The Wake

Dating in today’s culture provides a multitude of options, particularly for our generation. We can be traditional, meeting people through friends or co-workers, at parties or clubs. We can be risk-takers and venture to the bar with the hopes of at least finding a playful one-night stand. We can use our connections through school or clubs, churches or synagogues, athletics or hobbies. Or we can hop on the Web, go to a site and meet the man who could be of our dreams – or nightmares.

Gophersingles.com is one of the latest websites to serve the college community. Based in Texas, gophersingles.com is part of 100 online dating sites, such as ASL-singles, single Latinos, tattoo-singles, and skier-singles.com.

The company’s CEO Brad Armstrong told me the service has been doing well since its launch in summer 2003, and currently has approximately 3,000 registered users. Visitors are allowed to post five pictures, read messages and search for free. If you find someone you like and want to use the website to chat, the cost is 67 cents per day or $19.95 per month. All of your personal information is anonymous until you choose to pay, where it will be stored in the company’s database.

Armstrong, 45, said he sees many benefits to online dating, where candidates can be previewed before meeting in person, especially for those who’d prefer more security.

“In my day, you’d see a woman across a smoky bar dance floor, think she was cute, and then approach her,” Armstrong said. He said it helps people feel like they have control in their dating life, something that is often so risky.

It all sounds too good to be true. Many people can find happiness this way – a woman I exercise with is engaged to a man she met online. While some have found success with online dating services, others can only find disappointment.

Bored and single, I spent one summer day passing the time at online dating websites with my fellow receptionist. We put in the particulars – 6’0” with dark features and poetry in his heart, while my friend’s fantasy was more practical: looking for a shorter, sweet, football fan she could be lazy with on a Sunday afternoon. Our separate and very different descriptors brought back many profiles, some with photos and some without. We immediately checked out those with pictures, just to get a sense of who was out there looking.

Physically, a few of the men struck our interests, and on paper, they seemed perfect. Of course, there were the guys who had the professional shots taken of them, shirtless in nature, as if their high school senior class pictures offered them the calendar boy option. And there were some who didn’t seem unfamiliar with anything online, let alone this dating website.

The site didn’t charge for the initial contact, so I sent out an e-mail to “Mike” to see if he’d be interested in chatting more. So as to avoid any additional fees, I gave him my Hotmail address and told him to drop me a note.

Three days later, I received new mail from Mike saying I sounded nice and he was interested in getting to know me better. We corresponded briefly, but after an e-mail about his “traditional” family and his admiration for his stay-at-home mom, I knew his ideals would clash with mine.

Later, “Steve,” a recent college graduate and Minneapolis resident, contacted me. We seemed to have the same interests, goals and viewpoints. His picture was very flattering, so I decided to take a chance. We met in my comfort zone on campus (if the date isn’t working, you can opt out with a class, meeting a study group, or luck may drop a friend off to “casually” run into).

Steve seemed nice at first, but immediately it was apparent he had some great Photoshop tools under his belt. We exchanged information about our upbringing in Minnesota (high school, college life and majors), discussed our favorite music and movies, and then he dove into the future talk. What’s your plan? How many children do you want? Where do you want to live, to travel? Quickly I realized that our “get to know you talk” was completed online and now Steve needed to know if he should invest his time in me.

This experience (and “Brian” who I met on AOL and later in person – a “member” of the basketball team who actually just videotaped the game) taught me a valuable lesson. Online dating may seem to speed along the process, eliminate risks and whittle down all the men out there, but there’s valuable knowledge to be learned just by meeting someone face-to-face. There’s a feeling you get meeting someone, whether it’s anxiety, chemistry, or good or bad vibes. Perhaps there’s more chance in putting yourself out there, but that’s what makes dating exciting. Besides, who wants to forego the butterflies when you lock eyes with a handsome man across a smoky bar dance floor?