I Love You, Let’s Meet

Now they’re not paying their bills!

This story details some of the other sleaze, which I’ve also covered in book and blog. I still have my free membership and experience some of the other sleaze more directly: the fake wink. Guys will write me and say “thanks for the wink, I like you too” and I never winked at them. Some machine goes in and generates random winks.

Here’s some science we all kinda knew. The last sentence is a succinct, sad-but-true way of putting it.

On the other hand, I do think online dating, as opposed to speed dating, can shift all this a bit. My book def. had cases of writing-attractions at least adding to if not superseding physical attraction.

about perseverance, I suppose.

But why would she write him and then not answer him back? Watch your back, Chip.

that’s the best profile headline on the goth singles site, where you can find boys who wear lipstick and girls who wear fangs and one little gothette who “secretly digs country music.”

they’re so cute!

in uniform

When are the Gang of Four gonna have their oldies tour anyway?

Good lord.

On this dating site for nerds:

When a user “winks” at another person to get the banter going, for instance, they have the option of sending any number of virtual objects — the greek letter Pi, a unicorn, a floppy disk, a crop circle, or a dilithium crystal used to power the warp drive on Star Trek

I might add an image of Professor Frink to that list (just learned his name copyediting the upcoming Simpsons issue of Time Out). (And yes a true nerd would never link to a site that hasn’t been updated in 10 years, but the official Simpsons site for some reason ignores Professor Frink.)

why, if he was pontificating and flirting online, of course.

I’m sure this is a great way to niche (I assume someone’s already verbed that noun) the dating population, but I’m picturing red-stained keyboards and long, maudlin e-mails. Perhaps it’s because of this claim in the article: “On average, Americans consume about 600 million gallons of wine per year.”

I used to think I drank my fair share, but I doubt I’ve even gotten to one million gallons, and it’s already July!

Time’s article on the five worst websites had me yelling at my screen, “Yeah! Tell ‘em!” “Exactly!” “Mmm-hmmm, so true” and “What the hell is Meez?” I’ve hated e-harmony plenty on here, but I haven’t hated MySpace enough. Partly because it would be wicked hypocritical to join the chorus of “it’s just marketing vultures feeding on the teen lambs” when I am one of said vultures with a MySpace page for my book.

In my defense, I’m too lazy to be really predatory, so I’m not sidling up to beFriend many teens or adults, though I pretty much say yes to everyone who invites me to be their friend. I guess that makes me a lazy MySpace slut, a category in which I imagine I have a lot of company.

Speaking of lazy, I’ve had a handful of people tell me I really need to check out SecondLife because it’s an important Web development, so I was happy to have Time confirm that it’s as big a time-suck as it seems. It’s hard enough staying on top of First Life.

this piece on slate starts out as a good overview of the chemistry.com ads that respond to e-harmony’s exclusion of gays and others. But then he veers into Bitchy Fashionistaville — “darling, a vest over a sleeveless shirt simply isn’t done.”

He says online dating needs screening to keep out bad people who do bad things like make outfits Seth doesn’t like. I never thought I’d stick up for Dr. Warren, but at least e-harmony’s questions try to get at things that matter in a long-term relationship like values and attitudes toward money, child-raising, sociability, etc.

I don’t think Seth online dates; otherwise he’d know there’s plenty of shallow snap-judging; no additional screens needed.