Dating on college campuses is dead.
Many people much older and wiser than myself have made this proclamation (indeed even Duke-ophile Tom Wolfe trumpeted as much from nearly every pulpit while stumping in support of his new novel). But as a senior who arrived on the dating scene this fall after an amicable break-up and six months away from Duke, I refused to take this time-honored adage too seriously. So I set out into what I soon discovered was a grossly incestuous environment of drunken hook-ups and hurt feelings.
Those first couple of weeks introduced me to some new faces and spaces, but in the end, the realization came crashing home—Duke is a miniscule social network. For a university of 6,500 undergrads and an unknown number of graduate students, the options for singles looking to date seemed decidedly few.
None of what I experienced in those first couple of weekend excursions was particularly unprecedented or surprising, but it remained troubling nonetheless. Could this really be all that was available to young, willing and able singles?
And then I decided to take what many considered to be a drastic step: I signed up for Match.com, an online dating site.
Despite my high hopes, I received looks of dismay and chagrin as well as some good-natured ribbing from many of my friends. I found my initial foray into online dating to be a little lacking, so I subsequently began to search for a wider variety of sites that served a greater range of interests and people. What I found was a universe of singles similarly disenchanted with the prospect of meeting people in a public setting.
While every site has its own unique elements, most require the same basic information: a pseudonym, brief physical description, likes and dislikes and usually a short bio that can include everything from the number of cats owned to reasons for “finally signing up.” Many sites offer a number of other searching and matching options, but those usually come with a monthly fee. Overall, most online dating sites are just like thefacebook.com with one small difference: each of these individuals wants to meet someone.
I was initially shocked by the diversity of races, ages and ethnicities on these various online sites, but it all points to the fact that a lot of different types of people are all looking for the same thing: love. Indeed many women included lines like “Please, no more games” or “Sleazeballs need not apply,” indicating that they were fed up with dating in the real world and were looking online to find Mr. Right. But for every person who seemed to have been hurt in the past, there were equal numbers of singles just interested in stepping outside their social network in hopes of meeting that special person.
The young women I found online—my search was purely a heterosexual one, although one can search for any kind of relationship he might imagine—had a vast range of interests and professions. Many were students like myself, but quite a few were single mothers. Still others were simply too shy or too busy to meet men in public, and some were young professionals who didn’t have the free time to meet new people.
The Internet has become just that—a time saving device where one can accomplish a month’s worth of bar-hopping in a few short surfing sessions. Where one might have had to go up and talk to a woman to get a phone number, now you can simply shoot her a quick “wink” and message through cyberspace.
The argument that online dating lacks the sort of personal connection one can make in real life is a fair criticism. Meetings are impersonal, at first. However, this same loss of physicality is also a benefit of the online scene. While being shot down in front of your buddies can sting, the pain of an unanswered e-mail is remarkably tame.
It’s OK to be a bit suspicious of the people you might meet. Are there some strange birds out there? Sure, but who’s to say the guy or girl you meet at the coffee shop down the street could turn out to be totally normal?
My story doesn’t have an ending, but that doesn’t preclude it from having a moral. A lot of people turned up their noses at my online search for love. Words like “sketchy,” “pathetic” and “sad” were bantered about with reckless abandon. But what I realized is that all anyone can do is keep an open mind and hope for the best. There are a lot of people—big people, small people, shy people, funny people, party people—out there, and technology has provided a convenient, if not slightly impersonal way, to get to know them.
Dating at college might be dead, but anyone can meet new and interesting men and women by simply logging on and letting go.
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