School of Love

A few nights ago, in a rather inebriated state, my housemates and I placed an ad for a friend on an online dating site. It was drunken revenge for him not coming out, apparently he had a “9:15 seminar that I really can’t miss”. We went the whole way; uploaded an innocent looking picture, described in detail his ‘fun-loving and caring personality’ and what he was looking for in ‘the one’.

We had a good laugh about it at the time, but as with most drunken escapades I’d all but forgotten about it by the morning. That was until multiple emails popped up in my inbox the next day letting me know (we’d used my email address) that quite a few ladies had expressed interest in my friend who has since begged me to remain anonymous- lets just call him Chris*.

Feeling a little bit guilty, I grabbed one of my equally responsible housemates to check out the middle-aged divorced women who’d fallen for Chris’ youthful good looks. Except these girls weren’t aged and wrinkled; they were young and some of them were actually good looking. There was a ‘naughtyJodie’ aged 21 from Leeds, a ‘han_579’, 20 from London, and a rather provocative ‘ontheshelf_09’, 21 from Newcastle.

Now excuse my assumptions, but I always expected online dating sites to be for older generations too shy to get out and meet new people, or divorced forty-somethings looking for a second chance at love. I had no idea that young people were using these sites, or at least the sheer amount of young people we found after a quick browse on one of them.

Is online dating a good thing for those too shy to approach someone in real life, or is it simply defeatist? Just sitting in front of a computer instead of going out into the real world and meeting real people?
Curious about this question, I searched the internet to see if there were any sites specifically dedicated to online dating for younger people. The search brought up more than I had expected and even several sites specifically for students looking for love. This was an even bigger revelation; a whole online student dating community, who knew?

I’m torn whether this is quite sweet or just really weird. It’s nice that less confident students can chat and find comfort online. But it freaks me out that these students trust a website to give them ‘perfect matches’ when they could go out to the Courtyard, meet some new people and possibly find a perfect match for themselves, not to mention the obvious dangers of meeting people online.

It seems a bit scary that some people let technology make their life choices. And isn’t university supposed to be the time of your life? A time for acting crazy, having fun and meeting friends you’ll know for life, not stuck in front of your laptop talking to God knows who online.