RSVP: Its part in my downfall (Apologies to Spike Milligan)

So...
After a productive year of successful singledom, this summer produced Bernard Black-eque feelings of the necessity of a summer girlfriend. Something about the humidity, I think. This culminated in an admission, at breakfast, to two of my nearest and dearest, that I did not foresee being able to last another year of singledom. This was an extraordinary admission from me, as I have previously claimed I could do a year of celibacy standing on my head (not literally). However, this statement bore with it an obvious question - if can't do singledom, what choice do I have?

Smeames, my erstewhile companion, has oft regailed me with success stories from the world of internet dating - I am told her sister located a strapping transylvanian gentleman thereon, with whom she has produced a child. With the promise of summer vampire love, and having watched too many episodes of True Blood, I resolved to at least look. No harm in looking right?

Initially, it seemed very unlikely to bear fruit. Lots of profile photos with pictures that looked like they'd been taken at flemington racecourse, with words like "bubbly" and "live, laugh, love" and other shudder inducing phrases. I was very close to giving up on the idea, when I stumbled across a young woman - black hair, likes sci fi and video games, has tattoos? Had I found my Ramona Flowers?

I took a deep breath and set about creating a profile. It's a difficult thing - trying to write something that appears snowflake-like, doesn't include any foibles that people aren't likely to find charming, not appear to be self-aggrandising whilst being exactly that. Neil Strauss wrote about "peacocking" in his excellent book "The Game", and this is very much what was brought to mind. If you haven't read this book, then you should - despite what I thought was highly suspect subject matter (the International Society of Pick Up Artists) it is in fact an extremely interesting examination of neuro-linguistic programming, human interaction, and ultimately a charming love story. And it has Courtney Love in it! But I digress.

So I wrote something that highlights what I believe to be the selling points of me, and obscures my Woody Allen-esque nerotics (I believe some people like my neurotic habits, but it's not romance material). And sent a form of limited exchange to the the dame who caught my eye.

It is here that the slightly odious element of monetisation enters the fray. I get it - I'm not some wide eyed neophyte. No one runs a dating site so they can go home with a warm fuzzy feeling. They do it to make money, and they're entitled to do so. But the only way to make such a system work is to restrict access between people. But you can send a little, canned piece of script that you can select out of several options, just to ensure you haven't wasted money on someone who perhaps sees you as "well, maybe if you were the last man on earth...but you'll still have to wear a bag over you head."

So I sent this, and to my near fatal shock, got a positive response - "You seem interesting, I would love to learn more about you."

Gads? More? About me? How could I refuse? Someone, somewhere out there was currently suffering from a dearth of information about me! How could I, as just, reasonable, compassionate man deny her this? Out came credit card.

I got ready to send an email. Finally, a chance to use my WORDS. I'm an articulate guy right? I even use the world "dilettante" in an appropriate context in my profile! So...

What little shame I have left does not permit you to give the exact text used, but it was something along the lines of "So...do you like...stuff?"

I am not surprised that this failed to elicit any response whatsoever.

Saturday night saw dear Smeames leave me at home with her laptop, scrolling endlessly through faces frozen in a rictus of "cheerful, bubbliness". There's something hollowing about this experience - the cold, brutal assessments you make on a person based on their slightest written inflections, the grim knowledge that the same callous judgements are at this very second being meted against you as well. But there's a sense of voyeuristic power as well - although you are  not entirely unobserved, with a click I can approach someone I'd never approach in real life. With another click, I can dismiss someone who's found me. I found myself quite addicted, I have to say. When Smeames returned home, she found me scrolling like a madman. It felt icky, slightly sickening, like eating too many pringles. But once you pop, you can't stop...
Monday was an oddity - I received a contact from a girl, far too attractive for the likes of me. Evidently the press I'd used had succeeded, but perhaps too well. Email banter ensued - areas of common interest found - and slowly, a consensus to meeting up in the real world.

It is important, at this critical juncture, to remind readers that I have this...tendency. I tend to construct these long, romantic narratives about any vague prospect I have. Long as in "growing old together" long. It requires little participation from the other person - in fact, the less they are involved, the better really. Real people rarely match up to the idealised narrative. I will henceforth refer to this as "The Ramona Flowers Effect". So of course, prior to even meeting this person I had spun this elaborate story of the past, present, and future of this involvement; its place in the grand scheme of my somewhat farcical romantic life.

Once again, gentle Smeames was the one to jar me out of my suppositions. Of course, I had no real idea who this person was. I had no idea whether we would work. I had no way of knowing at all. And acting like this was anything other than a possibility was abject foolishness.

Thus it was that I came to be much better prepared for the rejection that followed. We met, had a few drinks and went on our way. I have never felt so comfortable being let go by anyone. It was actually kind of a relief - no longer wondering whether enough I would attractive or witty enough, whether eating that for lunch was a wise idea, any of that stuff.

It seems to be winding up now - the interest I found, or garnered seems to be drying up. I have many rejections under my belt, endured with an increasingly degree of nonchalance, and a great number more of being ignored without response. I find myself doing this scientific dissection - the autopsy of a social experiment. I am chalking it up to a learning experience. I will now return to the quiet dignity of going to Pony, getting drunk and going home alone, or alternatively spending saturday evenings shooting monsters in Gears of War. I have a strong temptation to scrawl "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" across my profile and abandoning it to the wolves, but I still bear some tiny, niggling hope that something will come of it. But nonetheless, chase not the elusive transylvanian promise of internet dating. It is a perilous game.