Online Matchmaking note: Wired Flesh and Wild Hearts?

blaw

overview

statistics

studies

hearts

e-brides

law

scams

fidelity

cautions

related
Guides:

Consumers
& Trust

Identity
Crime

wired flesh and wild hearts?

This page considers other aspects of online matchmaking and advice for the lovelorn.

It covers -

agents, home pages and blogs
dumping and denouncing
guides for the lovelorn

agents, homepages and blogs

The unlovely advice Attract Women With Your Online Personal Ad (on a page littered with treats such as promises to "Relieve hemorrhoid pain fast") claimed that

For every 10 men who post a personal ad on a dating site, only 3 get a response. In essence, only 30% of men will get a response, while the other 70% stay home alone snapping their radish. Why is the response rate so low? Because most personal ads posted by men are boring, redundant, and worse yet, plagued with grammatical errors.

Oh dear, split infinitives and misplaced semi-colons as the cause of achy breaky heart syndrome.

In practice printed tips about smiling, wearing clean socks and carrying roses (or capsicum spray) do not appear sufficient for some readers, who have instead turned to commercial services that will lovingly craft the requisite online profile and even handle initial email exchanges to the inamorata.

These include solvedating.com, findtherightguyonline.com, e-cyrano.com, cyberdatingguru.com and profiledoctor.com.

There has been surprisingly little academic attention to the role of personal home pages and blogs in underpinning online romance, given that web logs arguably offer a fuller picture of the author than standard matchmaking service profiles and short email or IM exchanges.

dumping and denouncing

If you are squeamish about F2F in dumping a loved one (or wannabe) - or merely have bad manners and a taste for cruelty you can always rely on 'dear john' sites.

Papernapkin.net for example explains -

here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset, you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead.

That's where Paper Napkin comes in. Give them [email protected] (or paamail.com, to be less suspicious), tell them it's your address, and when they write you, they'll automatically get a response telling them how badly they've been rejected. If they sound desperate enough, it may even get posted and ridiculed. Yes, it's cruel, so use it wisely.

Sites such as DontDateHimGirl.com, ManHaters.com and TrueDater.com offer opportunities to expose online fibbers (or merely engage in defamation), typically allowing one party to a relationship to expose the other's shortcomings - whether in offline interaction or in itemisation of the untruths associated with an individual's online profile in venues such as Match.com. Some issues are explored here.

guides for the lovelorn

Wired Not Weird (New York: Synergetic 2001) by Christy Clement & Kay McLean asks

Why sit at home alone when you can find interesting and available men waiting to meet you?

It is an example of a minor genre - often published by appropriately minor presses (some which appear to be restricted to the works of the particular author) - concerned with tips on meeting and retaining Mr/Ms Right online ... a rose-coloured version of the One Minute Internet Manager and descendant of a long line of thin tomes on how to win the person of your dreams.

Other guides for the digitally lovelorn include The Rules for Online Dating: Capturing the Heart of Mr Right in Cyberspace (New York: Pocket Books 2001) by Ellen Fein, The Rules for Online Dating (New York: Pocket Books 2002) by Sherrie Schneider, Cast Your Net: A Step-By-Step Guide to Finding Your Soulmate on the Internet (Boston: Harvard Common Press 2001) by Eric Fagan, Cyberflirt: How to Attract Anyone, Anywhere on the World Wide Web (New York: Plume 1999) by Susan Rabin & Barbara Lagowski, Putting Your Heart Online (New York: Variable Symbols 2001) by Nancy Capulet, Virtual Foreplay: Making Your Online Relationship a Real-Life Success (New York: Hunter House 2001) by Eve Hogan, Men Are from Cyberspace: The Single Women's Guide to Flirting, Dating & Finding Love On-Line (New York: St Martins 2003) by Lisa Skriloff & Jodie Gould, Online Dating Survival Guide (New York: E Solutions 2000) by Karen Adams & Kate Crenshaw, The Joy of Text: Mating, Dating and Techno-Relating (New York: Simon & Schuster 2007) by Kristina Grish, Internet Dating: Tips, Tricks & Tactics (Roman Griffen 2003) by Roman Griffen, Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Dating & Relating (New York: Alpha 1999) by Joe Schwartz and Meeting, Mating & Cheating: Sex, Love, and the New World of Online Dating (New York: Reuters 2003) by Andrea Orr.

A cautionary note is struck by Michele White's 'On the Internet, Everybody Worries that You're a Dog: The Gender Expectations & Beauty Ideals of Online Personals and Text-Based Chat', a paper in Readings in Gender Communication (Belmont: Wadsworth 2003) edited by Mary Rose Williams & Phil Backlund, and Malin Sveningsson's 'Cyberlove: Creating Romantic Relationships on the Net' in Digital Borderlands: Cultural Studies of Identity & Interactivity on the Internet (New York: Peter Lang 2002) edited by Johan Fornas.

They are complemented by the more upbeat 'Personal Relationships: On and Off the Internet' by Jeffrey Boase & Barry Wellman in the Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2006) edited by Anita Vangelisti & Daniel Perlman, Online Matchmaking (New York: Palgrave 2007) edited by Monica Whitty, Andrea Baker & James Inman, Remote Relationships in a Small World (New York: Lang 2008) edited by Samantha Holland, 'Love Actually! Older Adults and their Romantic Internet Relationships' by Sue Malta in 5(2) Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society (2007) 84-102 and 'Getting it (On)line: Sociological Perspectives on e-Dating' by Jo Barraket & Millsom Henry-Waring in 44(2) Journal of Sociology (2008) 149-166. Other works are highlighted here.

Scepticism about online personality tests will be reinforced by works such as The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (New York: Free Press 2004) by Annie Paul.

Julia Turner attributes the 'breakup book' genre to the increases in the age at which people in the US (and Australia) marry: as that age

has been rising steadily for decades, so it stands to reason that the average number of serious breakups they endure is climbing

Advice on dealing with unsuccessful romance - or merely getting even with an online rat - features in mawkish primers such as Learn How To Heal a Broken Heart in 30 Days (New York: Broadway 2002) by Howard Bronson, It's Not You, It's Him: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Dating (New York: Broadway 2006) by Georgia Witkin, Exorcising Your Ex: How to Get Rid of the Demons of Relationships Past (New York: Fireside 1996) by Elizabeth Kuster, It's Not Me, It's You: The Ultimate Breakup Book (New York: Da Capo 2006) by Anna Grossman, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating (New York: Ballantine 1998) by Anita Liberty and Letting Go: A 12-Week Personal Action Program To Overcome a Broken Heart (New York: Dell 1987) by Tracy Cabot. Alas, no Breakup Secrets of Attila the Hun or Bluebeard's Guide to Ending A Romance.

next page (e-brides)