Met on the Net

`In an age when sex is deadly and we spend more time on our computers that we do with people, how can we not make online communication sexual?"

"Now we're together and we're very much in love, bummer thing is we're on opposite sides of the planet."

Love at First Byte. Met on the Net. Sighberlove. Cyberhunks and Cyberlizards. The Virtual Groper. Kiss Net. Candlelight Romance Directory. Virtual Immorality. FLIRT - Find Love In Real Time. And: "For the romantically impaired - Let the Cyrano Server help you say just the right thing to that special person."

Where are you? You're in the world of cyber romance. Key in "romance on the net" to any search engine and the matching results are in telephone-number figures. You don't so much surf the Internet for these tens of thousands of lurve sites as bellyflop dizzily from one to the next. After a few hours, you come away from the computer feeling like a cartoon character, with throbbing pink hearts where your eye sockets usually are.

Romance, the perpetual forum for those loving feelings, can thrive anywhere. It's certainly pounding away on the Internet, where the combination of online confession sessions and schmaltzy marketing was a marriage made in virtual heaven.

"I wonder if, at the turn of the century, people got this worked up about the telephone? Because that's when this `cyberdating' started! Email and the Web are simply different media for communications, not a new paradigm," according to Fran in New Jersey. She has posted her message on a site called "Back Chat - the dirt on cyberdating". Reading some of the messages gives a compelling range of people's responses to the concept of love online.

Lisa in Oregon writes: "In an age when sex is deadly and we spend more time on our computers than we do with people, how can we not make online communication sexual?" Editha in Florida offers the observation: "People have always been meeting and falling in love, sometimes in the most bizarre ways. We just have to go with the wave of the future. Fifty years from now, cyberdating will be treated as a normal part of our culture."

From Colorado, Christina is chilled out about it all. "`Hey, everything comes down to sex and territory. And it gets more and more interesting, given that the Net certainly expands the territory." Debbie in West Virginia says: "`Cyberspace opens up a whole new world, to be sure, but it has the potential of closing off the other world right around us. You can't hold hands over the computer!" And Alabama-based Emily kicks in with: "Cyber-guys could not be any creepier than some of the ones I have met in person."

On the Kiss Net message forum, Sandy Ess advises caution: "Love over a computer is much different than reality. Cyber-relationships become very intense very quickly because there are none of the distractions of the real world and because we build mental images of what we want, rather than building on reality. I'm not saying it's impossible to find lasting love on the Internet, I'm just saying it isn't a replacement for real time love."

Jacquie of Ontario disagrees. "I met the love of my life online in 1996. We talked daily for months. We were completely honest with each other - this is something which is a complete must! We met in person last March for the most beautiful weekend of both our lives. I knew before I met him that I was very much in love with him. He is soon to be my husband . . ."

Meeting strangers is always going to be a surprise, especially if they have been economical with the truth. On Backtalk, Annie says from Australia: "I have a friend who decided to meet a woman he had met online, at a computer conference in Prague, and when he went to meet her at the airport, he found out that she was actually a transvestite, and he was a bit salty that his online friend had neglected to reveal this small piece of information, and ended up fleeing the conference."

They're the ones who actually met. The Lovelife site is one of many which invite people to post the stories of their Net romances. Scores do. Jeff lives in Alberta. Janis lives in Darwin. After six months of emailing each other, Jeff writes: "Now we're together and we're very much in love, bummer thing is we're on opposite sides of the planet. I plan on rectifying that though, as I'm planning a trip down there in March to see her and actually touch her and hug her and be with her, a dream I've had for a very long time."

Caer Sidi on Kiss Net has a lot in common with Jeff. "I just want to post this for all those who don't believe in Internet relationships. I met my soulmate in a chatroom. We realised that we fit like two pieces of a puzzle. He filled the empty places of my soul and I fitted the ones in him. It is difficult because we live thousands of miles apart but he has asked me to marry him and I have accepted."

This draws a tart response from Shirley Rogers. "It is my opinion that it is the words you are falling in love with, not the person." S. Stringfellow agrees, warning: "You won't see their imperfections until you are with them. Until then, they are just a fantasy dream partner."

But for Callie Cadey, who met her fiance online, it was a different story. "By way of the Internet, we got to know each other much more intimately as far as thoughts and feelings go, than we would have in the `real' world, where the superficialities of life start to creep in." Regina H. also met her fiance online. She moved from Reno to Louisiana to live with her man. "It is truly amazing to meet and fall in love with someone on the basis of his personality, intellect etc and then to fall in love all over again when you meet in person."

On the Internet, no excesses are spared. There's cheeze aplenty - poems, stories and declarations of love so soppy they run the risk of waterlogging your computer - and sleaze aplenty. One of the countless folk advertising goods is Deborah Corn, "Intimacy Expert", and author of 101 Tips For Grrreat Sex. "Famous for her two-minute counselling sessions in bookstores across America," croons the Web site, on which you can arrange to purchase one of her books or videos. There's also a Barbie-lookalike photo of Corn posted on her Web site, for you to gape at while you grope for words that rhyme with her laconic surname.

In the Junk Yard of the Net, Romance and Romance Again site, you can choose to explore some of the following. "Tell Your Own Cyber-Love Story; From the Heart - A collection of love poems and letters from real people on the Web; Cyber-Romance 101 - an introduction to falling in love on the Internet, commentary about the ins and outs of cyberlove."

This is where it all becomes even more delightfully surreal. Reading up on the advice, it's impossible not to be reminded of small children and their Tamagotchi virtual pets that beep away night and day for attention before they turn into aliens or die. Ballroom of Romance, how are ya.

But there are some familiar points of reference: shades of Lisdoonvarna Online. On the Kiss Net forum at present, there's a message from a woman named Brigitte. "I'm looking to find love in Ireland. I'm an American woman, 22 years old, and am ready for marriage. Only catch is, I want to marry an Irishman." Catch? What catch? Lisdoonvarna punters, take note.