Love in a time of the internet

Dating. The hardest area for even the most acceptable geek. First comes the hard part – meeting someone to persuade into going on a date. Is it acceptable to put your finger in your ear when talking to someone in a club so you can hear their name? Is there an etiquette for asking for someone’s number? And exactly how long should one wait before sending that first, charming text message? The questions are endless. And then comes the second hard part, the date itself. Which pub best defines you as a person? Which t-shirt? The stormtrooper head or ZX spectrum keyboard? Should a joke about disability or a comment about region 2 DVDs really be avoided? Dating is the proverbial minefield.
Fortunately, the noughties seem to have offered a way out of the first dilemma, and it is only becoming more common as we enter our new, unnamed decade. Internet dating, once the domain of the pervert, is now remarkably acceptable and possibly cool. Nowhere is this truer than London, where the average tube journey bombards commuters with opportunities for amore. Though Match.com is the definite market leader, other companies like Only Lunch and Be Naughty specialise in different kinds of liaisons (young professionals on lunch dates and sex addicts, respectively). It is an indication of how far the profile of internet dating has changed that Match.com regularly runs television campaigns advertising for eligible men to meet female demand. Gone are the days of the only enticing woman online being Stephen from Nigeria who needs you to wire him money for his train ticket to meet you.
For the Acceptable Geek, the Match.com explosion offers an excellent opportunity but is not without danger. The benefits are not hard to see. Clubs and bars are not the ideal place to meet your sweetheart, especially if, like many geeks, you don’t excel at small talk or pump sufficient iron to arouse attention. Many geeks also find their circle of friends distinctly lacking in girls (and “being set up” with a friend’s girlfriend’s friend is never likely to go well). At risk of sounding distinctly chauvinistic, there are also many areas of the country that also lack of delectable women for the discerning geek. If you’ve left university and failed to find your soul mate, you may find yourself staring down the barrel of loneliness or, worse, a train wreck of a relationship with someone you have nothing in common with.
The Acceptable Geek Club is ostensibly pro internet dating. Though this may be the cheesiest sentence we’ve written, we have never tried it, but several of our friends have, and it has worked out well for them. The initial idea for this article was for your author to try it and write a detailed report. But having already punched above his weight and met a girl in what we may for not much longer refer to as “the conventional way”, decided that it was best not to take unnecessary risks. What we have gathered though, is that the hardest part is the profile writing. There’s a real tendency of internet dating to reward the liar and self-publicist who’s travelled to Kathmandu where he saved street urchins and gained an appreciation for Shakespeare yet still loves the Killers and going to upmarket restaurants. The best advice here is to be honest and be humble. As always, we believe geekery, correctly marketed, is attractive. Making up stuff will only disappoint the person you meet through it, and ultimately disappoint you to.
So what of the dangers spoke of earlier? Our fear is motivated by this, rather beautiful piece of advertising by Match.com (featuring, perhaps unsurprisingly, one very acceptable looking geek):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyxx-QqbJ3E

On first seeing this advert we were rather touched by its cuteness, but this advert represents a sea change in the claims of online dating companies. Previously all but the wacko Christian networks have sold dates not love, or, if love, love symbolised by a tacky arrow through a tacky heart. Now they are selling real, affecting love, the kind everyone would want to find. The danger is this: Love, or at least the British understanding of it, is a mythical almost religious feeling that’s found through struggle, perseverance and probably a little luck. It’s found in the intangible feelings of song lyrics and Jane Austen novels (and if the reader hasn’t read at least one, he should have). It’s an art and definitely not a science. And more importantly than anything, it permeates our culture and most men’s deepest desires. No matter how much we like to admit it, the desire for Taylor Swift’s Lovestory is as strong in us as it is in the girlies. Secretly, Hugh Grant in Four Weddings is a hero to men the country over.
The danger of internet dating is simple, but hopefully avoidable. It encourages the reduction of love and love-finding to a series of tick boxes and carefully placed statements of likes and dislikes. It can be an encouragement to mediocrity and a clarion call for desperation and taking whoever will have you. This is not to say these are not problems for Acceptable Geeks everywhere - many of who will throw away their identity to get “the one” - but this problem is heightened by the modern way of doing things. In short, online dating could be the final step towards a fully scientific society. We’ve taken the magic from the astronomy and religion; why not take it from love to?
To the geek, Match.com and its kin offer an excellent opportunity to break a cycle of, as the Smiths so perfectly put it, going to clubs and standing on your own till you cry and you want to die. We would encourage geeks plagued by this feeling to grab the internet opportunity with both hands. But in doing so, be wary. Your need to find someone can lead down a dangerous road of self-denial and the erosion of your identity. It can also lead to the discounting of love and replacing it with companionship, and if one feels a real longing for a true love story this will be deeply unsatisfying. The Acceptable Geek Club has little in the way of treatment to offer here, only a diagnosis. There is surely a way to navigate internet dating whilst retaining all we value in the idea of love, but we very much doubt anyone could show you the route. It may ring hollow, but believe in romance and believe in hope. Both are wonderful things.