ENTERING WEB DATING
Should You Test the Waters, or Plunge Right In?
Statistics About Cyberdating
Internet dating has become one of the quickest, hottest, and most challenging ways to meet people since personal ads became popular. The Internet is a fascinating tool to use for finding information you want on literally any topic that can be conceived, at a speed that was hard to grasp a few years ago, and now it has become an indispensable and valuable part of dating.
Internet dating started with only a few sites. From my research, it appears that Match.com was the first Internet dating site, established back in 1995 with an initial membership number unknown, because "no one was keeping track in those prehistoric days of 1995" (Match.com). The momentum of dating sites began to increase, and by 2002, Match.com saw its overall membership reach eight million. That same year Yahoo! began highlighting online personals. By some estimates, 25 percent of single people in the United States were involved in Internet dating sites (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006).
At the end of 2004, there were 844 lifestyle and dating sites to appeal to every human characteristic imaginable, and I mean everything. U.S. residents spent $469.5 million on online dating ad personals in this same year. By 2007, dating sites numbered well over 1,000, and Match.com alone boasted a membership of 20 million people (Match.com).
Finding the appropriate site for you may seem like going to your favorite restaurant with a list of gourmet delights to choose from. “I would like one tall, very handsome, single (or married), wealthy (or not), professional (or not) Caucasian (or not), Aries/Scorpio male/female to go." It’s almost like going to the drive-through window to pick up a meal.
Sometimes the choices on the menu are severely limited by the applicant's I.Q., education, or attitude, however, as shown in this recent profile from a popular dating site.
Profile of a 48-year-old male in Houston:
Short, fat, balding, and unemployable, questionable hygiene, never owned a working car. Didn’t quit looking straight down until hit by a bus, while collecting cans. Cut my own hair when not incarcerated. Love to cook if instructions are in English, can borrow toaster oven with notice and when the power is on. Like to read novellas left at the bus stop by my house, they usually have several pages missing, but I don’t read so well and can really only tell by looking at the page numbers. I have an almost complete collection of the Home Shopping Networks NASCAR display plates. These are not the common kind that you would put macaroni and cheese on, these are the good ones that you save up for and put on the wall when decent people are commin over. Partner in an Internet beanie baby deal wherein I hold up the beanie baby so that they can take a real good picture. Not really so much a partner as they gave me some beer so that I would lay down on the floor and prop the little animals up with a coat hanger and not be in the picture.
Oh, my fault, let’s start again. This is for fun, right, passion, excitement, adventure, maybe a little bit of anxiousness. As a rule the words “what the f~~k” should probably not be contained in the subject line of your email. I, for one, have much fun after having had a great laugh with the person with which I am about to exchange bodily fluids. Call me shy, ignorant, an asshole, but I just can’t seem to get wood after receiving mail which informs me that I have the most f*#*$*ked up profile on AFF.
You remember that time when you screamed “you f#@%king piece of s*$#t, what are you doing?" I really felt close to you after that and thought, I can’t wait to be stuck in traffic so I can daydream about this lovely creature, who while she doesn’t know which side the fork goes on, would consider the side of my head as an option.
There is jest something so romantic about those photos you sent to me with the uneaten food on plates in the background under the dirty clothes and the stains on the, as of this decade, unpainted sheetrock. I know that none of us is perfect and that Martha is having all those legal woes and maybe behind in her correspondence regarding your decorating, but if I wouldn’t stand in the room barefoot chances are I’m not going to be terribly comfortable rolling around in that room. I know, I have that profile with the phrase questionable hygiene, but that was a joke, honey, you know satire but the opposite sarcasm. Kind of like when you write “living life to the fullest while photographed on the hood of your unpainted 1978 AMC Gremlin."
Anyway, I really appreciate all the responses. My favorite to date has been “if you would not spend money on a paid sex website you could get something nice for yourself."
My Ideal Person: Seeks lady friend who uses a lot of small words and speaks slowly, has extra bars of soap, bus tokens and owns a can opener. Comfortable with the expression “He does not live here anymore.”
Chapter One
