"It's not the fact that you can meet people online that bothers me. I believe that people can find one another in a chat room just as they can in a bar, at a circus, the park or wherever - the Internet doesn't make it easier. It's just another place to look, fraught with its own problems and games to play. I suppose match-making sites can remove the guesswork in some ways, assuming everyone is honest (of course people never misrepresent themselves online).
Everyone knows what the other is after in a basic sense. But in trading sensory perceptions for anonymity and fast answers it doesn't seem like you necessarily get closer to success. You might come away from a profile knowing how many kids someone wants but can never quantify how funny their jokes are, how charming their smile is or the other human details that amount to the spark between two people who really like each other.
The fact that, after a few years of mainstream existence, sites like Chemistry.com and Match.com are offering discounts is no more revealing than any other store offering coupons or special deals. But the kind of discounts they are offering is significant. My first five matches are free? Six months free after my first six (presumably fruitless) months of searching? So I'm going to sift through at least five non-matches over a year? That doesn't sound like a faster, more efficient way of meeting people. It sounds a lot like dating.
Discount Digital Dating
Things are getting weird enough for young people when it comes to finding a soulmate. All this Internet stuff makes for a lot of complicated nonsense to sift through in a medium without a lot of room for human emotion. When dating sites start offering discounts, one author thinks our reliance on technology for love has gone too far.
