Here is my confession: newly single, I decided to give online dating a try. Oh my!

To be clear, I’ll admit I haven’t given it a fair chance (haven’t tried much and since I refuse to actually give pimps any cash, I only went to various free sites) but I don’t think I’ll be doing any more "research"–ugh!

My main rant is the astounding number of impersonal personals you come upon. E.g.

• "I never know what to write in these things." Why not start with "This is the first sentence" Useless verbiage.
• "I’m good looking." Uh, is that ISO-2006 good looking or are you sticking with the ANSI standard? This is so relative that a bit more detail might just be helpful…
• "I like music." Arg, can’t you at least specify a type if not a few bands?! Same goes for movies, books or whatever.
• "I like to have fun." My personal all-time favorite, a rare and unique trait–highly distinctive: you’re my type of gal, fer sure. Gaah!

The real kicker is the sheer amount of misrepresentation. If the goal is to actually meet someone in person, how does one expect to pull off all that BS? It just makes me wonder if these people really believe all that crap about themselves. I sure hope not…

The moral of the story is that if you:

• were born after 1981;
• don’t deviate from the norm by more that 2% in any manner;
• enjoy pop culture, pop music and pop everything;
• are ready to say whatever it takes to make another person like you.

Then you’ll probably have resounding success as an online dater. Otherwise, enter at your own peril.

Yes, I know I just sound bitter. I guess I might be… I thought it would be an easy way to hookup with that feeble percentage of people I really get along with but, alas, they are elsewhere.

In any case, there are so many variables involved in this type of interpersonal relationship that I’ve always trusted my senses and brain to pick up the subtle cues, ranging from body language and pheromones to verbal skills and philosophy, and perform the integration for me. This simply isn’t possible online, where your mind has a tendency to make up the missing pieces of the puzzle, often with idealized fantasies and the associated dire consequences.

I’ll be sticking with real life, going outside and doing stuff I like and will just see what happens. For those who are still game to give it a shot, you can check out these free sites:

• OKCupid. A nice system, with profiles and a pretty awesome matching algorithm (provided you take the time to honestly answer a number of questions). Young and superficial crowd.
• Plenty of Fish. An ugly site, which seems to attract the downtroden.
• Craig’s List. Mainly brief descriptions, no profiles and often no pics… lots of scams and spammers

Enjoy and good luck.