Dating PSA: The less you know, the better.  In terms of prior knowledge of your online date, that is.

Is not Googling your date the new abstinence?

Stop Googling your dates’ names before you meet them! I know we’re are all guilty of playing online detective to some degree. When you find out a fellow 100hookupr’s first name, city, and profession, it’s usually not too hard to find this person’s LinkedIn or Facebook page (unless you are the equivalent of a David Cohen, ESQ in NYC).

The next thing you know, you have spent an hour in a trance-like state staring at the screen, reading up on this person’s entire career history, the names of his nieces and nephews, and every photo from the New Year’s Eve party he hosted in 2011.  Believe me, I totally understand how tempting it is to extensively research someone online before your first date! This behavior, however, presents several potential perils:

1. Particularly in the early stage of a new relationship, having more details about someone increases the chance that you’ll find something objectionable about him or her. Say you’ve been exchanging a few messages with ‘Mike’ and agree to meet him for drinks. But, a Google search session reveals his online poker activity or his habit of instagramming three meals a day, or his photo album from his cousin’s Bar Mitzvah last year when he was 20 pounds heavier with a bad haircut. These kinds of things are no big deal, but if you are feeling neutral about Mike, this prior knowledge will color your perception and produce a negative attitude toward the date. Once you meet Mike and develop a mutual attraction with him, you probably won’t care as much that he used to be heavier or that he likes to play poker. If you know this information and haven’t even met him yet though, you may never learn that he has a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh.
2. Another potential problem with over-researching your date is that you might forget what you are “supposed to know” about him or her. Have you ever wondered if she said she had two brothers in her profile… or if you just saw it on Facebook? If you act surprised to hear about her siblings, but she mentioned them in her profile or in a message, she’ll think you weren’t paying attention.  But, if you didn’t already discuss it, and you bring it up yourself, you’ll appear creepy!  This is basically a lose-lose situation, so avoid it by remembering only the information your date gives you – nothing extra.
3. Third, even if Google reveals good things about your potential date, beware of falling into the “good on paper” trap – the opposite of the situation described above in #1. This situation happens when you expect someone to be a great match based on prior research, but he isn’t. The Internet might tell you that handsomedoc76 went to Princeton, grew up on your Grandma’s street, and was a counselor at your camp. If you can’t hold a conversation with him though, or you don’t share the same values, then you might need to let go of the Google image you conjured up that doesn’t actually exist.

In conclusion, Internet research can be dangerous to your dating life!  If you disregard someone because you find a picture of him with his three cats, you could be missing out on a great match. Conversely, if your date doesn’t live up to your high hopes, you could face disappointment. Step away from Google and go meet in person!

We are too dependent on the internet. I just spent an hour on the phone with my horrible internet provider, which I will not mention by name by saying that they are Comcast. My internet goes out every night, and I am often on the phone with them. As I am in customer service myself, I understand that they have to deal constantly with angry customers. However, it is not quite the same. While I work for a good, reputable company, they work for the most disgusting, freedom-hating, Osama-loving corporation America has seen since T-Mobile (I have my reasons).

They make it even worse by employing friendly customer-service representatives. It would be so much easier to yell at someone over the phone if they weren’t so friendly. On top of that, the customer service representative in me prevents me from telling them to punch themselves in the face with a nail. I personally get told to punch myself in the face with a nail about ten times a day, and that is outside of answering phones at work. It usually happens when talking to people in stores, at the gym, people yelling at me while driving next to me after cutting them off, etc. It’s kind of weird that they all shout the same insult.

Without the internet, how am I supposed to look at all of the girls on here who will never love me? I need the possibility, though the probability is zero. I need to be able to feel something positive before I take my horrible shower and then lay in bed alone.

However, once my internet does come back, I’m immediately relieved and no longer angry even though I know it will momentarily go out again. This phenomenon is so weird. We crave the internet so much, that once we see that Google homepage, all of our life’s problems are briefly eliminated. What happened before Google? Were people just constantly murdering people all the time? I don’t remember because I was in junior high constantly getting punched in the face with a nail.

People often like to ask, for example, “What did people do before the internet?” I’ll tell you what they did. They led perfectly rewarding lives. They ate at the dinner table. They stalked crushes only in their minds and also in trees, which, as a bonus, allowed them to not be so overweight that they have to shop for groceries using a computer because if they tried to walk to their car, their legs would rub together so much it would start a fire and kill them.

Of course, things were never as ideal as they seemed in retrospect. People still murdered other people, and sometimes their pets. People also had to meet members of the opposite, or same, sex out in the real life world. Yet people still got together. Babies were still born. Is dating better now because of online dating, or is it just more convenient? Dating is now equated with ordering a pizza or paying taxes. Maybe in another twenty years, online dating will be used on a format equated with using the bathroom or sleeping. I don’t even know what that means. It’s the future. Anything can happen.

Online dating has been beneficial for me, though. I have met nice ladies based on information I was able to review beforehand. This removes the need for pointless small-talk. However, pointless small-talk is very much needed on dates with people you don’t like. However again, online dating already has helped to get rid of undesirable dates. In conclusion, online dating has made dating better. I’ll let you know after Wednesday night if I still believe this sentiment.

This is what happens when one loses internet. For the first thirty minutes, you frantically repeatedly connect and disconnect from your network, with the faint hope that turning it on and off again at a frenetic pace will suddenly make internet for that which there is no internet. After a half hour, you start looking for other wireless networks that are not secure. By ‘not secure’, I, of course, mean not password protected, because if you’re going to steal somebody else’s internet, you’re damn sure not going to try to guess somebody’s password using only the name of the network as a clue. After ten minutes of not finding any other non-secure networks, you restart your computer exactly seven times, using the same ‘on and off’ theory you first used when repetitively disconnecting and connecting from your network.

After an hour of no internet, it’s time to break out the reserves. You start looking through all of the photos on your computer. If you are a photographer, like me, then you have a lot of pictures to look through while waiting in vain for your key that can unlock the world (wide web).

After about two hours, you go to the bathroom because you have been frantically drinking ice water because the a/c has also been broken, but you haven’t spent any time trying to get it fixed because the internet is also broken, and that always takes priority. On top of that, your water bill, cable bill, electricity bill, rent payment, and taxes all have to be done, but again, the internet. On top of that, it is also your father’s birthday, your aunt and uncle’s anniversary, and the day for your scheduled colonoscopy.

So the 24-hour period that I had no internet directly coincided with the time I was supposed to write a new, hilarious JBlog post. Instead, I sat in an OCD-induced stupor waiting for the internet to come back. Now that it’s back, I still have nothing to write about.

If you’ve met someone on 100hookup recently I would like to take the opportunity to humbly suggest to you that December 24^th, Christmas Eve, is a great day to ask him or her out on a date.  First off, I promise you that there’s a very good chance that they’ll agree to a date since there is an overwhelming chance that they aren’t busy and what really do you have to lose since, well, neither are you.

Since your plans probably consisted of watching movies and eating take-out Chinese food, why not buck those stereotypical boring Christmas Eve plans and instead opt for a date? Even though you might have to do a little work finding something to do, or a place to go, I still think it’s worth the small amount of extra effort you’ll spending searching on the Internet.

As the person making this suggestion it would be an empty gesture if I didn’t have a date with a pretty hookup girl that I met on 100hookup planned for Christmas Eve, but fortunately I do. What we are going to do, and where, is yet to be determined; however, I know we’ll figure it out, and I’m sure we’ll have a nice time especially when you consider how most of our single hookup counterparts will be spending their evening.

Admittedly, I’m an old fashioned gal.  It took me a while to accept that in today’s age the majority of couples that get together meet ala the Internet.  What happened to kismet?  Can you imagine what our great-grandparents would think…you met your Beshert how?  On the computer?  What is that?  And how do you meet someone?… Fast Forward …not only do couples meet on the Internet but people text each other to set up those dates.  The sport of dating has turned into a practice of efficiency and multi-tasking.  Is the ever present accessibility beneficial or destructive?  And then of course there is even IMing.  I recognize I may be in the minority here but I prefer not to spend my free time in front of the computer and when I log on to 100hookup, I like it to be a quick venture.  Respond to some emails and log off. But inevitably some guys prefer to chat via IM. I prefer to be outside playing and meeting “you” in person… I’m guessing some people find it efficient and effective verses the back and forth of “old fashion emails.”

I know online dating works.  I have met so many people who have met their partners this way. And yes, even including my mom and her current sweetie.  Perhaps this old fashion gal has to give-in to technology, IMing and this modern age of dating.