One of the first guys whom I met on Match.com quickly proved himself more louche than a Kellogg student soused on several Big Cups at the Keg. The guy – we’ll call him Austin – extended an interesting proposition to me in his second (and final) e-mail: Would I like to “get coffee and make out sometime?” I quickly filed Austin under the “no” category in my head. After all, aren’t random hook-ups supposed to be found only on darkened dance floors or over a game of flip cup?
As an online dater and alleged member of the Internet generation, it seemed I had stumbled upon the new frontier of the casual affair. While I never planned on using Match as a tool to find The One (barf), I also never planned on writing anything about the myriad meaningless trysts the site facilitated. After all, my grandparents are reading this. But it turns out that’s why some users are turning to online dating, or at least it’s a nice perk on the road to finding that special someone.
Stephanie Blake, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs assistant professor who researched gender norms and online dating, says she counseled a twenty-something friend of hers to raise her age requirement of potential dates if she wanted to find someone serious. A friend of mine told me that his older brother’s foray on Match led to numerous one-night stands.
But that’s not to say that all of men I encountered were in it for the instant gratification. Among the countless profiles I scanned, many included lines like, “I’m new in town” or “I just moved back.” After graduation, as I trudge cautiously into the big question-mark that is the rest of my life, who knows how many times I’ll be a stranger in a strange land? Yet in all my time pondering potential moves, I never really thought about how I’d seek out new friends and potential mates. I decided to ask my mom what sort of advice she would give. After all, following a stint in the Peace Corps, she jetted to Washington, D.C., where the only person she knew was her big brother.
“Mom,” I asked, “how should I meet people if I move?”
She responded exactly how I thought, telling me that boys could be found, “by joining the synagogue youth club, by taking classes for adult education in something fun, by going to lectures, by telling your friends that you’d like to be fixed up.”
But apparently, the kids these days are eschewing the advice of their parents, or at least adding an extra field for grazing.
Irina Shklovski, a post-doctorate fellow at the University of California – Irvine’s School of Information and Computer Sciences, researched how people maintain personal ties via the Internet after a move. While Shklovski says her research focused mainly on ties that existed before a move, she says that the study “did find people who had at least one new tie in the new location … did better, they adjusted better, they felt the move was a good idea much quicker.”
For a generation of daters who can figure out who’s gotten married and who’s stepped out of the closet thanks to Facebook, it seems logical that the Internet would be a breeding ground for finding new friends as well. “I think when people move they become more open to new ways of meeting people because it’s a stressful thing but it’s also a crucial thing to do in a new location,” Shklovski says.
One of my dates last week included on his profile that he was a relatively recent Chicago resident. But the other three men I met seemed to be on for another reason. And yes, you read that right. In seven days, I went on dates with four different men.
The remaining three all worked in occupations that I would label as man-centric: software and engineering. One of them, we’ll call him Eddie, says that he joined Match because he met no women at work. Eddie was the only guy I’d met through Match who brought up these articles when we met. Enjoying my ability to discuss online dating candidly with another Match user, I asked him if he found that the women on Match were in woman-centric jobs. He says the majority of the women he came across were nurses.
Also among the dates this past week was my second in-person encounter with Ray, the first Match guy with whom I went on a date. Unlike our first date, during which I felt comfortable blathering about EU politics and slurping down coffee, this time I felt pressured by the too-expensive restaurant and the look I perceived in Ray’s eyes. I felt myself stressing about the rules of dating that various movies promote (mainly the checklist of activities that grows with each date) and desperately wishing that I were at home with my roommates, bumming around on our ugly floral-patterned couch. I quickly realized that I was dipping my toes into the pool of adult dating, but that I really didn’t want to take the plunge.
So the moral of my month on Match.com? After my own adventures, I certainly won’t be a snarky judge if someone else decides to try online dating. But for me, I think I’ll be content to return to the world of college dating, with all of its awkwardness and ambiguity. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put on my beer goggles and let that Big Cup work its magic.
