Meet "Karen." Karen writes for a website that is not this one. She met "Joe" on an online personals site, and they exchanged a few e-mails trying to set up a drink. He called her "Sparky," was a little slow getting back to her, and made an excuse about illness and religious obligations — which he tries make again below. Where the emails were unsigned, I've prepended the senders' names for clarity. I've also cut some of the initial correspondence in the interests of space, but here's where things get good. Or rather, crappy:

Karen: My parents are in town this weekend, and then next week I'm heading to DC, which leaves me with only this upcoming Monday night free for a drink in the next week and a half. Any chance that works for you and we can meet before this becomes an epic tale of two ships?
____________
Joe: I dunno. What about tonight?
_____________
Karen: Tonight I'm working on a deadline, alas.
_____________
Joe: On what? Finish it up already.
_________________
Karen: You're impatient for a guy who kept me waiting two entire weeks between the first and second email. It's an oped for [website] about the whole Polanski business. And I just started.
__________________

[an hour later]

Karen: Soooo... you're busy googling me now, I guess? Let me know what you think, and if we can make Monday happen...
__________________
Joe: Hey...High holidays and sick, remember?

And no, I am not googling you. Should I? I don't know your last name, remember?

As for Monday, I'll check my schedule. I suggested tonight because it seemed like a better strategy.
____________________
Karen: Yeah yeah. High holidays and sick only accounts for the second week, Sparky.

You certainly could google me with what you have now. I think "Karen [website]" would do the trick. It's an unusual spelling. But if you do it, you have to give me fair access and spill something that will make you google-able. After all, you're going to get over 20K hits on me once you track down my last name...
____________________
Joe: I'm not googling you. It's no fun when someone WANTS you to do it. Also, where is your creativity? You are calling me by the nickname I gave you?

tsk tsk
__________________
Karen: Hmmmm... you're contrary, in possession of extraordinary impulse control, or YOU HAVE A GOOGLEABLE SECRET YOU DON'T WANT ME TO FIND? Or could it be... all three? Only time will tell.

And now you want me to give you your own nickname on top of it all? Patience, Grasshopper.
____________________
Am I patience, or Grasshopper? And if you are on deadline...how do you have so much time to write?

:)Joe
_____________________
Karen: I don't. In fact, Grasshopper, you and your impertinent banter are distracting me from my socially important work. Way to go. I suggest you busy yourself clearing your schedule for Monday evening instead.
______________________
Joe: By all means, we all know how deeply relevant the Roman Polanski case is. Personally, I'll forgive a lot from the man who gave us Chinatown. She's my sister, My daughter! My Sister!

Just Fuckin fantastic!

I'll let you know about Monday.
________________________
Karen: I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this, but with a bit of unsolicited advice: It's best not to make rape or even rape-adjacent jokes via email with someone who's never even heard your tone of voice, and so finds it hard to interpret it in print.
______________________
What? That wasn't a joke. I was quoting from one of the greatest and most fucked up endings of all time.

But now this feels weird, so lets' just call the whole thing off, okay?

Best of luck!

Joe
____________________
Whoa. Grasshopper. Take a deep breath, mmmkay? The part I wasn't sure how to take (aka, how much you were joking about) was whether you were in the camp of folks who'll really forgive Polanski anything b/c he makes awesome movies, or if you were mocking those that make that argument. Which, obviously, I think is a socially relevant question, otherwise I'd be having drinks with you right now instead of staying up trying to churn out coherent prose at 11:30PM.

You seem like someone who likes to debate ideas, so I'd be bummed if you're this easily spooked, but I guess there's not much I can do about it if you are. If you change your mind, I'm still free Monday.

-Karen
__________________

[the next night]

Well,

Here is the thing. All I ever talk about is rape jokes. That's it. It's a weird neurological condition. It has been hard on my family, but me most of all. But if you are okay with that, let's meet for a drink. I am not sure about Monday though.

Joe
______________________

[three days later]

So... you respond to my concern about rape jokes not by clarifying what you meant in the first place but by making a joke about rape jokes? Klassy. I think perhaps you were right - let's quit while we're ahead.

-Karen

P.S. - Since you obviously did not google me, here's the piece I was working on Wednesday night: [link redacted]
_______________________

How long did you think of writing that? Dial it down. I am not your enemy. You are your enemy, here I think.

And no, I did not read your work. I prefer to not read people's professional work before I meet them. And since I won't be meeting you, it seems a waste of my time, no? I also avoid serious conversations about rape before I meet someone. But for the record, since I have had to be a de facto counselor for friends who have been sexually assaulted, i can say emphatically I am against it. The Polanski case has a lot more complications to it, though, not the least of which include judicial misconduct, and a victim who desperately wants the case to go away.

So let's just say we've both had the last word here, so we can move onto exchanges with other people that have a future.

Joe
___________________

Wow. Narcissistic much? I rolled my eyes when I got your response a few days ago, then went on with a pretty busy weekend until this afternoon, when I remembered that I hadn't responded to you and that you might still think we were trying to have plans. Hope it doesn't break your heart that I didn't obsess about you all weekend.

For the record, I have no idea what the fuck you mean about me being my own enemy, but I'm pretty clear you're not mine - you're just a jackass more interested in telling me to "dial it down" about my life's work than he is in actually being real for a minute about a very real subject, and would rather make lame, passive-agressive jokes than take even the time it takes to say "maybe this is too serious a conversation to have over email."

I'm sure you'll take this email in some way that convinces you that you're far superior to me. Enjoy that feeling.

-Karen
_____________

Please stop writing me. I think I've made it clear I am not interested. I do not want to have to block you or report you. Please leave me alone.

Joe

"The key is the picture... as terrible as it sounds," said CBS anchor Chris Wragge. Match.com "relationship expert" Whitney Casey agreed. She helped CNET Senior Editor Natalie Del Conte set up her very own profile, which included a tutorial on choosing the right picture. One, where Del Conte is wearing a life jacket was vetoed: "'active girl' is great, but not for your main picture," said Casey. Another was turned down: "depressed latte girl, not a good one." (Black and white is also bad, as are old pictures, and "crop-outs, crop-out is a cop-out.") After wading through several minutes of Casey's brilliant advice, it came down to this: chose an attractive picture and don't lie.

Other important "insider" tips included: write your profile to reflect the correspondence you want to have, keep in mind that "no answer is an answer," and only mention things that you feel strongly about. This advice wasn't bad per se, it just seemed a little bit obvious. Does anyone really need an "expert" to tell them how to act "natural"?

Despite Casey's insistence that online dating is now a widely-accepted manner in which to meet a mate, this hilarious section from the Onion News Network shows the other side of the virtual coin. In a clip titled "Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently," Onion "reporter" Jeff Tate discusses the benefits of internet matchmaking: "innovative features like instant messaging and video chat make destroying one's self esteem as easy as clicking a mouse," and "the endless string of first dates is unlikely to result in a lasting relationship, but it can occupy a woman's attention enough to distract her from killing herself." It may be just a joke, but like most of the Onion's stories, there is a certain ring of truth in the parody. Many people still view sites like Match.com as a place for sex-starved creeps and desperate old maids. As Sadie discussed earlier this summer, online dating might have lost some of its stigma, but for those who truly hate dating and the sweaty palms, racked nerves, and potential for disaster that necessarily comes with it, online dating may be just as fraught as the "real" thing.

Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently

Polishing Your Online Dating Profile [CBS News]
Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently [The Onion]

Related: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?, Online Dating Expert Reveals Not-So-Secret "Secrets"

Long story short, Kelly Girl (the couple differentiates by referring to themselves as "Kelly Boy" and "Kelly Girl") sent Kelly Boy a message, and the two started talking. The talking turned into dating, and the two eventually fell in love. Now, the couple is getting married. Clip below:

While the couple will surely hit a few speedbumps as far as paperwork confusion goes, they say they'll at least try to make it a bit less confusing for the rest of the world by not naming their future children Kelly, as well. But wouldn't it be kind of hilarious if they did?

Pair With Same First Name, Last Name To Wed [MSNBC]

37% of single Internet users have tried online dating sites, but a new study has uncovered a hazard: The more matches you get, the worse you are at picking the best ones. Study authors Pai-Lu Wu and Wen-Bin Chiou say "more search options lead to less selective processing by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information, and reducing their ability to screen out inferior options." Online daters can suffer "cognitive overload," losing their ability to judge because there's so much information. In another study, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School found that online daters spent 12 hours surfing dating sites and e-mailing or every two hours of actual physical dating. He says users of dating sites "evaluate each person only superficially, never investing the time and energy to explore whether a match might work."

This doesn't actually sound all that different from offline dating, but researchers suggest that dating sites could improve the experience by reminding people how many profiles they'd already viewed, and by asking users more interview questions that "allow individuals to highlight unique aspects of their personality." But would more information really make things better? In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz discusses how having too many choices — like, say, the "275 varieties of cereal" an average supermarket — makes us less satisfied with our decisions and with the choosing process in general. Is this true of dating? Does online dating, like a cereal aisle, present us with too many not-so-good options, making it harder to select a good one?

True/Slant's Ryan Sager references The Paradox of Choice, and adds his own prescription for better online dating:

Meanwhile, what I think would be more useful is some kind of humor typology. Have people rate jokes, clips from TV comedies, etc. I bet you could break people down into four or five general humor categories (America's Funniest Home Videos vs. Flight of the Conchords, etc.)

A shared sense of humor is certainly valuable in a relationship, but is this really something that can be evaluated on the Web? Something that's funny in person is often lame in writing, and two people who like the same TV shows won't necessarily find each other amusing. Perhaps the dating sites will have advanced love-bots that suss out what we really want — not what we think we want — and deliver us a few carefully chosen matches. Until then, the solution is obviously arranged marriage. And Pop-Tarts.

Data Overload On Dating Sites [Technology Review]
50 (Or More) First Dates [True/Slant]

Earlier: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?

She writes,

I'm starting to think that Internet romances, including Mark Sanford's, are not romances between people at all. They're affairs with the Internet. Watch people who are newly in love, especially any kind of love that requires that the participants keep stealthy and apart, and they're all over their iPhones and Palm Pres. It's P.D.A. with P.D.A.'s. Romance seems to have become an online multiplayer fantasy-adventure game, no less thrilling than World of Warcraft, and open to all ages.

Ignore the lame jokes (from the Maureen Dowd school of technological humor), and she kind of has a point. The Internet, whether you use it to meet or just correspond with a partner, and whether said correspondence is adulterous or not, provides a whole new platform for romance. It allows lovers to communicate with far more frequency and granularity than physical dating affords. You might only see someone once a week — especially if you're not supposed to be seeing them — but in that time you can exchange thousands of e-mails, IMs, and Facebook messages (does anyone really flirt via Twitter?).

These modes of electronic communication don't just augment a relationship — they create a whole new relationship, parallel to and existing apart from any actual face-time. Anybody with both a computer and a heart has probably known someone who sends really charming e-mails but is a dud in person, and anyone who grew up with the Internet has probably had a few IM-only friends or more-than-friends. As Sadie points out, a correspondence can be as exciting as a meet-cute story, and Heffernan notes that frequent e-mailers tends to fall into a certain simpatico groove with one another.

But are they really "with one another"? Or are they just in a relationship with their chosen medium? Maybe a little of both. I know that when I'm stressed out, I find myself checking my e-mail the way others might reach for a cigarette, and I know that online communication itself can satisfy other cravings as well. Getting a lot of e-mail can make you feel successful and desired in a different way than locking eyes with a crush; quickly crafting a witty IM that you can refer back to later is different than simply telling a joke. Especially with the advent of Google's saved chats feature, all my online correspondence can now be archived forever. Critics say the Internet is ephemeral, but the typed word is now more indelible than the spoken one, and lovers can carry on a romance with their inboxes long after the actual affair has ended.

Of course, where there's a new platform for love, there's also a new platform for hate. People are notoriously willing to say things in, say, blog comments that they'd never voice to someone's face, and one reason advice columnists tell you not to break up with someone via e-mail is that it's so (comparatively) easy. The Internet divorces us from the human reality of our interlocutors — we are names typing at names. As such, it's easy to respond to the smallest slight with a burst of vitriol, and to care more about how many followers we have than about whether we've hurt someone's feelings. So has the Internet simply freed us up to express our true enmity for one another? Or have email and blogs and message boards and Twitter actually created a new hatred, a hatred for what other people become when they're no longer forced to deal with us physically, but also for what we've become, and for the medium that has transformed all of us? Is what we have with the Internet a love affair or a hatefuck? Again, maybe a little bit of both.

Love, Virtually [New York Times]

Earlier: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?

It went on. "Used in the bedroom by lovers to describe parts of the body, and physical activities, they are very proper indeed, and they distinctly enhance sex. Overhaul a prudish attitude. Don't whistle and stick up your nose, at least, not up in the air."

And here, of course, is the rub. In a post the other day, I asserted that "online dating has long since lost its sad-sack stigma." This sparked a conversation in comments: is it really free of stigma? And even if it is, is there a reason for the stigma? Several people mentioned that they found the process unavoidably fraught and "manufactured," while others made the point that the element of "screening" involved in fact makes dating easier. Several people - like friends and relatives of mine - had met their significant others on these sites. Others had been put off by the unavoidable creeps who find their way into any community. And almost everyone had good stories. One thing came across: most everyone had tried it. And isn't this the most telling thing? Those who'd hated it, overwhelmingly, said they hated dating anyway, with its expectations and awkwardness and sense of judgment.

Katherine Sharpe's N+1 piece on her online dating experiences reinforces this: online dating, now, is tantamount to dating. Especially in cities, it's simply a useful shortcut, and for every self-aggrandizing frog, there's the great guy who, like Sharpe, you date for two years. Now, she explains, she's back online, and while there may be no stigma, she brings up other potential problems:

I worry that online dating has the potential to become an end in itself, an empty activity that soothes in its ability to offer casual, meaningless contact, and the illusion that whenever you wanted to, you could dip into the well and walk off with a partner. I wonder whether that sense of available variety makes it less likely for us to choose, to take something home today. After a while, the thumbnail images and clever sobriquets all blend together, equally desirable, equally "meh." My California roommate may have been right about this one thing: no one ever stayed together because they had a great "how we met" story, but it doesn't hurt at first, when you need some kind of glue to bind you to a complete stranger. I feel as though I could wander forever through these halls of pixel, unable to tell one well-traveled, dive-bar-loving hopeful from another.

I remember when I set up my Nerve.com profile. I posted a single picture of Mr. Met, said something terse about not looking for any man who thought Harold and Maude was a beautiful movie and, when I failed to elicit so much as a wink, took it down after a day with a crushing sense of rejection. In this way, it mirrored my real-life dating experiences of the time: agreeing to attend a party, standing around glaring in a corner for 20 minutes clutching a pineapple juice, then storming out under a cloud of furious self-reproach. The funny part was, I had always looked forward to online dating: I liked the idea of being able to write rather than talk, to have a modicum of control over the situation. Sure, you have to admit to wanting to meet someone - maybe the issue for some - but in a normal frame of mind, this seemed to me natural enough. I have also never found such "how we met" stories unromantic; I find the details of correspondence, a la Shop Around the Corner, to be infinitely fascinating. What was a revelation was that the feelings were the same as "real life" dating (even after I took down the profile, I'd spend hours looking at pictures and profiles), no safer or kinder. As more and more people dip their toe in the online world, surely it's this that will become manifest - that at the end of the day it's the same thing, but we're more willing to admit, as in previous centuries, what our intentions are. It's only recently, after all, that interaction has taken on the agonizing ambiguities that define "dating" today. If you look at the 19th Century personal ads on the estimable "Advertising for Love" blog, after all, they're as frank and unsentimental as Craig's List, albeit more family-friendly. Although it should be said no one was being ordered not to "whistle and stick up your nose, at least, not up in the air."

Scattershot, Desperate And Sleazy [N+1]

Related: Recently-Divorced Guy Dates 50 Women To Find Ms. Right
"Show Your Moral Courage, Young Ladies, And Write"

Ron James is a social worker at a retirement home (caring profession!) who, when his 13-year-marriage ended, joined JDate the same month (really?). He says he wanted to "get back on the horse" (fair enough) and so he "signed up to meet all women ages 30 to 50 who lived within 50 miles of his Westchester apartment, including Manhattan." (Hmm.) "In 18 months, he e-mailed 500 to 600 women and dated 40 to 50. On a social worker's salary, it became expensive: the train to Grand Central Terminal, the dates, a $39.99 monthly JDate fee." So he'd stack his dates, arranging one on top of another at a centrally-located Starbucks, eating between dates to save money and avoid the women seeing one another and being hurt. (What the baristas thought is an open question.)

While online dating has long since lost its sad-sack stigma, and JDate is a popular choice, as the article mentions, amongst the Boomer set, James' aggressive approach was still unusually thorough. Indeed, a non-psychiatrist might regard it as a coping mechanism, or a means from distracting from the pain of a divorce. And yet, to hear James tell it, it was all worth it. A year and a half into his full-time dating, he met Cheryl Daija, who, while she'd only been on three JDates, shared other interests of his: community activism, music, an "old bohemian" ethos. She was his second date of the day - he'd been taken in, the first time, by a woman who wore sunglasses in her photo - and he liked her ripped jeans. They fell in love and, when they realized both their first marriages had had the same anniversary, they decided to marry each other on the same date - which, if nothing else, would seem to make the math very easy.

At the end of the day, it's a happy ending, and who doesn't love that? The couple is in love, has made a life together, show once again that, despite the impersonal morass that is the internet, human connection can happen. And yet, I couldn't help but wonder (and what a passive-aggressive written tic that is, by the way; the disingenuous abdication of the perennial girl-woman): why share this? Why make the sausage in quite such a public forum, to add an even uglier image? Why the hundreds of dates, unsatisfactory, "dishonest" woman before he finds his bohemian princess? What of those hags hiding behind their sunglasses, failing to meet his so-high standards, who will read this and recognize themselves as one of the hundreds he saw in a day? The ends, James would have us know, justify the means: he's found love - everything that came before was, like so much on the internet, impermanent, ephemeral, somehow not real. Is this a happy ending modern love story? Sure. But nothing nowadays is really that simple.

His 50 First Dates (or in Her Case, 3) [NY Times]

The Economist says: "it may be that people have more time to devote to their private lives as the economy slows; that uncertain times increase the desire for companionship; or that living alone is expensive, whereas couples can split many of their costs." We're curious: Which other subcultures are desperately in need of dating sites? [Economist, InventorSpot, Redneck and Single]

ABCNews decided to have a little fun with this phenomenon, setting up singles with online matches, complete with photographs, before having the two meet in person—both looking completely different than their online personas. As Yardena Schwartz of ABC notes, "With so much riding on the personal profile, it is easy to imagine people embellishing physical characteristics. Some online daters use photos from earlier years, thinner days, or simply photos that make them look more attractive than they truly are."

Justin Dubler and Carrie Goldstein were chosen for the experiment; both of them set up 5 dates apiece, using their real online profiles. But their dates were met with Charlie and Sabrina, two actors who looked nothing like Justin and Carrie. "It was nearly impossible for their dates not to notice the actors were impostors," Schwartz writes, "especially because Charlie was seven inches shorter than Dubler and Sabrina nine inches taller than Goldstein. The actors were also about 10 years older than Dubler and Goldstein."

The dates reactions ranged from sympathy to forgiveness to flat out anger and rejection: one date spied on Sabrina, whom he assumed was Carrie, from outside for 10 minutes before texting some BS excuse about a family emergency and taking off. Ouch.

I have never personally been on a blind date, but I suspect my immediate reaction in a situation like this would not be a positive one: I'd stay for dinner or what not, but probably wouldn't call the guy again, as the first thing I would have noticed about him is that he was a bit shady in hiding his real identity. How have you dealt with such situations? And have you ever fudged your picture so much that your date didn't recognize you?

When Your Date Looks Nothing Like His Or Her Picture [ABCNews]

She writes:

My parents met in 1966 through the world's first computer-dating service. I am the second of their four children, and they have been married for nearly 40 years.

Horn's parents used the Operation Match program on a Harvard University IBM 7090. College students around the U.S. could fill out a questionnaire and mail it (along with a $3 fee), and the computer would provide five or more "compatible matches" within the student's geographic area. Horn's parents were attending different colleges in Philadelphia and had no mutual friends or contacts. Her father got a list of six "compatible" women; her mother got a list of men. (She was not, of course, expected to call the strange men, but to wait for them to call her.) Not only did Horn's dad call her mom — he went out with all of the ladies on his list. But what really strikes Horn as interesting is the idea that at the time, people believed technology to be infallible. Both of her parents had "perfect faith that modern science could do no wrong" Horn adds: "As my mother put it: 'This was the ultimate science, the highest technology. The list of matches even came as a computer printout! Who could dispute it?'"

Now that we've been living with technology for decades, we know that computers have glitches; they crash and get viruses. We don't trust much of what we see online, and everyday there's a new reason why we shouldn't. But: While we still use computers to communicate with people — via dating sites, MySpace, Facebook or Meetup — Horn thinks we rarely break the ice and talk to strangers: "We have the technology, but we no longer have the guts," Horn says. "Despite our increasingly busy lives, meeting people isn't ultimately the hard part. Perceiving the possibility of happiness is." Here's where I disagree. Isn't the computer just a tool for fostering relationships? Don't people find the "guts" to go from online to IRL chatting all the time? Haven't we all done it before? If not for a date, then for cocktails and dreams, or some other reason?

The Ghost In The Love Machine [WSJ]

According to the New York Times, romance is one of the few industries that's booming. Online sites are up, matchmakers are booked, and singles events are bursting at the seams. It's not hard to see why: dating this way is cheaper than going out on the town; less work means more time to devote to love; and more to the point, in times of uncertainty, people don't want to be alone. Says one woman quoted in the article, "It's an upsetting, depressing, scary time, and to have someone to relate to and to vent with would be nice."

Priorities are different, too:

On Blackpeoplemeet.com, a site for black singles, the percentage of people listing "job" as a criterion when asked ‘What are you looking for in a partner?' increased 18 percent from January 2008 to January 2009. (Other profiles are more direct: "Looking for a date for dinner, Dutch treat," read one Match.com headline).

By contrast, other people quoted in the piece say that folks are now less materialistic and, perhaps brought low themselves by the economic reality, more inclined to look beyond a job title or paycheck - or arm candy.

The piece doesn't mention it, but it seems like this upswing would help to remove the final remaining stigma from online dating. After all, at this point, beyond a drinks tab, there's not much difference between online and real-life dating: the population is probably not dissimilar, the ratio of crazies to keepers pretty even, the chances of meeting the 'real' anyone pretty comparable. I'd call that a silver lining. It also seems likely that budget dating could speed up intimacy somewhat: are people more inclined to move up that more affordable cooking-and-video date, and all its implications? For that matter, does an increased interest in companionship extend to more sex? I couldn't help but wonder - where's our Depression-era Sex and the City when we need it, to decode the new language of love we're all being forced to learn?

The Recession. Isn't It Romantic? [New York Times]

I'm hard on "Modern Love," but that's partially because when it's good, it can be really good. This week's essay, "A Student of Intimacy, Step by Step," is a particularly poignant one. Matthew Parker is a middle-aged man who has spent most of his adult life in prison for drug-related offenses. He's gotten clean and become a full-time student, but finds romance a more difficult challenge.

When I got out of prison in 2002, I was narcotics-free for the first time since I was a teenager, and achingly lonely. Yet I had never had a normal relationship, and I was clueless about how to get myself into one. My 11 years of forced celibacy in prison and decades of drug use had left me inept when it came to women. I sometimes had junkie girlfriends, but junkies rarely find love because their love is the narcotic. Everything else is secondary.

Parker tries online dating, but finds women are put off by his troubled past. So he looks farther afield: a site that sets men up with women from Colombia.

My girlfriend, Gerenith, is barely five feet tall, and is thin and beautiful, with long, curly black hair and lightly freckled brown skin. She epitomizes the hustle of Cali. Working full time for a condominium complex, she also studies business administration and finance on weekends. I love it when I give her money — to pay for a meal, say — and she shortchanges me. I pretend not to notice because it reflects a survival instinct that I am quite familiar with. Gerenith lives on about $60 a week. From this she must pay her rent, tuition and all the things that provide a modicum of comfort in a third-world country. Every peso counts.

Gerenith, however, is a professional woman and fiercely proud: she has joined the site because she doesn't like the macho Columbian culture of mistresses; she won't tell Parker she loves him for months, and insists on taking the physical relationship slowly. And, when he suggests they marry so she can come to America, she is insulted: “'Marriage is much more than a legal document,' she said in her fast-flowing Spanish. 'It is a joining of our hearts. And how would I finish my education? Nothing is more important than our education'.”

While the relationship bears little resemblance to what we are used to, and we are left hoping for, rather than certain of, its unlikely success, there is an immediacy to the essay that's lacking in so many of the personal accounts we read: you're left in no doubt of his sincerity, of the compromises life demands, and of the power of loneliness and love. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but this week's featured wedding in the "Vows" column touched on some of the same issues of mid-life love, loneliness and the possibilities of the internet. The account of the wedding explains that Christina Welykyj had devoted her life to work and a father ill with Parkinson's disease. It was only after his death that she felt able to pursue a social life:

Following her father’s death in 2001, Ms. Welykyj went to Match.com, through which her colleagues had found spouses, and eHarmony.com, another dating site. Ms. Welykyj, who goes to Mass every Sunday, joined church groups and attended adult education classes and a speed dating event. Still, she dated only sporadically.

After several years, Ms. Welykyj meets special ed teacher Brian Ante on CatholicMatch.com. “You have kept the best wine until now," says the priest who officiates at their Ukrainian Catholic wedding. Two stories of people taking initiative and finding their particular happiness: What a lovely way to begin the week.

A Student Of Intimacy, Step By Step [NY Times]
Vows: Christina Welykyj And Brian Ante [NY Times]

Both Salon's Broadsheet and New York Magazine recently mentioned the site, which features personal ads like this:

You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.

And this:

I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking (but other fields are great too). Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.

And, my personal favorite, this:

My name is Daniel. I consider myself to be a born-again egoist and I have dedicated the rest of my life to self-improvement. People see me as a socially inept loner because I tend to avoid superficial conversation but actually I love talking to people who like to think (the problem being I don’t know very many).

My boyfriend (probably in an effort to prove to me that he is really not one of these people) points out that on no other dating site would you see the phrase, "people see me as a socially inept loner." Another odd wrinkle: although Salon blog Broadsheet mocked The Atlasphere, Salon writer Lynn Harris appears to endorse it — if that's what the blurb "My personal favorite [niche dating and social networking site]" really means. For all we know, Atlasphere could be her favorite pizza topping — or her favorite place to make fun of assholes who think they're the center of the universe.

Artifact: Free-Market Meat Market [NY Mag]

Does My "Fountainhead" Turn You On, Baby? [Salon]

Coloccia has many scoops like this, which is why, perhaps, she is "developing" an online dating course. Which people will be able to take online. Lord knows how much Coloccia's class will cost (her book is $16.99 on Amazon) but here's some FREE ADVICE regarding dating online:

It's dating. With e-mail.

People lie online. They also lie in bars, at dinner parties and in bed. People post old pictures online. They also wear toupees, assume an expensive car will act as bait and have clammy hands in real life. There are married guys looking to cheat online, just like in real life! You can meet a gross loser online, just like you can in real life. And! I have dated online and I can safely say: You can meet a great, funny, smart, cute guy online. Just like you can in real life. It may not be easy, but since when is dating — of any kind — simple?

Married? Sleazy? Web Dater Finds Ways To Pick Losers [Reuters]
How To Navigate Online Dating’s Depths [MSNBC, via Reuters]

Earlier: New Ruel: When Dating Online Add 20 Years, 100 Lbs. To Your Partner's Profile

P.S. No animals were drugged in the making of this video.