I'm presently working with a market researcher on some uh-duh, market research projects at the office. He is a 40-something male, who I'm assuming is swimmingly single due to his over-enthusiasm for cars and travel. For those of you that may think being judgmental is a bad thing, that is what this guy does for a living, and he is fabulous at it.

One of the judgments he has made about 18 - 34 year-old males (who are the target respondents in our research) is that they are lazy and do not communicate.

"These guys are lazy, we can't ask them to just tell us how they feel, we're going to have to pull it out of them. Doing collage exercises and stuff just isn't going to work."

His words were relative my job and the task at hand, but immediately, I thought that these were words I really could have used to have heard during my time in the social cesspool of confusion and misanthropy that is online dating.

I spent almost a year trying to make it work, this newfangled match.com and (our dear) Salon personals, were my only lifeline to the male gender aside from bars. It offered a way to filter individuals, which was nice, however I quickly learned that like any survey: the answers to the questions asked in online dating profile generators are easy to doctor with "desired" responses.

I wish I had known that I didn't stand a chance in hell against a demographic that was 100% interested in fucking and 0% interested in my brain. If I had known that they are (except for my fiance, whom I met in a bar) lazy and impossible communicators, I would not have taken the constant rejection so hard. I wouldn't have been compelled by my frustration and discontentment to write a manuscript about it.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I did.

But I do still wonder, a little bit, was it me? Or are all these people on these sites really fucking insane? As soon as you sign up for Match.com, do you automatically lose your mind? I suppose that you do, because the internet is not real life and it becomes rapidly apparent to your subconscious that this is the case. For those of you that have never attempted to get something meaningful (i.e. a damned conversation that isn't like non-novacaine involved dental work) out of online dating, allow me to boil it down for you.

Phase 1: Winks or other horribly innocuous signals are broadcast through the digital wasteland and someone that may or may not be attractive. Next, if their profile indicates that they are interesting, you may opt to send a real message with real questions and real hints of who you are.

Phase 2: If the "messaging" process is going well, you may move onto the phone. However, be foreward, no one will fucking call you. They will all want to text you. Thusly, it's exactly like "messaging" and you won't learn anything of their mannerisms or personality traits.

Phase 3: You give up and decide to suggest to meet up. You are either 1) repulsed or bored or 2) elated and your genitals are a bit giddy

Phase 4: You become so enthralled that some attention is being paid to you by the opposite sex, so you quickly bed down.

Phase 5: Whomever you slept with will never speak to you again.

That's why online dating is a sales stimulus for the anti-depressant industry. When there is a sea of so many ready and willing fish, it's very easy to chuck one and go back to the sexiness ocean for more. Devaluing humans in a sexy economy is a nasty nasty and sordid thing. Immoral really.

While I've been (ever so merrily) out of the game for over a year now and am not going back in for another play, I wondered if things have changed. Are they different for older age groups?

My report from the nether regions of my poor friends is that no, things are not different.

My good friend recently encountered an odd fellow who insisted on texting her every morning and every evening to say something to they effect of, "good night sweetheart."

Let me remind you, they had never met nor spoken on the phone. El texto solomente.

She quickly cut the cord as this one appeared to have a bit of crazy dangling on the tips of his fingers and in the depths of his brain.

I deeply feel for everyone legitimately attempting to use online dating to meet someone. You are probably very deserving people and are 100% worthy of having someone to empathize with, love, and share your life. However, nutjobs looking for a quick nutjob everywhere are ruining the idea. They've created a people-store with very low involvement in purchase.

Just like every good marketing test, a benchmark must be set to determine success or failure. No one has set this benchmark for online dating, as it's a giant money maker without having any proven success at all, so that would all be for naught wouldn't it? A major sales killer. Nevertheless, allow me to do it: marriages that can persist for longer than 20 years.

Online dating sites have been around for less than 10 years. Match.com was launched in 2001. It's unlikely that any research will ever be done, except possibly by the academic arena interested in determining why so many people are on anti-depressants.

I hope it comes to pass that this information is disseminated. Only time will tell if marriages generated online can actually stand the test of time. Though my money is on the horses racing on the track'o'real life.

 *Praise be to my fiance who read my entire manuscript on this topic before dating and then deciding to marry me. Having been on the shit end of the rainbow and at the pot of gold, I will never forget how lucky I am to have him.