The E-Games People Play

As I said yesterday, people play these online games with people because of their own special agendas. Some folks are bored, some folks need to know how popular they are, but the biggest driving forces here are fear and deception.

Jennifer Worick, author of "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating & Sex", says people do have different agendas when it comes to dating. "For me, the end goal is to be in a loving relationship with someone. But for others, the end goal might be that they’re passing time, preventing boredom, or just collecting men and women", she says.

Deception, people pretending to be something they’re not (whether it’s single or a certain gender), can be another reason relationships stay in the virtual realm, says Patricia Wallace, Psychologist and Senior Director of Information Technology at Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth in Maryland.

Another big factor is fear. "There’s the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of making a fool of yourself," she says. "An online relationship is perceived as being low-risk as compared to meeting in person. When you pick up the phone or meet in person, you have a lot less control over your message and your impression as compared to a Facebook wall post or an IM where you can rewrite and think about what you want to say." (In other words, lie.)

She says, having more control means having the ability to create a better version of you which can then be marketed to a better version of someone else (more than likely a fake version). "A woman (or a man) might feel really smart and attractive when she’s (or he's) online because she (or he) comes up with a lot of witty things to say. She or he controls the pictures that she or he sends and she or he meets somebody who does the exact same thing," says Wallace, author of “The Psychology of the Internet." "They can have a magical interaction — a meeting of the minds, sort of — whereas meeting in person would just spoil it. He stutters; she burps." (You know, real human things.)

Yeah, reality kicks in... reality can be messy. It's not clinical, it's not clean. What all of these people miss out on is that life... real life, real love... is only interesting really good when it is in fact what it is... messy, unclean, unclinical, and totally out of control. This is what makes a relationship worthwhile and memorable. The technology, the hiding and the posturing be damned. In the end, the real will win out and it has to.

Don't get me wrong... I network on Facebook, probably more than I should, but if I were single, trying to meet someone, and forge a relationship, Facebook, Twitter, I-Chat, etc. would be the last place I would go to do so. Remember, you're talking to a guy who doesn't trust the personals in the newspapers!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!