I Love You, Let’s Meet

Jupiter Research has this to say about the online dating biz. So look for more and more super-scientific “value-added” quizzes and techniques and procedures as well as more and more niche sites.

just got this from the Little, Brown publicist:

Odd news of the morning: the producer from KAHI [in Auburn, CA] just let me know that—right on the heels of their confirmation yesterday—she took another look at the book and realized that it wouldn’t fit in with their show format. She tells me that she “didn’t realize there was so much graphic language in it.”

Humph. It was clean enough for Lima, Ohio; Bloomington, IL; Dallas, Philly, Chicago and NPR (Diane Rehm, Valentines Day at 11 a.m.). Guess nobody has sex in Auburn.

KEGK-FM in Fargo, on the other hand, wanted the juicy stuff! I asked, “Is this a family show?” and the DJ said, “Yeah, but tell us the story anyway.” (They were taping.) You can see how much of it they use by streaming at 8:40 a.m. from eagle1069.com (hey, that’s a pretty sexy radio station name, you got your 69, plus gay bars are always named Eagle).

South Africans wary, the French tried online dating the most, and perhaps the saddest stat in this story: among the online-happy Americans, 82 percent think people lie in their profiles.

So South Africans, it seems, object to and avoid lying more than Americans do. And the French are creative with definitions: As a French friend said about lying about her age, with an adorable shrug, “eez coquette.”

So then why do we literal-minded Yanks keep complaining about liars; shouldn’t we be accepting it as part of Internet dating?

The PUAs (pick-up artists) are storming online dating. I recognized the acronym and the terms in the headline from Neil Strauss’s “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” which is leather-bound with a cloth ribbon bookmark, just like a bible. It’s hilarious and pathetic, about nerdy guys who develop a system to bag “HBs” (hot babes). The writer, skinny, pale, bald Strauss, had good luck with the techniques and was swept up into their subculture for several years, even living in a group house of PUAs.

Jan. 31 I saw my book next to The Game on the Valentine’s Day table of Barnes and Noble in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was my first glimpse of my book in a bookstore and as I stared, I started an imaginary dialogue between the two. My book said, “you think I’m falling for THAT line?” and The Game said “I don’t care, you’re not a stripper or a model.” And my book said, OK, and they coexist in peace.

I crashed J-date a few years ago, and here’s another site that isn’t my tribe but I’m interested in. (Well, not the actual site, but the idea. MarriedBefore.com looks pretty cheesy and a search for men 40 to 52 near my very populated zip code turned up exactly zero (0) divorcees/widowers.)

Even if there were any nice single Dads for me, though, I wonder if the site would let a spinster on. A spinster with a terribly unfair double standard: Guy over 40 who’s never been married or in a long relationship, major red flag. Woman over 40 in the same situation, why she’s fine, just had bad luck.

I’m usually pretty fair across genders (I don’t think men should have to pay for dates unless they make a lot more than the woman, for example), but for some reason I think if a man hasn’t committed by now, he doesn’t want to or something’s wrong with him. Wow, that’s really unfair, isn’t it? No wonder I’m single: what a bitch!

They may reschedule me, they may not. I’m sort of disappointed, sort of relieved, but definitely eyebrow-waxed.

And I get to go out tonight after all, no 6 a.m. call time, and bravely try to have fun despite this terrible loss of a woman who was famous for marrying an old rich guy. I just hope I and the country can move on somehow.

that they don’t want to stop after they find someone. You can stay in the eHarmony compound forever now, yippee!

I’m going to be on a bit about women who blog about their love lives THIS Saturday. This will be my third TV appearance: Did you know they airbrush you, like a car? And talk about you like you’re not there: “She’s got freckles; you can’t cover them up.” “Yeah, but there’s a lot of red in the skin.” “Her brake fluid’s a little low.”

This was before the Keith Ablow show (the local Today show just powdered me). I don’t know when the Ablow show will air but will post when I do know.

I did like my airbrushed and eyeshadowed look. And so did the 27-year-old “addicted” online dater who brought his spreadsheet of 700 women he’d met online: He asked me out in the green room! And I THINK Brian Williams ogled me a little bit in the hall, but maybe I was making that up. He’s shorter than you’d think and cuter, like onscreen celebs always are. More compact and beautiful versions of humankind for the rest of us big galoots to gaze upon.

mildly amusing site; can’t tell if the letters are real.

My friend Angela made this cool video.

I’d like to point out that many of the people shown looking pensive as I read about my own dating failures and those of Chapter 3’s “Christopher” are actually happily coupled!

And in case anyone’s confused, Unnameable Books is the new name of Adam’s Books, which remains a wonderful bookstore. Adam is being very good-natured about being sued by some bully bookseller also named Adams; he’s even considering changing his own name to Unnameable.