by Lindsey Challis
Have you ever gone out to lunch expecting a casual conversation with a friend, only to find out they have some earth shattering romance revelation that they insist on gushing about until it’s received with the appropriate oo-ing and aa-ing?
I’ll admit, this was probably me a couple of months ago, but my question is would the gushing and the oo-ing and aa-ing have been the same if it was an online rendezvous? Is finding your soul mate in the virtual world as acceptable as finding one in the non-virtual world? I’d argue that despite the 2% of all marriages in America that eHarmony claims to be responsible for, online dating still has some way to go in the eyes of society.
But why? It could be that online dating has been stigmatised as romance for the socially challenged. Or it could be that e-dating still has some technical hitches, and as a result, the techy evangelists who popularised Twitter and the like, haven’t yet been won over. Also, credibility issues such as thousands of fake profiles and poor matching algorithms may deter users, and could be a reason for the rise in niche sites such as those for people with specific religions, disabilities or even book preferences!
So is it really that new or different? The concept of finding your true love through carefully constructed prose is surely not a new phenomenon. The once wax sealed love letters were firstly transformed into the lonely hearts column of our parents, and have now become a website pool of singletons who WLTM U but only if U R VGL (would like to meet you but if you are very good looking, for the e-dating novices). Soon the divide between reality and virtual will become even more blurred with the proliferation of smartphones and location based dating apps.
Which brings me on to my next point – is online dating really more blind than traditional dating? Perhaps it is blind in a different way. In online dating, as far as I can see, the idea is to get to know the person before you can judge on true appearances, by delving deeper into the web page you can move beyond ascetics to a perhaps, truer connection. On the contrary, in traditional dating, success is often achieved if the singleton is able to look beyond first appearances.
All in all it’s about enhancement rather than replacement. Technology has given to dating, what masks gave to the masquerade ball, an added flourish that can be embraced or ignored as you wish. Unless, of course, you have a gushing friend insisting on lunch!
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