Singletons everywhere can breathe a collective sigh of relief with the passing of February 14th marking the last romantic holiday of what some refer to as the deadly trio; Christmas, New Years Eve and Valentines Day. Some of us are looking at the new landscape of feasibility, pros and con’s of dating in a digital era.
One of the realities of virtual worlds is that people do enter and venture into them seeking out romantic opportunities. I may be white washing with that phrase because certainly every encounter or intention is not going to be pristinely with an eye to a long term future together. But meeting people online has been a common practice since the early nineties and the inception of MiRc (Internet Relay Chat). It was popularized by the explosion of social networking programs such as Windows Live Messenger™, Yahoo!© and Skype™ which finally allowed us to not only meet new people, but also engage in real time chat from the safety and protective obscurity of our own homes.
Enter Virtual Worlds to the global social stage and suddenly we are presented with the evolution of online dating, or the “Age of the Avatar”. Simply create an attractive avatar and engage with potential partners or liaisons in a meaningful new way, able to ‘emote’ with hugs, kisses, cuddles and physical gestures that enhance and build psychological intimacy. All dating is wrought with its risks and pitfalls and dating in virtual worlds is no different. It mirrors real life because it is real. Behind ever avatar is still a live human being.
The practice of online dating is debated and frequently mocked, a curious fact given its very apparent global prevalence.
“Consumers spent $302 million on paid personals and dating content in 2002”
– Foxnews
“…email relationships can be far more intimate than normal dating. Women are most likely to find a potential lover online with 72% admitting to having had an online romance, compared to 52% of men. This report also found that 33% of all online relationships led to a date”
- The Sunday Times, Innovations
Discrimination against the enterprising singleton using mass media to solve mass loneliness is not something new. According to “The People’s Almanac #2″ a woman named Helen Morrison placed a Lonely Hearts advertisement in the “Manchester Weekly Journal” in 1727 and was promptly committed to a lunatic asylum for four weeks.
Ouch.
In support of online dating there are many advantages. Ease of access. You can literally log in to your digital world and bump into someone from Venezuela, Italy, Australia or Canada easily. No travel required. By removing conventional geographical limitations, the door is opened to an incredible opportunity to engage with interesting peers from a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds who you might never have the opportunity to meet via conventional methods.
Physical safety is a paramount concern particularly to mature single women. For some, it may have been well and good to go to the local bar and drink to excess and stagger home to some strangers bed in College, but for most adults I know, this practice is not only immature it is downright dangerous and irresponsible. Online dating allows for a careful pre-screening and hours of real conversation, perhaps even weeks or months of it prior to meeting offline. This slow-know method may be in itself a neo-romantic renaissance. Getting to know someone first. What a concept!
The ability to moderate communication is another advantage to online dating. If things go south, you can opt to limit your communication with the individual. Chat programs include the ability to show as “offline” to the individual or to “mute” the individual to prevent emails or offline messages from being sent to you, if you no longer wish to hear from the person. This is a peaceful non-combative alternative that allows two people to go their separate ways without offensive emotional fallout.
In terms of disadvantages to online dating, the statistic from The Sunday Times bears a fairly blatant truth about motivational factors for the genders. Women are biologically engineered for relationships. Men are biologically engineered for physical conquest. Will online dating satisfy a predominantly physical need? Unlikely. And short term biological needs are best met, without a doubt, offline.
Does online dating make sense for everyone? Probably not. But for mature professionals willing to invest the effort, it might be the best way of conducting a meaningful search for a long term companion.
What do you think about dating in virtual worlds? Leave your comment below.
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Sources: Web March 1, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,87256,00.html
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/Articles/a2003-09-23-seekinglove.html
The Peoples Almanac #2 – David Wallechinsky
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