Sadly, no longer do hopeless romantics follow the time-tested tradition of picking a future spouse by attending clubs and flirting with the best pole dancers. Nowadays, there is a new path through which one can find the person of his or her dreams -- or, more realistically, the person his dream person would steal lunch money from. These havens are called online dating services and stem from the archaic Gaelic word "onliindattingservise," which, although a difficult translation, roughly means: "an Internet site that turns answers into numbers and then assigns you to people who have similar numbers -- numbers so inflated that no matter how much the user looks and acts like a hallucinogenic toad, he or she has perfect scores for every rating, including attractiveness, friendliness and the ability to hibernate."
I recently filled out an application on one such dating site, eHarmony.com, a process that makes applying to college look like preschool naptime. I'm not exaggerating when I say there are 100 online pages of those Likert questions where you have to rate yourself from one to seven (the higher the number, the more accurately the phrase describes you) on such questions as "I have never purposefully ridden a bull" and "At this point, I would not mind being assigned to an average-looking rodent."
So in lieu of actually thinking about my answers, I decided to check seven for everything. I'm afraid my score of seven for the opposing questions of "I love Oprah" and "I think Oprah is the anti-Christ" will force the eHarmony database to view me as a monkey who happened to stumble onto a computer and, therefore, assign me to a zookeeper. This is a problem because it interferes with a promise I made to myself many, many years ago -- a vow that I would never date a woman, no matter how amazing, if she works around elephant poop.
If I do find a match, though, I'm not sure how to contact her. There's always online messaging, but the chances that she would reply to the screen name DngeonsDrgonCutie69 are close to nil. I could call her, but I'm very particular about voices. If I call her and she sounds like one of those brawny Alaskan males who uses a chain saw as a beard trimmer, then I will hang up almost immediately after she says, "Hello? Hello? I can hear you breathing, creep."
This method is unfair to both of us, because she could be a perfectly beautiful and intelligent female who just happened to go through male puberty. The best way to meet her would be an actual date, but I can just see how this first interaction would go.
Her: So why are you using eHarmony to find women?
Me: Actually, I can't grind poles. You?
Her: I'm a rodent.
Me: Well, umm, at least you're an average-looking rodent.
Her: [Squeaks and chases after bread crumbs]
The reason I applied to eHarmony was because I'm a white, non-denominational male. If I were lucky enough to be of a more fun ethnicity, however, I would have plenty of specific dating sites. For instance, there is www.muslim.indiandating.com and Jdate.com, a Web site for Jewish people and guys named Jay.
I think these dating sites are good if you desire someone from a particular group, but what precedent do they set? Will we soon see the rise of even more specific dating sites, such as eUSStateSenators.com, and eGermanMalesLookingForKoreanFemalesWithLazyEyes.com? My worry is that with more dating sites, there will be fewer people using eHarmony, the only dating site that still accepts me, a white, non-denominational male. This terrifies me, because with fewer females using eHarmony, there is a much higher chance that they will all be zookeepers.
Looking back over my article now, I realize this whole online dating process has caused me more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps I'll just throw off these modern shackles of online dating and revert to the old-fashioned, chivalrous way of choosing my wife.
Chris is a Cavalier Daily Life columnist. His column runs Mondays. He can be reached at shuptrine@cavalierdaily.com.
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