The Love Machines

By Walter Kirn

After his first marriage ended in divorce, Steven Rudin, 42, decided to have a go at online dating. He wasn't expecting much. In December 1998, he logged onto a website he'd heard about devoted to matching prospective mates with an interest in rural life, countrysingles.com Soon enough one profile caught his eye, that of Ann Christensen, also 42. Within a few weeks, the two were e-mailing each other, and by February they were engaged. Rudin moved from Seattle to Fresno, Calif., found a job as an auto mechanic, and last June he married Christensen, a customer-service rep with an agricultural company. The newlyweds completed their rural idyll by settling down on a 30-acre raisin farm. "If you had told me that I would wind up meeting my great love this way," says Rudin, "I would have said you were crazy."

Crazy or not, the world of online dating is certainly booming, with millions of willing singles hunched over keyboards touch-typing their best smooth lines. "It's to the point where mothers are actually telling single daughters to search for their husbands on the Web," says Trish McDermott of Match.com an Internet dating service that boasts about 100,000 active members. Like similar services, Match.com attempts to rationalize and organize that messiest of human endeavors--finding love, or its closest substitute. Users, who pay $100 a year, fill out a questionnaire listing their height and weight and personal interests. Like brokerage customers screening mutual funds according to their desire for current income or long-term capital appreciation, users also specify their romantic goals. Are they seeking an e-mail pen pal? A life partner? Finally, users receive a roster of other members who meet their criteria, and the e-chase is on.

In many ways, this is courtship as it once was, before the advent of the singles bar. There is plenty of conversation but no touching. With the computer serving as a chaperon, guaranteeing that no one gets too close, tastes are compared, as are family backgrounds, hopes and dreams. Much as sites such as Priceline and eBay encourage old-fashioned economic behavior--one bids, one negotiates, one doesn't pay retail--the dating sites serve as 19th century parlors where couples sit in chairs and chat. Even the word chat is slightly antique, recalling porch swings and glasses of iced tea.

"You're actually seeing couples court each other and build up some level of intimacy," says psychologist Alan Clark of Santa Monica, Calif. "This can help make relationships more meaningful and exciting down the road."

Online dating also puts a premium on verbal fluency, another bygone romantic skill. The sonneteers competed to shower their ladies with flowery metaphors and witty images; online suitors are also obliged to charm. "The written word promotes people talking about themselves without the self-consciousness of how do I look, how am I dressed," says Andrea Baker, a sociologist at Ohio University. She sees the Internet as a haven for the shy, the tongue tied and the thoughtful. "You have the chance to think about what you say and revise what you say and add to what you say." Also, says Jim Fraenkel, 29, a New York television producer, "all of a sudden, there's a forum for meeting people that doesn't involve alcohol or staying out till 4 in the morning."

Despite its sometimes traditional etiquette, online dating has a futuristic side. In a sense, it resembles an electronic trading floor specializing in emotional futures. And with millions of people seeking partners in cyberspace, submarkets have sprung up, appealing to specific religious backgrounds, age groups and sexual orientations (see accompanying story). Even better, online courtship saves time and energy by culling prospects in advance. If a man prefers, say, 6-ft., brunet Scorpios, he can make his tastes known up front, discouraging the advances of short, blond Leos. But no amount of screening can trump human chemistry. Grooving on instant messages doesn't mean two people will click in person. "You cannot assess information about another person without physical, nonverbal cues," says Dr. Reece Burka, a New Orleans psychologist. "A false sense of intimacy is created when interaction remains purely cognitive."

Like walking from Plato's cave into sunlight, the transition from e-mail to males and females interacting in person can be disorienting. Charles Frier, 50, an Atlanta attorney, used to frequent Compuserve's Jewish single forum. "I met an interesting woman online," Frier recalls, "but she lived quite far away. After I purchased an expensive nonrefundable ticket to visit her, she sent an e-mail canceling the meeting because she had met someone locally. Online relationships," an embittered Frier adds, "have no more guarantees than 3-D."

Carl, 47, a mechanical engineer from Chicago who asked to remain anonymous, probably wishes Frier's lament were true. Carl lost a wife six years ago to the third dimension of the chat rooms. After noting a suspicious number of messages on his home computer from the same sender, he retrieved his wife's deleted files and found romantic missives from a man two states away. A divorce ensued, and Carl's wife moved in with her new boyfriend (they later broke up). "Conversing on the Internet," Carl observes, "could totally ruin your life." Carl, however, now lives with a woman he wooed online.

Romance has always had its perils, though, and if the great masked ball of online dating sometimes breeds heartbreak when the masks come off, that's a risk millions seem prepared to take. Indeed, if the Net's emotional dance floor poses a challenge for the lovelorn, it is the sheer size of the crowds it attracts. "You wind up having the kid in the candy-store effect, with unlimited numbers of people to choose from," say Aaron Ahuvia, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. As marriages made by modem multiply, only time will tell if they're as lasting as the ones made in heaven.

--Reported by Jyl Benson/New Orleans, Laird Harrison/Oakland and Laura Koss-Feder/New York

With reporting by Jyl Benson/New Orleans, Laird Harrison/Oakland and Laura Koss-Feder/New York