Seeing as how it's April Fool's Day, I take most of what I hear today with a grain of salt. I know that some of it is not true. However, even some things that are true seem unbelievable. Given that we are thinking today of ways in which our friends, coworkers and neighbors will try to mislead us, and since I have a story you may not believe that is true, I think it's time to tell you all just why I hate online dating so much.
A while ago, at the behest and persuasion of people who claim to care for me, I joined several leading online dating sites. They all cost money, and since I find it odd to pay money to find out if I can pay more money to get to know a woman I still have not actually met, I never paid for a subscription. When the sites let me communicate for free, I tried to get chat pseudonyms and email addresses so that we could communicate outside the paid framework of the dating site. Most of those contacts didn't really go anywhere; most of the women in whom I felt myself interested weren't really all that interested in talking to me. Maybe it's my picture; maybe its the fact that I was open and honest in my profile; maybe it was them. Maybe it was all a lie.
Only one woman really seemed to be interested in me besides chatting when she was sad, lonely, or bored. As luck would have it, she was in Wyoming, making it a significant distance to get to know her. Since it cost me only time to email her, I explored the opportunities. I was honest and complied with her requests for pictures. I found it odd that she seemed to not be as educated as she purported to be. I also found it odd that she seemed very excited. Usually I'm the one who jumps the shark and tries to hard and rushes into things so that they don't work out, but this time she was the one who seemed very excited and accelerated the relationship and wanted to meet. I gave her my phone number and requested to chat before we met, because I wasn't sure about the commitment involved in having a long distance relationship, and then I waited.
At length, the hammer dropped. She took a trip to an exotic foreign nation and contacted me one day to ask me for financial help after she came into distress. I wrote her back and told her that I would be a fool to send her money since we had only conversed via email to this point. Several warning signs started to add up against her and her story. Although she claimed to be a college graduate and the daughter of a Canadian and an Australian, her diction, syntax, and communication made Americans seem collegiate masters of the English tongue. I've met Americans who aren't articulate but who are good company, so I initially ignored that. Furthermore I found it odd that she had no friends on whom to rely for assistance. She also claimed to essentially be an orphan, but the fact that the only person she could turn to for help was a man she had never met struck me as odd. She traveled to a country that I would never visit alone if I were a woman, because that culture likes to enslave women to either labor or prostitution. Although she sent me pictures that were all of the same woman, including some that seemed to be of her in the nation she claimed to be visiting, the file names seemed odd. Granted, I don't know how smartphones number images you photograph, but some of the pictures had file names consistent with pictures you download from someone else's facebook profile. If they were her real pictures, she could have sent me the original files. She had never called me or spoken with me other than email, and I felt it unwise to send her money. I even told her there were many such scams on the internet, and once you send the money you have no recourse; no crime has been committed if you voluntarily send money.
She responded and asked for a revised sum, but after I ignored that email, communication ceased. So much for her being in love with me, looking forward to meeting me, etc. I know that it's possible her story was true. That does not obligate me to help. I didn't really know her. For all I know she was a Russian male trying to scam me out of money. On the internet, nobody knows I'm really a lemur. Eventually, the profile was deleted; I presume this was because the dating site discerned it was a fraudulent account. If I'm wrong, I'll answer for it at the Judgment Bar of Jehovah. I've been burnt before.
I never know what to trust on the internet. I automatically assume that most of what I read online is editorials masquerading as fact. Most of what's available on the internet is pretty useless, which is probably why it's free. Many of the people on the internet are pretending to be something they are not. In the movie "Must Love Dogs" Diane Lane's character desperately subscribes to a slieu of dating sites in order to get a date; the trouble is that most of what she puts on these profiles is outright false, but she's just out to "have a good time". From my extensive reading of Shakespeare, I have learned that most of what you see is actually a play, the parliament jester's foist on the somnambulent public. In any case, I'm not desperate enough to try to force something wonderful from so little as a dating profile offers me.
Essentially, online dating isn't necessarily any better than meeting people at a bar. You have a visual image and a limited bit of selectively shared information to use in an essentially vain attempt to spin a relationship out of thin air. You make decisions based on a limited bit of information, all too much of which turns out to be half truths and whole lies. People only usually tell you about the best bits of themselves, but even then those things are not the whole story even if they are true. I know that online dating works for some people, and I'm glad for them. My problem with it is that it first off begins with an ulterior motive and secondly that it is unreliable. You're looking by definition for a date, and so people will ignore you if they don't think they'd marry you based on what you choose to tell them. Some people are honest; many of them are not. Most of the people are interested only in the cover story, and I do not give a good enough first impression to get anyone's attention. I ignored a lot of women who from their profile pictures were offering access to the tantalizing temptations of the flesh, and only to slake their own lusts. The one person who seemed to want to get to know me was probably a liar from the get-go. Fortunately for me, this person was impatient enough to try and force me to make a financial risk in a little less than four weeks. In real life, many women are far more adroit and adept at dragging it out and leeching a man dry. Imagine what might have happened if she waited for me to fall in love with her and then reeling me in with a hook in my cheek!
A few years back, I dated a woman who, if she had chosen me, would have come across to some as an unbelievable story. She was practically perfect in every way, and I know that people who didn't know me or our story would have looked at me and asked, "What did he do to get her?" People who know me would have seen it as a validation of my hard work, my character, and my discipline to principles. My buddy Jay while drunk on his birthday told me he hoped I got an amazing woman so I could shove it in the face of everyone who looked down on me for sticking to my guns. Well, I'm not interested in gloating, but it would have made one unbelievable story. Not one couple in a century seems to really have a chance at true and real love, and you might not have believed my luck. There were times when I myself wondered if my geautiful birl was too good to be true.
Most days of the year, I listen to information with a leery and wary eye. I distrust almost everything I hear on April Fool's Day, but I also take a longwinded view of what women tell me on other days of the year too. Actions speak louder than words, and every woman who has ever told me she was different from other women turned out to be exactly the same. If you are truly different, you won't need to tell me; other people will tell me that about you. Many stories are unbelievable, and I don't trust all the dating site ads with their happy endings. I don't trust the notion of falling in love with nothing more than a picture and a paragraph. Love does not come first; first comes infatuation, lust, and desire. Love comes later. I don't think there's anything magical about the mathematical matricies on which they make matches. I think it's still about luck and about what you're willing to accept. If you're looking to be deceived, online dating's a good place to start. As for my part, it's hard enough to know if you know the real person if you spend any time with them in real life, so adding one more layer of obfuscation just complicates it to the point where I would rather not bother. When I found that woman aforementioned, I wasn't doing anything special. I was doing what I loved and living the best life I could, and God brought her into my life. He can do it again. He knows where to find me.
"Wherever you are; whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life And I know that we can be so amazing. Baby your love is gonna change me...and someday I know that it will all work out, and we'll make it work so we can all work it out..." --Michael Buble (emphasis added)
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