Conor Murphy | Deputy Opinion Editor
Online dating is the future, this is without a shadow of doubt in my mind. In a world with the divorce rate we have, in a world where so many people have spent years with people because ‘they’ll do’, we have needed better ways of finding partners for years. And some form of online dating is undoubtedly it. However as I tripped into that world in the past few months, just what form of online dating it’ll be has become much less clear.
I started dipping my toes into the social stigma a few months back, with a cavalier attitude of “just checking it out” and a very slightly open mind. Plenty of Fish (POF) was the first port of call. It’s a virtual cornucopia of online fake tan and “oh can you see my cleavage?” profile pictures. But I plugged my nose and jumped in anyway.
However, that ideal sculpture of online dating where you find the ideally suited person and have an ideally worded conversation soon started to melt away under the overwhelming evidence. Part of this was the site’s fault, but mostly it was mine. My ideal world excluded real world truths and anxieties that don’t go away just because I’m tapping a keyboard and not a shoulder.
If you approach someone in a club only one in ten of those will actually interest you past the next thundering of limbs to Gangnam Style. Naively ,I multiplied the number of attempts at approaching a stranger in the real world by ten online and thought I should get many more people I actually like. But obviously not, because when there’s no social pressure to stay talking for a little bit, that five seconds of first impressions become that first paragraph of conversation with no way to redeem yourself. The problem is this brave new world still retains some of the worst parts of the old world.
Guys are still guys online, they (read I) send these carefully crafted unfunny funnies to women who are completely unsuited to them just because that womans’ particular measurements resonate with the same natural frequency as male stupidity. Now they’ll (read I’ll) eventually get past this but will have wasted the first month poking that mousepad and touchscreen like a five year old in a sweet buffet. Basically, they spam mail women – this means women actually trying to go on a date are trying to sip at a hose of virulent sex chat and decaying one liners.
Women are also victims of their own modern ineptitude online. They, by-and-large, write non-existent profiles that just have a few pictures and no personality, so hey, guess we’re going to judge you on your picture alone then. Half the profiles ask you to message if we get on yet hold nothing else but a complaint on the volume/quality of dick pictures they’ve received unsolicited (which is a fair complaint, duly noted). There is a lot of obvious trying to look oh so casual on these sites because they’re trying to avoid the online dating stigma to people who are already on the site!
Thats why the next attempt fared a bit better in quality, if not quantity, OkCupid.
One of the longer standing dating websites has a slightly smarter and more cynical way than just dumping on you a list of all the women in Dublin. It doles you a number of suitability for each contact depending on how you answered a few questions; the more you answer, the more “accurate” your numbers. Thankfully, or pathetically, the great calculator in the sky actually seems to work. It cuts through that layer of the truly unsuitable people and if you spend half an hour completing the questions it can do a lot of the profile talking for you.
However, OkCupid is an empty pub to POFs jammed nightclub. Yes, there are a few there who might suit you, but you’ll burn through that crowd pretty quickly. The talent for mass consumption of profiles I developed on POF was less well suited to OkCupid. But in its moments of sublime selection, this was the nearest I’d gotten to a moment of “this is the future” – but it was too temporary to be sure. With anywhere near to the mass of numbers on POF, it could be pretty close to perfect. I actually paid for one month not out of need, but because their sites so much better laid out than the others. And the mobile app of this was ok which led to one angle being exacerbated more than POF.
Online dating is the most addictive game in the world, possibly even more than mobile games similar to 918kaya and other games. With a mobile app, it just gets a lot more intense. It’s a mobile game where there are new levels every day, and the prize could be real human connection. I’ve never understood the logic of gamblers, but I think I do now, that bizarre certainty that this half filled profile is the one that’s different. You end up pulling out your phone and starting each new attempt at the perfect conversation opener at a bus stop, with a coffee or romantically perched on a college toilet.
My adventures continue, though with a lot more reality and cynicism. I understand that perfect soulmates’ profiles can callously ignore my messages, and I know not to even bother with the patently vacuous profiles no matter how hard my man bits nudge my brain. As I tentatively set up another real world encounter and all those real world narcissisms rear their rather humongous head I’m left with the feeling that this online dating world needs to change a little. It’s already losing that veneer of desperation and is hopefully going to switch from the cattle farm to the quiet conversation model. What this newer face is going to look like I don’t know, but I know we’ve got to give it a try. Because hey, this is the internet – at least it’ll be interesting.
