This entry really does not have much to do with the recession but it does have to do with being 24 in the year 2009, which is in the time period of the recession so it relates. Sort of.  I have dabble in internet dating on and off in the past. Creating accounts and then deleting them when life got better. Yes, in times of depression and desperation, or in being completely isolated out in bitter Western Mass winters, I created profiles of my best features and put them out on the world wide web for others like me or worse off or just weird to wink at me or message me. My intentions were never really to date any of these potential lovers, it was more a way to boost my own ego after a messy breakup or to cruise while sitting in front of a warm fire.

I always believed in finding true love in the real world. In a coffee shop, on the street, at a bar, through friends, any way other than meeting someone through an online dating service. It was beneath me! 

I have been fighting many aspects of technology as it has progressed over the years. I have yet to buy an ipod, I refuse to subscribe to Twitter and I fear the day when libraries don't exist because everything is online.  With this fear of the technological progression of our society, I fear that meeting other humans will only exist online. We never leave our homes and become hermits goggled into some alternate universe where we live in the form of computer generated characters. I am not the only one with this fear, there are movies popping up with the concept and even the book (which I am currently reading and is only enhancing my paranoia) Snow Crash describes such a world. But lets be rational here.......this online dating concept is actually the internet version of a phenomena that has existed for hundreds of years. 

Personal ads use to exist in newspapers and still do I believe. Perhaps the ads are put in by people like me who refuse to conform to technological advances or older people who haven't yet figured out how to use a computer or set the clock on their VCR.In the book, Sarah Plain and Tall, a widowed husband takes out an ad for a woman to come care for his children and help him care for a farm. Sarah reads the advertisement and journeys from Maine to Kansas to help on the farm not knowing the man or the children or what she will get herself into. yes, I know that it is a story but my point is that such things existed long ago (long ago being the Depression). And when taking into account ways that people meet online dating seems a bit safer and more in my control than an arranged marriage which I know a great many who have had such relationships and they worked out. So why am I fighting the future of matchmaking?

Halloween night was a crazy night in my life. We will leave it at that since I don't really want to rattle on about the problems of my life but something came of the craziness that has made me embrace technology. Basically, I came to the realization that it is far more humiliating to fall for male friends with girlfriends than it is to become a part of the online dating world. At the beginning of this week, I posted a profile and within a few days had hits and found a few potentials whose words and photos were appealing enough to message and set up meetings with.  So perhaps this anti-technology girl will find true love via the internet. Damn, you technology for winning this battle!  But I will never hermit myself away and completly sucum to your powers! That I promise!