I'm a journalist. Want to go on a date so I can interview you?\ It's not the best pickup line I've ever used, but it's the best I could come up with without compromising that whole ""journalistic ethics"" thing and blatantly lying to everyone I was meeting online.
I resisted the urge to add a ""lol"" or a winking grin to the end of my message and hit the send button. My pathetic electronic plea for a date had just been sent out to yet another recipient, and I was seriously beginning to understand why some journalists fictionalized their stories.
I wasn't optimistic about my odds of finding a date online. I had always been fairly negative about online dating and usually argued that anyone who couldn't find a date in the ""real world"" was somehow socially inept or hiding some deep, terrible flaw he/she didn't want the world to know about.
Of course, this brilliant wisdom came from someone who usually needed to be buzzed or drunk before he could even gather up the courage to talk to an attractive woman. It took the recognition of my own hypocrisy to finally accept the possibility that maybe I was also wrong about online dating.
After joining Okcupid.com, a free online dating site designed by Harvard graduates, I set up a mandatory home page about myself and took a couple of personality tests that were more reminiscent of a Cosmo quiz than an actual psychological profile.
According to these personality tests, I had the personality of a ""deliberately brutal billy goat,"" which of course gave me the self-confidence to start e-mailing every single female in the Madison area with a decent photo who didn't want to get married or make me her man-slave on the first date.
Not surprisingly, I got rejected. A lot. As if dating someone you found on the Internet wasn't already stigmatized enough, most people were pretty uncomfortable with the prospect of being grilled by an awkward journalist about their reasons for being on an online dating site.
Despite my best attempts and failing miserably, I got lucky. A recent graduate in the public relations department at UW-Madison took pity on me and mustered up the courage to send me a message back. Soon, Kristin (not her real name, so don't even try looking her up on Facebook) and I were having regular conversations online and getting to know one another. Eventually we managed to take time away from jobs and persistent editors and arranged to meet on a Friday night.
She wasn't thrilled about my suggestion that we grab some sushi (I always thought salmonella was a turn-on), but we did finally agree to have dinner at Gino's, 540 State St. Not the most original dinner destination, but it's still an old favorite of mine.
When we finally met, I felt very awkward. I had already learned a great deal about Kristin from her online profile and from our prior AIM conversations, but it felt strange actually meeting her, considering I hadn't heard her real voice or even seen her in person yet.
In true self-fulfilling prophecy fashion, we had both discussed the possibility of having nothing to say to one another once we finally tried to have a face-to-face conversation that didn't include interactive smiley faces on a computer screen.
Thankfully, dinner went smoothly. Both of us were nervous, but all the background information we knew about one another really helped break the ice. The awesomely nutty waitress who couldn't stop making us both laugh helped a lot too.
Eventually, we got to discussing the reasons why she first joined an online dating site in the first place.
For Kristin, online dating was a way to be more selective about the men with whom she interacted. Tired of unwanted advances from scuzzy men and not interested in drunken one-night stands, she felt that being online allowed her to pick and choose whom she did or didn't meet.
That's not to say that all her experiences with the men she has met on the Internet were pleasant; one man on Okcupid.com recently asked her if she wanted a male sex-slave all to herself (she declined). For Kristin, the real issue was gaining more control over the dating process, something she never got while being groped in bars by drunken frat boys.
After a great meal, we headed over to the Comedy Club, 119 State St., a favorite haunt of mine that combined little talking and a lot of laughter, which are always a great combination. I figured it was better to have a fallback plan that didn't involve a lot of talking in case the conversation died during dinner.
By the time the late show ended at the Comedy Club we were both fairly burnt out. I walked Kristin to her door and prepared to call it a night. However, she had one more invitation for me before the night ended: ""Want to come up and play Scrabble?""
I'm sure everyone knows what happened next. I won by one point.
By the time the night was over, we both agreed that we had each had a great time. I lost some of my misconceptions about online dating and Kristin got a free meal and a Scrabble partner. For my first online dating experience, I couldn't have been happier.
In the end, I realized that online dating has its perks. Unlike that awkward moment when you realize the girl in the bar wants nothing to do with you, the odds of receiving mixed signals on an online dating site are fairly low.
However, the lack of actual face-to-face interaction seemed dehumanizing at certain points, and unless you're ready to shell out large amounts of money for the more popular sites like Match.com, the number of potential dates in your area might be limited.
While I may or may not ever try my hand at online dating again, it is obvious to me that an ever-growing part of the population is beginning to believe that true love might really only be a mouse click away. And that really is something we can all smile about.
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