What Match wont Catch.

In related news, I feel I must address the topic of online dating.  In this day and age, we turn to the internet for just about everything.  I mean, really.  I carry out so much of my life online that I'm sure many of you expect this habit to extend to love and intersex relations as well, right?

WRONG.  

I cannot date online.

The way I see it:

Online dating is essentially taking a human phenomenon that is inherently meant to be very, very, sexy..... and taking ALL OF THE SEXY OUT OF IT.

There is nothing coy about laying all your cards out for the world to see, and declaring yourself 'open season'.  I liken it to digitally ringing your dinner bell to summon all the cowboys to "COME AND GET IT!".  Groan.  I just can't stomach it.

About me: I am horrendously awkward in any and all romantic situations.  While I am apt to maintain a charismatic conversation with just about anyone, as soon as it turns any kind of romantic, I desire to hide my face and run to my car.

Don't compliment me.  It makes me feel weird.  In my house, 'pretty' was not celebrated.  There's no merit in attractiveness, and the culture at the Sun household followed suit.  So, even now, the easiest way to make me shut up and lose speaking ability is to say something sweet.  I'd rather you insult me.  Seriously.  That, I can work with.

So with online dating, it's all awkward conversing and blatant agenda.  You are already declaring yourself as 'interested' with the first correspondence.  Yeuck.  Part of the frustration and excitement of dating is the initial unknowns.  Is he single?  Into it? In a band?  These are all things I would like to hear from you, not from reading your carefully typed-out profile.  Plus, there are so many factors that can't expressed via website.  I need to know if you talk with your hands, what your laugh sounds like, and if you're an interrupter.  (like me).

I am constantly being harassed to try it; apparently being a nomadic soul and an extrovert guarantees excel in online dating.  What-EVER.  I do not desire to subject myself to any series of half-blind dates (see Blind Date Policy) with people who may seem statistically compatible with me.  I have had numerous friends who are apparently bigger people than I, and have treaded the waters of this Gen-Y trend.  Some have met the love of their lives, while others are still wading in the mess.  I can't definitively declare it good or bad; I just know I'll have nothing to do with it.  My dinner bell will remain unrung, even if the cows never come home.