Most nights, my roommates and I find ways to fill our time without doing homework. Our flights of fancy range from buying a vintage leather jacket online to watching "Next," learning the "Cupid Shuffle," to playing Scrabulous in French.
About two weeks ago, we pioneered a new source of online procrastination. Giggling and patting our snarky selves on the back, we decided to create online dating profiles.
Initially, we thought it would be fun to play around on eHarmony.com, the ubiquitous dating site that claims it might be responsible for about 2 percent of last year's marriages. After all, with its cheesy television ads, which seem to equate a peck on the lips with a weekend of steamy sex, how funny would it be to see what sort of guys were on the site looking for love? Unfortunately, after completing the exhaustive survey we realized there wasn't much to be done without becoming a paid subscriber. Undeterred, we switched gears and logged onto Match.com, a dating site that lately has been running ads that look like indie rock music videos.
Filling out Match's preliminary information was much speeder than eHarmony, and we soon found ourselves face-to-profile-picture with a few dozen potential mates. To my horror, all of my bitter, ironic sentiments toward online dating flew out the window. I found myself commenting on nice smiles and almost squealing when I found commonalities like favorite books. I'd been sucked in.
We live in an age when we post on one another's Facebook walls instead of mailing birthday cards, text each other from across the room and keep tabs on one another on MySpace.com. Yet even among members of our tech-addled generation, online dating still seems strangely taboo. Meeting a handsome stranger at a bar is in some ways quite similar to e-mailing a man with an alluring profile, but it's much easier to tell your friends that you gave your number to a cute guy at the club than it is to say you're taking an online courtship to the next level.
2008 Woodie Awards
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