Cyber love at first click seems more and more prevalent but doesn't always work out

By some miracle, the prettiest girl at the party let me take her out on a date. We talked and giggled nervously over Indian food, and I almost kissed her among shelves of old records. I wanted to see her again, but she didn’t return my call, my text, or even my Facebook poke. After a few days, a mutual friend broke the news to me: Miracle Girl had started an OKCupid account and was searching for British men ages 25-45. She had moved on.

Online dating used to be for total losers, but now, even hot girls are doing it, especially around this time of year—when it’s cold outside, and store aisles are filled with stuffed gorillas that sing love songs. To our generation, browsing online dating profiles just feels like Facebook-stalking, and we’ve been desensitized from the creepiness of both. Many students also like the practical aspect of online dating—rather than going to Strand and waiting to run into the next datable person reading the same obscure, yet deeply meaningful book as us by crazy random happenstance, online dating allows us to simply plug in our preferences and search.

Dating websites geared specifically toward Columbia students include DateMySchool and LoveAtCU, but one of the most popular sites among students in general is OKCupid. The fulcrum of OKCupid is a never-ending personality quiz that every user can take—with questions like “Would it bother you if a partner likes to cross dress?” In addition to answering “yes” or “no” to each question, the user also indicates how an Ideal Match would answer each question and how important that answer is to him or her (“Irrelevant” to “Mandatory”). The more questions the user answers, the more accurate matches are supposed to become.

“I answered like 200 of those questions when I was bored,” said Marshall*, who started using OKCupid after a semester full of boring first dates. One day, an adorkable boy showed up in his top matches. But Marshall hadn’t set his geographic filters—Mr. Adorkable lived a thousand miles away. Marshall sent him a message anyway, thinking he would make a good friend. They fell in love instead—over casual talking, which became “date nights” (talking face-to-face over Skype, then watching a movie together on the internet), which became visits to see each other. They are so cute that even the most cynical of Marshall’s friends have to admit that the usually cold Marshall has a soul when they see the couple together.

On the other hand, Joan* met someone who seemed awesome on the internet—he regaled her with tales from his academic research on the city’s lesbian dominatrix scene and of his nights out as a “fag stag” (a straight man who hangs out with gay guys and hooks up with the hot girls who tend to orbit around them). Joan and Mr. Stag decided on a first date at New York City’s No Pants Subway Ride—a flash mob of people who meet at a pre-arranged time and place to ride the subway, drop trou, and soak in the ensuing awkwardness. Mr. Stag showed up hung-over, which might have been excusable had he not been so boring.

Chemistry is hard to capture in an algorithm, especially because at least part of chemistry isn’t rational at all—it’s that element in someone that makes us drop the shopping list of traits we thought we wanted in another person and say, “I want that one.” The ability to see another person as a person and not as a bucket of traits is probably the very acorn of love.

While online dating websites like OKCupid give us the opportunity to articulate what it is we want in a lover, sometimes we have to admit that we don’t know what we want. While I’ve had wonderful lovers who I could have programmed into existence according to the specs important to me at the time (and I swear I wasn’t dating robots), I highly doubt OKCupid would have matched me with my current boyfriend.

“What, out of curiosity, would have weeded me out?” he asked.

“You’re a Republican, among other things,” I told him. Really, I didn’t know what I wanted until I met him. OKCupid would have assumed that I at least had a rough sketch.

*All names have been changed.

Lucy Sun is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics. Queerbot runs alternate Fridays.