college and is interested in him as a person, not in the five dollar bills he keeps shoving in her skivvies.

Karol got lucky in the real world. I got lucky in the online world. Many of our friends are still slogging away through either or both, and making snarky comments about us when our backs are turned. ("Of course Karol can say that, she's got a boydfriend." Or, "God, Ken just makes me want to puke now that he has a 'GF.' I mean, 'GF,' what the fuck is THAT about. Like anybody cares what her name is?")

Okay. This was supposed to be a paragraph. I'm supposed to let YOU have the discussion. So. Discuss. And be nice.