Adventures in Online Dating: Chapter Ten ONE OF THESE MATCHES IS JUST LIKE THE OTHER ONE
In the morning there are at least half a dozen more New Matches, some of them Closing the Match before I can even check their profiles, others demanding more attention than I have to give right now.
Later, after work, I look again and see Match #1 hasn’t written be back and Match #3 hasn’t answered my Open Questions. Match #4, we’ll call the John Cusak look-alike, has not answered my First Questions. Noelle comes by before dinner and we look at her My Matches page.
“Can we swap Matches?” she says.
“Hah. No. Why?” I say.
“Because I’ve got this firefighter here that I think would be perfect for you,” Noelle says.
“Where, let me see?” Dara says, joining us in the back computer room of the coffeehouse. Noelle clicks on the photo and we wait for it to load, the hefty Carhartt wearing firefighter leaning against the fire truck. “Oh. Damn!” says Dara, leaning in for a better look. He is, indeed, handsome and strong and wears a lovely five ‘o’ clock shadow. But Noelle’s not interested and he’s her Match, so she moves on and I log out to let Dara long in (there are only two computers).
“Ok. This is ridiculous,” says Dara, the only one left yet to join to full membership and pay to see pictures and Start Communcation. “All My Matches are NASCAR fans or beer drinkers. This dude says he ‘can’t live without’ Clemson Football, my iPod, NASCAR, and porn….This other one says he is most passionate about finding someone with a perfect body…[Click, click, Match Closed…Click, click, New Match Found…]…”
“Well, I got one here that says, ‘I am most passtionate about NASCAR and yes I still have all my teeth,’” says Noelle to the now growing crowd of five people in the coffeehouse computer room (the three of us, Noelle’s mom, and a craft school students curious about all the fuss).
“Hey, who’s this physical therapist from AirportCity, NC?” says Dara, finally hopeful, looking at her New Matches page.
“What?” I say, disbelieving.
“Wait,” says Noelle, turning her head slowly. “Isn’t that…?”
“Oh my god. Yes, it is. That’s my Match #1! It’s the same guy!” I say.
“WHAT?” says Dara, clicking on his About Me page. I lean close to the screen and check the facts. No doubt about it, this is the same guy (no photo available). “You mean we can barely get dates up here on the mountain, and when we do it’s always the same guys our friends have been with since there are only a few eligible guys around here? And then we start online dating and out of all the guys, any of the guys of the ‘thousands of new members per day,’ we get the SAME MATCHES?”
I suggest immediately starting a new membership, posting a photo of Dara and I as Siamese twins, filling out a hybrid Personality Profile across 29 Dimensions, and seeing if we get Match #1 a third time around. Meanwhile, Noelle continues to read her New Match profiles and we find that she has three of the same Matches I have as well.
Incest in the world of eHarmony? Could it be? That’s not very harmonious if you ask me! Isn’t that kinda like two people eating with the same spoon out of the same gallon of ice cream?
