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Online dating: still pathetic

"The perfect match, if you ask me, is between the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year old boy."
- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

*********

Call it desperation, call it loneliness, call it pre-Valentine's malaise, but I finally decided to bite the bullet and sign up for online dating.

Everyone I know under the age of thirty has joined for one of two reasons: 1) they lost a drinking game-related wager, or 2) "Everyone else does it and it seems like fun." I'm sorry, kids that got tricked into painting a fence, but it is the exact opposite of fun.

Do you know what online dating is good for? Horror stories that you tell on dates that weren't arranged via the internet. It's a conversation that has been had many times, and it goes a little something a-like this:

MAN: I'm so glad we met. I was having some really bad luck on eHarmony.
WOMAN: Oh, me too! There was this one guy who would only talk about the plight of Malaysian lemurs.
MAN: Ha ha! You should hear about some of the women that I went out with! She was in an adult cheerleading league.

And scene.

This is the only utility of online dating: making other (read: Real) dates seem more authentic. It's like swinging two bats in the on-deck circle. Or doing that thing in a doorway to make your arms float up afterwards.

I think the problem was that there has never been a site that calls out to me. We all know the usual suspects. Match.com, eHarmony, Craig's List, the AnnCoulter.com message boards. And since "BlondeAustralianWomanWhoLoveTheMarxBrothers.com" is still in beta testing, I've got nothing.

eHarmony features "real testimonials" of happy couples who found their soul mates. Not bad advertising, but apparently only 6's and below can find happiness on the Internet. These "happy couples" look like the sort of parents you'd expect to see at a five year old's pool party. Maybe beautiful people have their own, secret dating system. You know, apart from walking into a bar and being gorgeous. Bastards.

Speed daters look down on online dating. Frequenters of brothels look down on online dating. Even the people who sign up for online dating mock people who sign up for online dating. So why have I been swayed?

The other night, I discovered a new dating site that finally spoke to me. One that seemed in tune with my unique way of life.

I'm speaking, of course, about CougarLife.com: the dating website for women looking to catch younger men.

With their charming jingle "I'm a cougar. I'm a cougar. Don't you want to date a cougar?" I was hooked. Ever since I learned about cougars from Neil Patrick Harris on "How I Met Your Mother," I decided that I wanted to be sexually exploited by a 45 year old woman getting her groove back. Because nothing can possibly go wrong in that situation.

Filling out the profile was an exercise in sexy futility. Apparently I qualify as a "Cub," which in gay-lingo is a small, hairy man. In Cougar context, it is only slightly less degrading. According to the site: "A cub needs to be youthful, fit, unintimidated and of course sexually driven! These men can range from athletes to intellectuals, and from technologists to entrepreneurs and all points in between; they can come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing they have in common is the desire to possess a sexually charged older woman."

Yes. A "technologist." As in "Are you sure you didn't mean: technology?" Where do I sign up? Oh yes. On the website I just quoted.

How did I come across this Shangri-La of desperate divorcées? Was it one of the periodicals that I often read? Was it Hulu's patented ad tailor?

Nope. I happened to stumble across their TV commercial while watching a late-night replay of WWE Monday Night Raw. Because you know it's a high quality Cougar hunting website if you're advertising during professional wrestling events and reruns of Two and a Half Men. Nothing says "honest dating site" like having your informercial sandwiched between a Shake Weight ad and a promo for the Big Carl (new at Carl's Jr). Hot cougars ideally want to hook up with twenty somethings who spend their time blogging about how John Cena should turn heel.

So it's time to hunt the most dangerous game: Cougars. Or maybe they're the ones doing the hunting. I'm still confused about the logistics of this whole ordeal.

******
Epilogue:
There's another site which I was tempted to join, but I doubt that I would fit in: www.blackpeoplemeet.com. A site that, no lie, was advertised five times on ESPN during Martin Luther King Day.

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