Modern Dating

It’s become the defining feature of this blog that I am an embittered, sexless, lonely male prone to crouching in dark corners while clutching a rat-nibbled cauliflower with a smiley face drawn on with marker pen. The ugly truth is that, surrogate vegetable friend aside, I am far from alone. It seems that in the modern age, thousands of us are struggling to find the companionship that Disney films insist we require. And as the modern age rises up to meet this challenge with a swathe of alternatives to the traditional candlelit dinner/walk in the park/date rape, are we really helping ourselves, or setting ourselves up for a future of dysfunction?

Naturally, it’s the Internet that has stepped into the breach to shore up our dating woes. Without it showing me my very first pornographic photograph at the age of twelve, I might not even today know what a naked woman looks like. Unfortunately she was being mounted by a Doberman. And this is the problem with the Internet. Since its inception, misfits and social inepts have lurked around every virtual corner ready to pick your pocket or ejaculate on your shoe. How can you trust that any potential partner to which the Internet introduces you will not burn down your home and wear your scrotum as a coin purse? It’s only natural that, sooner or later, like an exasperated mother kicking her adult son onto the street and changing the locks, the Internet should try and foist these undesirables onto somebody else.

So what are the options? Online dating seems most prevalent. And amid the lurid softcore animations of uniformed lovers or unregistered sex offenders strumming the ukulele on train stations, it’s eHarmony that sets itself apart as the most successful (success presumably derived from number of dating site subscribers dredged from the nation’s canals, on average). eHarmony claims that it really gets to know you before matching you with a potential life partner. How well can an automated survey get to know you to be trusted with such a decision?

Beyond basic information, it asks me to rate my physical appearance based on my own, and what I imagine to be my friends’, impressions. The most recent comment I’ve received from the opposite sex is ‘weirdly tall.’ This isn’t an option. As for my friends, the survey isn’t too keen on letting me select ‘oversized sarcastic whinging prick.’ In the end I choose ‘Healthy.’ My matches won’t see that rash until it’s too late to turn back anyway.

After a never-ending parade of multiple choice options (none of which really describe me), from hobbies through to religion and moral fibre, the eHarmony gurus riffle through their pages of lovelorn women and throw up my closest matches. I have two.

-           Lindsey, 23, Nottingham.
Most Grateful For: The Twilight Saga.

Can’t Live Without: Wheetos cereal.

-          Denise, 26, London.
Religion: Devout Practitioner of Wicca.

Gee, eHarmony, you really worked out what I look for in a gal. It’s encouraging to know that soul mates really do exist.

Other alternatives include speed-dating, which, having survived against the odds outside of sit-coms, offers me the opportunity to be rendered mute and humiliated in the face of 25 women rather than the occasional one. On Freeview television the Rabbit and Gay Rabbit channels throw up an interminable gallery of men sucking in their guts, overweight women hiding behind doors or generous camera flashes, the sexually confused bewigged and slathered with more make-up than a pig in a testing lab. The archaic personal newspaper ad has so refined itself as to be the closest we’ve yet come to Orwell’s Newspeak. How much can you learn about someone from ‘Piers Morgan lkl wl2m sub bbw 4 fs rts dp dv da mbm’?

Impersonal dating is still a nascent method. It was reported recently that it’s now possible to hire an online dating personal shopper to do the legwork for you, like a smack-addled rock star thumbing through the latest Playboy. To put it simply, it makes me sad. These are lonely people setting aside what pride they have left to them in search of happiness. It makes me sad because I want every single one of them to succeed. It makes me sad because, unless something changes, it’ll be me putting aside my cauliflower companion and seeking love in the virtual world. And that’s something I hoped I’d never have to do.