Welcome to the 21st Century
Online Searches Change Dating Dynamic
By MARTHA IRVINE
The Associated Press
Monday, April 9, 2007; 3:14 PM
CHICAGO -- Dating used to be largely a matter of spending time with a love interest, discovering the good, the bad and the ugly in person. If you were lucky, friends helped fill in some of the blanks. These days, the Internet _ and the ability to check people out before they ever meet up _ has forever changed the rules. For better or worse, "googling" your date has become standard practice."I often tell my friends that are still in the dating sphere to use the power of Google to their advantage," says Katie Laird, a 24-year-old Web marketing professional and self-proclaimed "social software geek" from Houston.
The results can be enlightening, surprising _ and sometimes, a little disturbing. So Laird's advice also comes with a warning: "Don't google what you can't handle."
Hers is the voice of experience. In her dating life, she regularly did online research on her dates and turned up, among other things, "bizarre" fetishes and a guy who was fascinated with vampires.
"Not my scene at all," Laird says, "and nothing I would've ever guessed over an initial meeting and beer."
She also had to contend with an on-again, off-again boyfriend who googled her on a daily basis to try and track her every move. The story did end happily, however, when she met her future husband online.
In some ways, having a social networking page _ or pages _ has become the new calling card. It's a way for people to check out photos and find out what they have in common, even when they've already met in person.
I've done some virtual dating and found it is about as dangerous as meeting murderers online: you can run into assholes everywhere, including over lunch at your local bistro. One virtual date had police invade my home because he didn't like the way I sounded on the phone one night. You really haven't lived until you've had police invade your home at 2 in the morning to discover your naked form in bed. Yeah, I sleep without jammies in the summer months, it keeps my a/c bills down. I keep the doors better locked these days.
The intertubes are a mixed blessing.