Online Dating Gets Either More Clever, Or More Lazy

“Users receive calling cards to dole out to alluring strangers they encounter in their everyday lives. Recipients of the cards can use the identification code printed on them to log onto Cheekd.com and send a message to their admirer.”

And what exactly do these pre-fab come-ons say? Well, says the NY Times,

Each Cheek’d card has a sassy phrase like “I am totally cooler than your date,” or, for those with no regard for subtlety: “I’m hitting on you.” Ms. Cheek is dreaming up specialized card sets, too. One for New York City singles will have lines like “I live below 14th Street” and “I hope my five-story walkup won’t be a problem.” Willa Bernstein, 43, who uses Cheek’d, was recently making eyes with a man at the Soho Grand Hotel but was feeling shy, so she dispatched a friend to slip him a card on her behalf. Ms. Bernstein was not bold that night, but the words on her card were: “I’m looking forward to our first date.”

The cards provided by another real-virtual site, flipmedating.com, are slightly more earnest: “I’ve said ‘what if’ too many times … not this time.”

Sly, or lame? Confident, or half-assed? Romantic, or impersonal? Do the recipients mind that their suitor presumably has an entire pack of these and may be handing them out indiscriminately? We may all have a chance to find out: these programs, along with apps like Skout, are being touted by their creators as the dating wave of the future. And, as one user tells the Times, “It’s getting me out more…Instead of running home to my computer, I’m going out for drinks and coffee and just being more social.” Who knows? When you’re doing that, you might even…talk to someone.