Commodifying Cupid (or how I've learned to hate online dating)

Reckless as it can sometimes be to make "never again" statements, I am vowing "never again" (for now at least) to online dating. After lots of reflection, I've concluded it is a process that is fundamentally flawed. Flawed that is, if one uses it like I've done to try and make contact with a likely person of the opposite sex, with the aim of establishing a committed, mutually agreeable and essentially monogamous relationship. If your aim is to "hook up" for a more basic liaison, where monogamy is a totally trivial pusuit, and you're not too particular about the qualities of the "hookee", then the process may well work really successfully.

I read an insightful commentary by one online dater recently who'd given it a good long try, ultimately without success, and concluded the process is a great way to meet people but a lousy way to end up with someone. Her theory is that online dating changes people because they come to see the people they meet as commodities, which they feel free to pick up and put down at whim, rather like browsing in a shop. Perhaps it's because of the commercialised nature of the thing, which has become very big business indeed. As consumers par excellence, we are indoctrinated to look at things we have to pay for in a different, more materialistic light, and to see those consumables as ultimately disposable. In other words, it's fine to pick up a little something to while away a Saturday night, or maybe even a week or so but it's pretty likely that if we keep browsing, something even better is bound to be out there and then it's no big deal to consign the first purchase to the recycling bin. As a result, online dating promotes a culture of constant looking, rather than actually finding and committing, which is of course the aim of those making huge profits from the sites. Imagine if the thousands of hapless lookers all got promptly matched up for life after only a few attempts, Match.com, RSVP and the rest would pretty soon be making only big bucks rather than megabucks.

The other aspect of the whole thing that simply doesn't work for me, and I suspect many others, is the entirely contrived nature of the connection. If (and it's a big if) one gets to the stage of actually meeting a likely match, it of course constitutes a blind date with all the ghastliness that implies. How on earth to be "yourself", comfortable, relaxed, pleasant when from the instant of first sighting you just know they are totally checking you out for possible consumption, as of course you are doing to them, poor sods. And if on first sighting, despite perhaps an attractive photo, a witty and charming email correspondence, even a pleasant phone chat or two, your immediate reaction is "Oh God let me out of here!", or worse you can see that look in their eyes, it can be an ordeal straight from hell just getting through a coffee, let alone if you were foolish enough to agree to a full on dinner! Here is where alcohol in copious amounts is really useful, except for the pitfall of booze induced visual impairment where after enough, you can start to find even Quasimodo strangely sexy. Anyway the whole thing is usually utterly boring and because of how you "met", the conversation sooner or later leaps into "relationships", where you get to hear about their inevitably grotesque ex-wives and all the many desperate women they've encountered on the online dating site, who of course being the chick magnets that they are, they've had to almost literally beat off with sticks. One could go on, but in the interests of good taste I won't.

Apart from all the above, this method of putting oneself "out there" means you become instantly totally vulnerable and exposed (metaphorically speaking) to not only the world's choicest selection of freaks, cranks, sexual deviants, and social misfits, but to the experience of constantly being scrutinised, checked out, rated, laughed at, scorned and all too often found wanting in some way or another. This of course is pretty much a part of life, but usually only happens irregularly at such times as job interviews, auditions, exams and such like. But in online dating it becomes a way of life, and it's very emotionally demanding.

I have as a result, convinced myself that the process, while like so many seeming brilliant in theory, in practice just doesn't work the way many people think it is supposed to. The profiteers of course would have you believe otherwise and a quick glance through their "success stories" (supposedly autobiographical) may give one pause for hope. Far be it from me to be a nay-sayer and I have heard of friends of friends who met, married and lived to tell the tale on online dating sites (never met one personally though), so clearly it works sometimes. But I would be really interested to know the percentages, as I suspect those who actually find the love of their life are very much in the minority.

But I am not cynical or disillusioned about life, love and the potential of all of us single men and women to find happiness at whatever age and I remain very open to the possibility myself. But I just don't think it's going to happen via Cyber-Cupid, for me.