A note on internet dating

I love dating people on the internet. It's such a wonderful way of meeting random people you'd never run into otherwise, and, unlike in a bar, you can get a pretty good sense of their overall intelligence, wit, and background from what they choose to portray about themselves. I used to be quite shy and I attribute whatever ability to work a room I now possess to the practice I got from talking to strangers all the time.

So yes, I'd recommend it to anyone, particularly if you're new to the city. But for heaven's sake, don't expect to meet your one true love! The one complaint I have is with overly sincere profiles with hopes and dreams and detailed inventory of baggage. Would you tell all that to someone you met at a bar? Of course not! They wouldn't understand it anyway; they have no context. Instead, you tell them little jokes or interesting things about the world. If they feel a connection, they're going to pay attention to your clues about your hopes and dreams and figure it out anyway; and if they don't, it doesn't matter how explicitly you tell them, they're not going to care.

I haven't actively dated on the internet for a long time, but I've left my joke profiles about Slavic peasants with radioactive mutations and anthopomorphized underwear up, because they seem to give people a laugh, which is something that pretty much everyone can use, always.