Saturday, 04 July 2009

• A Guide to Online Dating

  Brought to you at the request of zzzdeng.
  
  So, you've picked a dating website, you've created the perfect profile, you wish you could just date yourself, your profile's so perfect, but you can't, so you have to go search for other people, or hope that they find you. Now what?
  
  There are a few things to always remember when in the online dating community:
  

  • There are a lot of options. Seriously. No matter how perfect you think a given match is, if that match isn't interested in you, s/he isn't perfect, and it's time to find another one. This can be done within a matter of minutes: there are that many people.
  • Everyone on a dating website is looking for a date. Don't expect to spend a long time communicating over the internet. Most people will expect a first meeting to speak for itself, for better or worse. This isn't You've Got Mail. Your online courtship won't last for more than about two weeks, at most, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Refer to point one for reasons.
  • Not everyone on a dating website is looking for the same thing. ALWAYS remember this. I know this may sound like it contradicts the previous point, but a dating website is not the cream of the crop - it's a little bit out of each interest group, with their only common feature being the deposit of information on a common server. They have as much in common as we Xangans do (don't make me bring Dan v. Paul or Rox v. Revelife into this). The most general categories of why people are on a dating website are:
  • The quest for true love. Yeah, they're out there. Rare. Possibly mostly female, I haven't checked, but they're looking.
  • Lack of time and/or opportunity. There are a lot of successful business people on dating websites because they don't want to date people from the office, and that's the only place they ever find themselves. This may also extend to disappointment with current location. Though I've not encountered this sort of thing myself, but be conscious of how far away your prospective partner lives and how willing you are to deal with a commute for a booty call, if it leads to that. My advice is to keep away. See my first point for why.
  • Expanding the dating pool. These people will tell you quite obviously in their profile that they're sick of "the bar scene," or "the club scene." Maybe this is because my only access to these two "scenes" has been by way of fake ID and my friends are only now coming to the age when they can come with me, but having spent at least five years in these "scenes," I don't find them boring. I think it may have something to do with these people getting bored of their own circles of friends. This may point to one of two things, more frequently than not, the latter: either they have re-discovered who they want to be and are in the process of re-structuring themselves and their lives and the internet is somehow their portal, OR, they are vapid people who get bored easily and want new stomping grounds.
  • Comfort with the internet. These people are also relatively rare, but do be conscious of people who are socially awkward enough to rely exclusively on the internet for contact. They're not bad people, and they can be very interesting, but, as before, refer to point one. Don't make it any more difficult for yourself than it has to be.

  There are three general categories of what people want when making themselves available on a dating website. These are all legitimate motivations. Just make sure yours match your partners'. These are: 

  • a relationship, almost right away, with anyone. This is not as terrifying as it sounds - you just have to make sure you're really compatible with this type of person.
  • dating with the potential for more if you see that you have chemistry in person and share interests.
  • a hookup. Yup, these people do exist. Ask me some time about what happened with my first Match date. It's a really, really funny story when told from beginning to end. 

  With this in mind, this is my advice:
  

  • Read profiles, don't just look at pictures. Make sure the person in whom you're interested wants the same things as you. There's nothing wrong with just meeting once for casual sex, or with getting married a week after meeting, but make sure that both of you want the same thing.
  • Know what you're looking for. This is very important. I don't know how to stress this enough. When you first search a dating website, you'll find a lot of people who have some of the same interests and priorities as you. This is nice. First of all, you have the potential of finding someone who matches all of your interests and priorities. Second of all, you won't be happy with someone who matches what you're looking for on the wrong things. This may take experimentation. For example, I discovered that I was looking for someone who enjoyed reading only after going through a couple of boys who preferred graphic novels and thought that this was a complete substitute. This is just my priority. Find out what yours is.
  • No standard is too petty, too silly, or too demanding. You're looking for someone who will make you happy - for one night, for your entire life, or for any period in between. Don't settle. The reason you're on a dating website is because you have almost unlimited potential for finding the perfect person. If you know your friends will make fun of you if you date another butterface, that's not a bad reason to reject someone who shares your interest in foreign movies, but has never heard of facial cleanser. If you've recently quit smoking and know you're prone to start again if exposed to enough of it, don't wink back at the cutie with the same interest in interstellar masses who has a Camel between his lips in a photo. And, if you don't want to deal with former-Soviet trashy immigrant drama, feel free to ignore boys from Brooklyn who have "Russian" listed under "Languages" - you know they're from Brighton Beach and think that listening to Timati without falling over laughing is okay, your parents wouldn't approve, and that's enough.
    

  • Make lots of connections. Everyone is looking for a partner, so if you're not it, they feel comfortable moving on. So should you. Don't get too attached. If you misunderstand someone's motivations, which isn't impossible even for a seasoned internet creeper like myself, you will get hurt, if only a little, and that is completely unnecessary.
  • Remember that meeting someone online is the same as meeting someone at a bar, through friends, at work, wherever. Treat it that way. Don't do or say anything you wouldn't say on a first date before the first date. There is no reason to treat online dating differently from regular dating. Avoid people who do. The people who are all about "I've never done this before," "I can't believe I'm on a dating website," "I know everyone says this, but..." are lying to themselves and you. We've all sent out resumés, we've all met people at parties, we've all sent e-mails to people we don't know. We've all been forced to have pen-pals at some point in elementary school, if nothing else. Everyone knows how to make a first impression, and everyone knows that s/he is posting him/herself up for public scrutiny.
    

  People who are pretending otherwise fall into subtopic one, subheading three, category two. You don't want them. Or, at least, I don't.
  
  The bottom line: You, and the other person, are presenting you/him/her  self to an anonymous series of anonymous individuals. You can be anyone you want on the internet, and meeting someone through the internet can allow you to become that person, for better or worse. Show him/her yourself as you are, or as you'd like to be seen, but show him/her the person s/he will be interacting with. Keep in mind how much you can learn about yourself, your priorities and your standards, both moral, social and aesthetic, in the process of filling out all of those questionnaires and going through all of those people. It can show you the best you you can be, if you let it. Remember, always, that other people will be doing the same and that, most importantly, not all of them will want to live up to the picture they've painted. I hope you do. Good luck.

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