Our Diminishing Populace...

There was a time when meeting a person was as easy as looking outside of yourself. You could walk into any room and all you had to do was look up. People were everywhere. They were in coffee shops and bookstores or in city parks on scenic benches.

Nowadays people are more likely to stay at home sitting behind their computers. Perhaps they’ll be at the coffee shops or bookstores, but they’re no longer interacting with each other. Suddenly, it’s become harder and harder to meet people. Suddenly it has become very difficult to make a match worthy of building your life on.

So how do people meet now? How exactly are any marriages happening these days? Outside of the lucky few who happen to meet people at work, or in the quickly diminishing populace at the coffee shops and bookstores. The trend that I’ve seen is that people are now going online. From all of the “millions” of singles websites out there, this most likely won’t be news to anyone.

The thing that makes me laugh the most about these singles websites is that they’re all the same. It doesn’t matter which one or ones you choose, you will invariably go through the same process. Set up a profile, and then you can view all the other profiles for free. If you find one you like, you’ll have to pay this or that site for the privilege of possibly finding your true love. Or not.

I was going through some online profiles the other day and was amazed at how similar browsing through guys’ profiles was to looking through trading cards. I’ve mastered the art of looking at a few lines that people have written to see if I might be interested in actually viewing their whole profile. This one’s divorced? Guess he’s out. This one is “spiritual but not religious?” He’s out too. Oh… he doesn’t think he wants kids someday. I’m not going to waste my time here, since I definitely want kids.

How have we stooped so low? Forget the compatibility quizzes where computers are telling me I’ve got a 75% chance of meshing with this guy. Even that doesn’t mean he’ll look at my profile and decide I’m worth trying on.

The whole game makes me wonder. Why are we so willing to put ourselves through this drama? Obviously it’s not enough to have to face the lack of single people to talk to in real life. Now we have to seek ways to be further rejected online. What is the world coming to?

By the time my kids (should I ever happen to be lucky enough to find “the one" and marry him) are trying to meet people it will be even worse. By then, people will have completely forgotten how to use their voices at all. They won’t know all of the intricacies of social interaction, such as looking each other in the eye.

Then again, I guess I really won’t have to worry about what my kids will be doing. I was just rejected by another online prospect. He said he wasn’t interested in my “flirting” with him. How does he know we won’t be a good match? It’s not like I’ve spent that many hours on my dating profile, making myself that much more attractive. Oh, wait… now I’m getting obsessive. I wonder how easy it would be to cyber-stalk this guy… to make him see what he’s missing out on… ;)
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