I bathe every day....marry me!
Millions of people, all over the world, including Malta, are doing it, experimenting with it, thinking about it or know someone who’s done it – finding romantic partners on the web is rapidly becoming the preferred way of interacting with strangers. And now that Valentine’s day is around the corner, I bet that many more will go online to find that someone special in time for the 14th.
Whether you are a student, a senior citizen, a regular guy with a religious lifestyle, or someone totally off the wall with hair plucking as a hobby, the web is becoming the best place to suss out the ‘potential’ market and meet someone compatible.
Although there are major caution signs for whoever chooses to indulge in this way of life, many adults find meeting people on line easier, safer, and more time effective than going out there and taking the plunge in bars and clubs. Truth be told, going to some teenage-crammed bar, dulling your senses with alcohol and attempting to get to know new people, is not the advice you’d give your children, and yet, for years on end, this is exactly how it’s been done.
But today, whilst clubs and bars are closing down every minute, social networking and online dating websites are mushrooming out of control. Some sites crudely cater for those unashamedly looking for no-strings-attached-sex, while others excogitate psychological compatibility tests to guarantee scoring a life partner within months of subscribing. Answering all the questions requires a good hour of your time as the questions range from food favourites, geographical knowledge, to excess nose hair, spanking limits and foreplay desires. But this might actually save you having to kiss a thousand frogs before finding your prince. Seriously, which bar encounter will give you so much information about a person when you’ve just met them in a drunken stupor?
It’s a bit like house hunting isn’t it? Nobody would advise anyone to randomly roam the streets of a town hoping to accidentally come across a vacant place that they will fall in love with and turn into their dream home. The reasonable thing to do would be to register your basic requirements with a few real estate agents and have them filter the ‘no ways’ from the ‘maybes’, and only then will the viewings begin.
Of course trust is the central issue in online dating. How do you know if a guy is really the Adonis his picture claims him to be or some sorry excuse for a Neanderthal. Pictures could be fake, and profiles could be entirely fabricated, but anything anyone says during a first date or a chance encounter could also be a complete and utter lie. With online dating there’s a service called Honestyonline which provides that extra layer of protection. Basically this website will verify basic information about you by combining in-person contact, data from leading information sources, in-person investigations and professional health screening. If you pass their test you get to tag an honesty certificate to your profile which gives anyone interested in you an added guarantee that you are who you claim to be.
Research also shows that people communicating online are usually far more honest than those communicating face to face. It seems that after decades of communicating through a monitor and keyboard, when confronted by a real person, we lose our spine to be real. And what is possibly the greatest thing about online dating, is that after having G-mailed, MNSned, SMSed, MMSed, MySpaced, and video called the object of your affection, you will both end up with enough pent up sexual energy to power the national grid – this can never be a bad thing!
One of the most popular online dating sites amusingly calls itself plentyoffish.com. This generates over 300, 000 relationships a year across the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland and the UK. What makes it so amazing is that its entire revenue is based on Google advertising making it 100% free for end users. Its entire staff is limited to Markus Frind, and volunteer forum moderators, and is run from Frind’s own apartment. When I logged on (for research purposes of course) I found over 18, 000 online!
Just like Facebook, most online dating sites have short one line tags which go next to your picture. These short one liners are meant to describe you and lure in potential dates to look at your profile and hopefully become interested enough to chat. The following were just a few of the clever ones I felt I should share:
- Down to earth angel seeks wings
- New girl on the block needs a tour guide
- Over 280, 000 women looking for a relationship and all I want is one
- Any good e-males out there?
- No picture, no response!
- I’m like poop. The older I get the easier I am to pick up.
- Willing to lie about how we met.
- Ok, I’m here. Now what are you other two wishes?
- Willing to share the remote.
- Thou shalt not weigh more than the refrigerator...otherwise message me
- And my all time personal favourite : I bathe every day...marry me!
My advice to anyone considering online dating is to keep an open mind, keep more than a pinch of salt handy, and boldly venture ahead. Whatever you do, don’t fudge on your weight when typing in your profile as it’s the one thing you can’t change at short notice. And once you take the plunge to meet your person face to face, make sure you choose a public place with many easy exits. Any venue at the Valletta Waterfront is ideal because should your date turn out to be a greasy excuse for a human being, water is at arm’s length, the police station is up the road, and you can run like the clappers without anyone batting an eyelid.
Alison Bezzina