Caroline in the City

Just hope HotChick25 isn’t this lady.

Call me old fashioned, but internet dating still seems completely foreign to me.

I mean, I laughed when I heard my coworker say she met her boyfriend on Craig’s List, and I definitely thought it was odd when I dined with honeymooners on a cruise who met each other “e-dating.” After seeing countless advertisements for Philadelphiasingles.org on a walk downtown, it dawned on me that perhaps Penn students, and our peers at surrounding colleges, are willing to rely on such devices to meet significant others.

Out of curiosity, I checked out several internet dating sites, several of which allow you to view other people’s profiles without signing up. To my surprise, I recognized a few Penn students, including one of my former sorority sisters.

Why would students at such a large and diverse university go to such lengths to search for someone compatible with themselves? “Perhaps it’s one’s desire to find a mate of the same religious or ethnic background,” said an Engineering junior who wished to remain anonymous. “I signed up for J-date, but I’ve yet to actually meet anyone yet,” the student continued.

So while I am not one to judge my classmates who participate in such an activity, I do believe that there are more conventional ways to meet individuals without hiding behind the veil of a computer screen. Anyone can be outgoing, “beautiful,” and seemingly cool via the World Wide Web, but it takes initiative to approach a love interest in person, and in my opinion, more if you can win him over.

So while some might say internet dating is the dating of the future, I urge people not to rely on such a socially passive method of meeting people. As my mother says, these sites are for “those out of circulation,” like 45-year-old divorcees. As a Penn student, I can assure yoi that neither I, nor any of my 10,000 peers are out of circulation; it just may take a small push past the socially awkward boundary to find a potential companion.

Caroline in the City appears every Wednesday and Friday.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.