October 12: Nice Pix

If you ask me, it's still weird. Technology is constantly changing and for the most part, we welcome its changes with open arms. Being able to carry music in your pocket. Taking pictures and watching movies on your phone. One hundred miles per gallon. Television in the third dimension. Using the Internet to find a lover. If you ask me, it's still weird.

As a society, we're becoming progressively more and more involved with our careers. Nine to five is no longer the standard or norm. People have their office work, their emails and text messages that need responding to on the way home, and more work waiting for them on their home computers. People don't have the weekends off anymore. I have one day a week off and I'm just a waiter! We simply do not have time to go out and meet someone new to date.

Websites like Match.com and eHarmony are the perfect solutions, right? For the cost of a few bad dates, a subscriber can weed out the bad seeds and go out with someone they know they are compatible with. As time passes, this idea is becoming more and more acceptable, but it's still weird.

Wasn't it just a few years ago that people were logging into chat rooms and talking with complete strangers without profile pictures? Wasn't it just a few years ago that Chris Hansen was making busts on old man perverts? Meeting someone online now is a lot safer than those days. Sure, you can lie on your Match.com profile, but Facebook has eliminated a lot of the unanswered questions of legitimacy. Even if you meet a real person on one of these sites, isn't it a bit awkward telling your parents and friends how the two of you met? I feel like my parents would only remember the Chris Hansen years.

There are a lot of reasons to join one of these sites. We're told over and over again that dating within the workplace is a bad idea. I agree. Working alongside someone you used to date is miserable, but if you work forty to fifty hours a week, finding someone outside of your profession is pretty difficult. Dating sites are perfect for people too timid to approach others. The idea of a dating site appeals to gorgeous girls that can't go to a bar without being hit on. The real problem, however, is that dating sites are also the perfect avenue for socially inept men.

A recently graduated, attractive female works fifty hours a week to advance her career. After years of schooling, she has finally landed in the field of her dreams and she's ready to experience life with someone special. Because she works so much, she doesn't have the time to join a co-ed recreational activity. She doesn't attend church and she doesn't have any friends with eligible suitors for her. Her only chance to meet a guy is on Friday night when she goes to the local bar with her girlfriends. Unfortunately, the only men in these venues are the men looking for one night stands; something she's definitely not looking for at this point in her life. She resorts to testing the waters of online dating.

She creates her profile and posts a few pictures. She is very clear in her profile about what she's looking for and who she is. Upon the first twenty-four hours of having an active account, she receives multiple emails from guys twice her age looking for some young tail. Subject lines that read, "Hey Baby" and "Smart AND Sexy?" fill her inbox. She is invited to spend nights out on the town. She is given phone numbers and AOL Instant Messaging screen names. Facebook and Myspace links are pasted in every other letter.

This is not the bar scene. This is not a co-worker approaching her for coffee after work. This is worse. This is disgusting and vile. It's degrading and sickening. She reads each email and finds herself becoming more and more repulsed with each one. Occasionally, she stumbles on a letter with a clever quip about something she wrote in her profile from a relatively attractive guy, but because it's mixed in with all of the others, he's just another creep. She doesn't respond.

A recently graduated male is searching for someone special. He's heard about Match.com and decides to go for it. He finds the profile for an attractive girl. It's well-written which means she's intelligent. She writes about the closeness she shares with her family. She writes about her passions in life. She's standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. She's white water rafting and sky diving. She's playing with her dogs. He writes and never hears back from her.

My theory is that girls believe guys receive just as many emails as they do, but I don't think it's true. A good looking girl has no motivation whatsoever to ever write a guy when she gets (at least) five emails from (at least) five guys a day. By the time she's done reading creepy letter after creepy letter, she subconsciously classifies every guy on the site as creepy. Any guy she writes is, and will be, a creep which, in turn, means no letters for the male subscribers.

Horny guys have ruined bars and clubs for decent guys. The idea of meeting someone on the Internet is still weird to me because it's still a relatively new concept, but the medium is already ruined by the same horny guys that tainted the bars. Online dating fascinates me. I find the idea absolutely mesmerizing. I wish I could witness a girl's reaction to the countless emails she receives and I wish I could read them. I want to talk to girls and hear their experiences. I want to know about the successes and the major fails. I want to know why people go on and how long it took to be scared away. If you ask me, I think it's still weird.