Online dating - then and now.

The golden age of online dating is upon us. Just ask executives of Match.com, who last month reported a 195 percent increase in paid subscribers over the same quarter last year. Or look at Yahoo, where online personals have increased the company's revenues despite a decline in income from advertising. Or talk to any youngish single person in New York. When I asked a friend, who met her last boyfriend online, how many of her single friends had used or are currently using online dating services, she replied, "Pretty much all of them."

Look no further than the "Personals of the Day" you see pop up on this site, as well as the Onion and countless other sites, and you'll realize two things: One, online personals have become a major source of revenue for content sites, and two, there are some damn fine-looking young folks floating around out there. Unless Spring Street Networks, the source of those ads, has been inventing fictional singles with a crack team of models, stylists, marketers and professional photographers, there appear to be a great many attractive people online these days, shamelessly hamming it up in the hopes of meeting that special anyone.

It's a far cry from the spring of 1996, when I attended a party for Match.com that was populated primarily by computer programmers who looked like they hadn't left the server room of their start-up offices in several months, their only contact with other humans limited to those moments when they braved the weak San Francisco sunlight to fetch a banana moon pie from the company's vending machine, or to scuttle over to Cafe Centro for a quadruple nonfat latte. That tall blond girl who worked there sure was cute, but she was sort of mean!
Now that blond girl is prominently featured on the pages of Match.com, pensively biting a manicured finger while lounging across an unmade bed in her nightie under the moniker "sweet 'n' dirty."

So how did everything change so quickly, and why have people begun peddling themselves so shamelessly online?

The truth is, most young people see nothing the least bit embarrassing about online dating or "man shopping" as one woman referred to it in a recent New York Times article. Maybe kids today are far less self-conscious about romance and love in general, thanks to not having been exposed to "The Love Boat" during their formative years. The more likely explanation, though, is that the anonymity of the medium, the prevalence of blogs, online photo galleries and personal Web sites, and the comfort most of us feel in corresponding entirely through e-mail have combined to make online dating a perfectly acceptable means of meeting new people.

Demand creates supply. When you think for a minute about how inefficient and circuitous the traditional delivery system for meeting potential lovers is, it's not hard to see how we landed here. When your options are limited to getting set up by your friends, going out to parties or going to smoky bars in the hopes of getting drunk enough to knock over someone with a pulse, it's clear why shopping for a mate online has been embraced by mainstream America.

Imagine, if you will, trying to buy a food processor without a Best Buy, or a Macy's, or a Williams-Sonoma. Imagine if you had to go to crowded parties and other tedious functions and search the crowd for someone with an old Cuisinart at home that they might be willing to sell you. Furthermore, imagine if it were considered rude to bring up the Cuisinart straight off the bat -- instead, you were expected to ask people about themselves, maybe buy them a drink, and feign interest in their rambling, self-involved banter, until finally, at the end of the night, loosened up by a few drinks, you could say what had been on your mind for hours:
quot;Um. I hope this doesn't sound too forward, but do you ... process food?"

And despite all that effort, imagine that the person's face drops, and he or she replies politely, but in a clipped, uncomfortable tone, "No, I'm not really into that kind of thing," and then exits the party without even asking for your number in case he or she ever does get the urge to process.