Anonymous Orgy of Convenience
"Internet Sex Unzipped: The young adults finding romance on the Web are helping to usher in a whole new casual sex revolution" by Jonathan Durbin:
No longer the icky, desperate realm of those who are looking for love and can't find it elsewhere, these overly friendly sites feature postings from young urban professionals all over the continent. Some view dating as an extreme sport. "I'd call it a casual sex revolution," says Andrew, a 27-year-old San Francisco lawyer who's cruised with the personals at several Web sites. During the past year, with consummate Colin Farrellship, he met 15 women and slept with most of them. "It's great if you're unattractive or even mildly attractive."
I can't do Internet dating. Only mildly attractive and Internet savvy-type guys can do things like that...gasp, guys like me! I'm a guy like me!
But seriously, going with my general motto that "if it feels creepy, then it's creepy", I removed the my online dating profiles, along with the Friendster profile. Not worth it. I have enough allies and enough enemies, thankyouverymuch. And dating as an extreme sport? No thanks.
[P]revailing trends that promoted the rise of Internet meet-and-greets -- long work-hours, marriage deferred for career, the loneliness of city-living -- aren't going away. And because the dating sites offer secure conversations where neither person knows the other's contact information, many women say flirting with men via their keyboards is preferable to being bombarded out on the town. On-line encounters mean no sticky obligations, no awkward pauses in the conversation and no chemistry-crushing expectations. It's an anonymous orgy of convenience that can translate off-screen and into your social calendar.
Oh, and words like "sucking", "sticky" and "penetrating" have no place in an article about hooking up through online personals. Unless irony was intended, of course.
Probably the best quote of the article is this: “The Internet is a great tool for those who want to conflate technology and sex to augment their self-image or make a quick buck.”
Going from memory—and I may have blocked some of it out, so take it with a grain of pepper—I've never once initiated contact in online dating. (The best line I can come up with is "I've never done anything like this, but..." Lame huh?) One girl, in 2000, sent me a message, but I went on a trip to China before we could meet up, so we dropped it. Since then, 3 or 4 girls have dropped me either "collect calls" or "icebreakers", which are predefined messages designed to get me to, y'know, pay to answer. Also, it's still awkward for me to tell my parents how I know some of my online friends that I talk about: I tell them that I met them through "my website", but I don't say which website. They think—and it's not as if they're wrong or anything—that I should be meeting a nice girl through my friends. Not that my friends haven't been encouraging me to date their friends (which I usually meet before they think we should start dating), but none—with the exception that was doomed to fail due to physical distance, her living in Philadelphia—have ever started with "Hey, I know a girl who's into what you're into. Is it okay if I set you guys up?"
(Okay, even that's not true. One guy, who's out of the country at the moment, did offer to set me up with someone, but even though we're local to each other, I haven't even met the guy wanting to set me up in the first place, so he doesn't know my social tics IRL, so it was with that excuse that I let it drop.)
I'm not averse to meeting new people, because, being the opposite of Randal on Clerks, I like people but hate gatherings. It just takes me longer than most to warm up to people, and it usually means making friends through friends, that last phrase almost totally discrediting my aversion to Friendster. Online dating just isn't for me. At least not right now.
