Internet Dating

In addition to looking for a "job" job between freelance contracts, I'm still also trying to find someone to hang out with that doesn't make me cranky and is someone I can have the hetero-sex with on a regular-enough basis that we could get good at it.

In the last two or three years, I've been really social: I go out a lot and meet scads of people(when I should be at home in a darkened room, blogging). A small percentage of those people are women who are around my own age. An even smaller percent of them are single, and a miniscule number of those are "looking". By the time you eliminate the individuals that are less than compatible with myself, I'm left with about 20% of one person. Meeting people through the random chance machine of modern, accelerated life is the least efficient way to do it.

So, my brother's dog died about a week ago. He was pretty broken up about it, so he and my dad came out to visit me. We went for Chinese food and then to the pub by my new place in Kitchener – oh, that's right... I moved. Again. More on this another time.

Anywho, my brother is about 10 years my senior, divorced, and even though he lives in Toronto he has the same problem as I do: meeting women gets less easy when you're not 22 and hardbodied and in an environment where everyone is trying to screw everyone else – like university, or working in a bar.

I knew he was doing the online dating thing – he's been meeting women there for years and he's actually had some decent, medium-term relationships come out of it. I have, naturally, done it too – though with less rosy results.

Those eHarmony commercials are very convincing. The idea that you can meet someone online and have an instant and irresistible connection with them worthy of a catchy onomatopoeia – "click!" – is utter bullocks, though. Don't believe the testimonials; they're real, sure, but they're given by people who have bought wholesale into the fairytale that love is a powerful multimedia force beyond reason.

He, my brother, tells me that he had used Lavalife and Plenty of Fish, but found them lackluster as well. He's been on OK Cupid – "I actually meet people I have something in common with and when you write to them, they write back." 'Nuff said.

I signed on a few days later and was generally impressed with the website itself. It's not perfect, be he was right – people there are on the whole a lot smarter and more articulate than other services.

I've been on a few dates and I'm finding it exhausting. Maybe I went a little crazy and based my dating strategy on volume because I still like meeting new people and I'm not one to sit back and wait. And, my previous experience tells me that if you try to line up five dates, you'll get one out of it.

What I'm still finding though, is that internet dating is just a compression of time. The people I'm meeting – great as they are – fall along the same basic lines as the people I met in real life. I don't have a large enough sample yet for a real comparison, but things are trending towards that 0.2 attraction/person threshold. Not enough to want to pursue anything seriously.

I'm left with the overall impression that love is like the lottery – and you can't win if you don't play.

I'll keep you posted how things go.