In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, not to mention my current status of being very single, I thought it might be interesting this week to take a look at a relatively new method of social interaction (at least in the last couple of years) that I, myself, have been attempting as of late. Online dating and matchmaking has grown increasingly popular with professionals young and old, students, and stay-at-home parents as an alternative way of making new friends and sometimes even more. And don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of success stories out there … I even had one of my own there for a while … but unfortunately for every person that finds their special someone on sites such as Match.com, Yahoo! Personals, and countless others, there are dozens more that are getting exponentially frustrated with the lack of results that we are sometimes faced with…
Today’s column is going to take a look at a few of my less than successful attempts recently.
Probably the biggest problem on the Internet, not just on dating sites, but pretty much everywhere online, is simply that it’s not reality for most people. Safely behind the keyboard and the cool glow of one’s computer screen, a lot of folks tend to forget that there’s actually another person somewhere, sitting at their own PC and reacting to the very things that you’re typing on that website or chat room. It’s always been a concern with e-mail, when we learned early on that emotion isn’t very well portrayed through plain text, and although the coming of emoticons has helped to clear that up a little, it still goes without saying that many will put down in words what they’d never even think of speaking to another face-to-face.
And granted, sometimes this can be a good thing! One of the beauties of writing is that it allows us to put down on paper just exactly what is on our minds – the good, the bad, and most certainly the ugly. Diaries and journals, whether they’re private or public, are based on this very principal and it has helped a lot of people get their ideas and feelings out in the open that might otherwise remain bottled up, however at the same time, what’s lost is the sense of responsibility in putting those words out there for whomever your audience may be. My parents taught me that everything I do has consequences, both good and bad, and it’s something that is important to keep in mind not only in my day to day life, but also when I’m writing as well.
For example, I do write about some sensitive and possibly offensive topics, especially with Against the Grain, and although I want to do my best to get my own perspective across while hopefully entertaining a few people along the way, a certain amount of tact is definitely important because my ultimate goal is to get people thinking, not simply piss them off so that they’ll stop reading my work altogether! And to accomplish this, I really need to consider my audience and remember that there are other people out there – people with quite varying perspectives – that might some day read my work. They may not necessarily agree with what I have to say, but for the most part I like to think that anyone with an open enough mind will understand my intentions and be able to take that at face value.
Now if only the rest of the online community put that kind of thought into their escapades online before posting and e-mailing and ranting up a storm! Talk about the writer penning the ideal world…
So to bring this back to the prospective of online dating, I truly believe that the key element here is really just that most people don’t take it very seriously. And not that people shouldn’t have a good time and enjoy the idea of making friends and meeting new people, but more so along the lines of just having a little respect for the people around you because although you might just be goofing around because you’re bored one Saturday night, the person whose profile you’re looking at might be very serious about finding the right person to spend the rest of their life with. It’s all about learning how we can co-exist out there so that everybody winds up happy, but I think the online dating world still has a ways to go.
Personally, the biggest problem that I’ve experienced firsthand is that I don’t seem to get a level of courtesy from other people that I tend to expect from those whom I haven’t met – namely, I get a lot of cold shoulder treatment, which seems odd to me because we’re all supposed to be on these sites trying to meet new people! Out in the “real world,” even if I were approached by someone in a bar or whatever and I wasn’t particularly interested, I wouldn’t just turn my back and ignore them altogether. A simple, “No thanks!” pretty much covers the bases and nearly every dating site I’ve visited gives users a fairly easy way of doing so – some even provide a link that sends a pre-typed message so that you don’t have to come up with some weird excuse, even if you think you need one!
And honestly, it’s the ability to be upfront and direct like that that should set online dating apart from the more traditional means of meeting people. These sites are great for people who either don’t have time or simply don’t like bars, don’t know where to go to meet other singles, and most of all, are a little apprehensive about the idea of meeting people. The laidback feel of the Internet can help in this aspect because it allows people to take a bit of the edge off, ease up on the nerves, and really open the doors of communication towards other people whom they’d otherwise probably never run into out there in the real world. But it’s important to remember that although the edge may be gone and you might feel free to act candidly, you’re still dealing with other people here and as our elementary school principal reinforced every single morning on the daily announcements, the golden rule certainly still applies.
“Do onto others as you would like them to do onto you…”
With that in mind, my encouragement to those presently in the same boat that I’m in – don’t give up just yet. It may seem like there’s nothing but heartless jerks out there online, but I’ve got good information that there are still some decent men and women sifting through the masses that are worth sticking around for. We may have to go through a dozen or more rude and uncaring souls to find them, eventually everything will work out just fine…
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