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Digital Slob Curt Brandao |
Log on for love
and I’ll find you
a soulmateWhen a Respectable Person sees a Digital Slob in a romantic relationship, they can't help but stare. For them, a Slob in love resembles a toddler in a sandbox, covered in dirt, blissfully licking an oversized lollipop -- too benign to intervene, yet wincingly unsanitary and still oh, so wrong.
For Respectable People, courtship isn't just a game, it's an Olympic event -- love is the gold medal and Cupid is one tough Eastern European judge who won't take a bribe. So every piece of food stuck in their teeth, every boorish come-on, every revelation about a past relationship that ended with someone posting bail, might cost them that tenth of a point that separates a life of happiness from one of isolated desolation.
High stakes for a table for two at TGIFridays -- that's why stressed-out Respectable People on blind dates wear clinched-teeth smiles so big it looks like they're ordering appetizers inside the space shuttle during takeoff.
Not surprisingly, the Net is crowded with matchmakers. The most comprehensive is eharmony.com, which starts out asking you more than 500 probing questions. This endless gantlet of introspection gets you so in tune with yourself and your place in the universe, you may be levitating by the time you finish registration.
But all such sites admonish you to "answer all questions honestly," which would seem easy enough. Identity thieves want your credit card number, not your fear of intimacy. Still, unrealistic expectations keep answers fuzzy.
So, you have to read between the lines. Years ago I thought I found The One on the Web, until I saw she liked "long walks on the beach." Whoa, I prefer short walks on the beach. Imagine a lifetime of seashore shouting matches about when we should turn around and go home -- really dodged a bullet there.
Here's a few dating sites I'd start up if I had the ambition:
>> pastlifematch.com: There's someone for everyone in this world, just maybe not on the same linear time plane. Search everyone who ever lived to find your match. Perhaps she's an alewife in medieval times, or he's a eunuch in the Roman Empire. Love doesn't have to be a pipe dream, and how can it be for a soulmate that was alive before the invention of pipe?
>> brushby.com: Who says a first date has to last hours, or even involve eye contact? For those who like to take things super slow, this site gets them to synchronize watches and briskly walk past each other on an agreed upon busy downtown sidewalk at the exact same moment. Ready for the next step? Silently wait in line together for the bus, or take the plunge and stare at the same wall in a doctor's waiting room for hours. Love has never felt so inferred. Rejection has never been more imperceptible.
>> single-kid-danglers.com: Being single is tough. Being a single parent is tougher. But when you're a single parent who dangles offspring over deadly dangers (a la Michael Jackson or the Crocodile Hunter) it's easy to feel isolated in a judgmental world. If you like to show your children you are their sole support in literal ways, this Web site offers you a way to reach out to the like-minded (with your other free hand). Your kid may not need a safety net, but that doesn't mean you don't. Find someone with the heart, soul and quick reflexes you can respect. Why go through life fighting the Office of Child Welfare alone?
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Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's production editor. Reach him at: cbrandao@starbulletin.com