A friend has been encouraging me for months to join the Internet online dating scene; she met her current boyfriend through an online dating site, and he is a genuinely nice man. She knew that I was looking for a little companionship in my life, and even once hooked me up with one of her lady friends who, as it turned out, prefers “big, burly men” (not me).
I had always mistakenly regarded the online dating scene as being for, to put it bluntly, desperate socially inept losers who couldn’t meet anyone any other way. A TV commercial that I saw on New Years Eve sparked my interest, though. A nice looking couple, twirling around and gazing romantically into each other’s eyes was accompanied by a pleasant voice that said, “It’s a new year. Start it out by meeting someone special. Log on to….” I thought, as I sat there on a New Years Eve without any dating prospects, “OK. That sounds good. I will.”
After filling out a huge questionnaire that supposedly matches me with someone “across 29 dimensions,” I was a bit disappointed to see that I was not compatible with anyone in the entire Oklahoma City metropolitan area. At least, not with anyone who’s a member of this particular dating service. Or, maybe this dating service is very picky. Fortunately, it didn’t cost me any money to see just how incompatible I was.
At this point, though, I was very curious. “Surely I can’t be that weird,” I thought, so I signed up, again for free, with two more popular online dating services. Once I’d posted a “profile” of myself, I was able to search and browse the profiles of thousands of women looking for dates. It was a very odd and compelling experience, a bit like thumbing through a huge catalog of available women, complete with photographs, physical descriptions, personal preferences and the like. There I was, clicking away like a kid in a candy store, muttering, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Oh, she’s kind of cute. Nope. Yikes, what’s that? Nope. Ah, she’s pretty, but sounds crazy. Nope. Nope.” Indeed, a strange experience.
Suddenly, my email inbox started filling up with “flirts” and “winks” from women who were allegedly interested in me. One dating service started sending me long lists of “matches.” “Hey, this is more like it,” I thought, until I started carefully examining what was going on. Some of the matches seemed to be with truly nice local women, but some caused red flags to start waving in my brain. The flags didn’t start waving because of the horribly bad matches, flirts and winks that I received (one, from a woman that I’ve affectionately named “Sasquatchetta”). No, the red flags began waving because of the way-too-good to be true, much-too-young-and-pretty to be flirting with a middle-aged geek like myself messages that I started receiving.
The first obviously impossible flirt came from a young beauty ostensibly living in Champaign, Illinois, who goes by the name of “Volumptousbabe” (yes, that’s how it was spelled). Her photograph ran up the first red flag. The pose, the pretty face, the makeup and lighting were obviously professionally composed, just like a super-model ad in Vogue magazine. I thought, “This can’t be real.” Then came another red-flag wink from “Honestmargaret,” located in Littleton, Colorado. She looks like something out of Playboy magazine. Again, “No way,” I thought.
I’d heard about scams run against people looking for online love before, so I decided to do a bit of research. The jury is in, and the following quote from Onlinedatingmagazine.com sums up the situation quite well. “Many… women run scams against men. They pretend to get to know and like you and once you fall for them they start asking you for money. Thousands of men have been sucked into this scam, wiring money to a girl they never met and never hearing from her again (or hearing from her asking more money). If the person you are communicating with asks you for money, watch out.” It should be noted that many lonely women have been ripped off in similar ways.
Even keeping the rules of Internet safety in mind, I’m not so sure that online dating is for me. Something about it just doesn’t feel quite right, but that could change. It may be the perfect solution for many people. Can online dating be fun? Maybe. Addictive? Probably. Creepy? Absolutely. Let the flirter beware.