Jay Cronley: Online dating investment doesn't pay off
BY JAY CRONLEY World Staff Columnist
Sunday, August 12, 2012
8/12/12 at 5:28 AM
One month ago, stunning women kept popping up on my computer screen.
Attractiveness isn't everything.
But it's something.
It's right in there with brains and humor, kindness and honor, independent wealth and the desire to help and serve mankind.
These women weren't from South Beach. They were from around here, the greater metropolitan area.
They were members of an online meeting/dating club that cost the equivalent of one round of drinks and chips and dip, $30 for a month of matches bound for glory.
The good and noble thought about online meeting must be this: Listen, I'm busy. In the workplace arena, all the good ones are taken. Nobody needs the drunk scene. What could be wrong with letting somebody screen the possible applicants so that I can have the company that my eight kids and I deserve?
Fool me once: In the first place, observing that a relatively small market area could be overflowing with stunning and well-intended people sounded like possible journalism to me, like a story.
Personal profiles of the club members spoke of integrity and simple pleasures, of social drinking only, not alcoholic fits of singing and dancing and throwing up on your neighbor at the Brady Theater, of sunset sea strolls, of loyalty, and of puppies and peonies.
Imagine the best-looking people you have ever seen in person. That was about one screen-full of these pop-ups.
The premise of most online meeting/dating services is commonality. It is suggested that the more things you have in common, the better you are apt to get along.
But where's the learning process in being with another you?
Didn't you have a lot in common with your ex?
Seller beware: So I sent in thirty bucks and joined for a month.
I sent no photo, no likes or dislikes, just a nickname based on previous pets.
What could be more honest?
What could be more intriguing than a person who had not been Photoshopped or presented in an artistic haze?
What could be more interesting than a person whose alleged goals in life were not presented like cheap poetry?
What happened next was that a couple of them who had appeared as angels and had sounded like natural spirits accused me of trying some con game and told me to take my pet nicknames and go plug up some third-world site.
So there's the story. More worlds than ever are stages.
Original Print Headline: Online date investment not paying off so well
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