Over the past several months I was rather struck by the number of people friends or strangers alike who were quite happy to share with me that the most recent girlfriend, date, or sexual encounter they'd had was thanks to meeting people online via relationship websites.

I found this a little remarkable at first, mainly because of the traditional stigma I suppose has been attached to folks looking for love through one of the many businesses available offering their matchmaking services. In the first instance -or so the stigma goes- the people who actually sign up for these kinds of services are little more than overweight, desperate loner types who can’t get off the couch and away from that bag of Doritos, a brand with which they’ve had a more substantial relationship over the past five years than with a proper, live human being. Second –or so the stigma goes- these businesses are often little more than an expensive scam for desperate people looking for unrealistic goal partners that can never be satisfied, or people just after the attention of someone -anyone- who might get them off that lonely couch, away from the bag of Doritos, and into a real, active social life with a proper, live human being.

Of course this really is all hooey, because as we know it’s well documented that while there are probably a few truly desperate-case individuals out there looking for love online, most of the people that frequent these incredibly popular sites and services are as arguably ‘normal’ as can be, and drawn from an absolute cross-section of socio-economic and other classes than might be expected. I’m certain, as so many of these websites assure us, that there are plenty of regular men and women who first met the love of their life in cyberspace.

The thing is, though, that unlike those sites such as eharmony.com and RSVP.com which are more focussed, I suppose, on offering matches for people genuinely looking for long-term love, many of these individuals regaling me of late with tales of fantastic sexual conquests and between-the-sheets experiences of joy had gone through websites that weren’t really interested in setting up lifelong partnerships, but rather one night stands, and catering to every sexual kink and preference you could possibly imagine.

And so, increasingly curious about this particular corner of the online relationship sub-culture, I decided to do a little undercover investigating for myself. I signed up for three of the apparently more popular websites out there- hornymatches.com, sexsearch.com, and the ‘foshizzle’-sounding bootycall.com (no subtlety in any of these site’s names, that’s for sure). I paid for three trial memberships, and gave myself assumed names and personality profiles (thus protecting that future run at the Presidency from a dirty smear campaign, ahem…). Not wanting to screw around with anyone’s potential real feelings and interests too much, I made a ground-rule of the experiment that I wouldn’t engage in contact with other members nor reply to any messages I might receive. I was there purely to observe.

Hoping to learn a little about what exactly might attract attention from the opposite sex online as compared to in the real world, I set up three very distinct profiles of 30-year-old males in each of these websites. First, I offered an overweight male, ‘Drew’, sexually inexperienced, but reading as incredibly genuine and friendly. Next, as something of a control mechanism in the experiment, I submitted a profile for ‘Joe’, an individual average in every possible characteristic that might be considered, from height and weight to the relatively innocuous state of his preferences in a woman. Finally, I offered a profile for an athletic, muscled Adonis-type, ‘Gary’, who was sexually experienced, but also written to appear as incredibly arrogant, fairly kinky, and somewhat chauvinistic. The personality profiles in place, I decided to sit back and wait for responses.

But most startling about joining these sites weren’t the types of responses I generated, it was the kinds of profiles already on offer from people. Sure, there were a few arguably ‘standard’ profiles wherein individuals simply displayed a regular photo of themselves and, at least as innocently as you might do within a web page devoted towards getting people laid, expressed fairly plainly their sexual interests and desires in a partner. Leaning towards the majority of profiles, however, was the more forward approach. What we’re talking about here is that instead of a photo of a potential partner’s face, many chose instead to submit a photo of their vagina- magnified five times. Or perhaps just a photo of their left boob. And instead of ‘normal’ online names like ‘Luv2MeetU’ OR ‘Grl4Fun’, were names like ‘Stretch My Ass’ and ‘Cum on Me’. Romantic stuff. A quick read of these profiles read more like a tutorial in anatomy and the kinds of things we might only ever expect to find behind the velvet curtains of a dicey Tijuana back alley-bar for $5.

Quite crazy, really, and if the female profiles were this daring, I could only imagine what most guys were doing. I needn’t wonder for too long- several female profiles, obviously fed up with receiving literally hundreds of expressions of interest from men merely providing photos of their penises had posted notices demanding:

‘WILL NOT RESPOND IF YOU JUST SEND ME COCK SHOTS!! NEED TO SEE A FACE PHOTO!!’

And so in many ways I guess this was perhaps the principal discovery in exploring these sites, though I suppose it was an obvious reality- using the internet to meet the opposite sex certainly affords an individual the chance to be far more confident, daring, and incredibly forward than you might possibly be in real life. Or have you actually met someone recently who walked up to you in a bar and said ‘Hi, my name is Stretch My Ass’? Of course not only does cyberspace allow for this kind of aggressiveness, but it allows people to lie, describing and selling themselves as individuals they most certainly are not.

Indeed, it was more than a little alarming to see how many people on these sites –I especially noticed it at hornymatches.com- had absently allowed far too much traceable personal information to be revealed in their profiles. Some had inadvertently left their full, real names in their profile titles. Others had included information about their jobs, where they attended college, and on occasion even named the street they lived in. When sites such as these number members well into the several thousand I’m sure there have been plenty of occasions where people have met up after first contacting each other online and discovered someone wasn’t who they had claimed to be- perhaps fatter or shorter than their profile suggested. And yet with the focus of these websites being so squarely upon sex and sexual liaisons I found it far more worrying that situations could occur where a person of sinister motive might get in the way of someone’s far too haphazard attempts at finding some fun. We needn’t only worry about murderers or rapists, either. Just this past month in Sydney it was uncovered that a gang of thieves had been using false female profiles on a dating website to lure men into hotel rooms where they would then tie up and rob their victims. Police theorised that there had likely been many victims who were unwilling to come forward out of shame. All this and we haven’t even considered the issue of whether the many thousands of people frequenting these sites are always mindful of sexually transmitted diseases.

In the end my three-male-profiles experiment didn’t really yield any significant surprises, and in fact played to type and expectations quite well. Without wanting to sound too malicious, fat ‘Drew’ pretty much only got expressions of interest from women in a similar situation, average ‘Joe’ received a mix of polite and more aggressive propositions, and ‘Gary’ the muscled jerk quite literally received a flood of offers from women of all shapes and sizes, teasing at the old assertion that women love to love the cocky guy. And judging by some of the offers Gary did receive let me assure you that these sites truly aren’t just a realm for overweight, bookish types. Of those which appeared to be genuine several of the women whose profiles I encountered would be described as stunning by anyone, and most were educated, professional types to boot. It should be no surprise, I guess, that everyone loves the nookie, nookie.

It’s fascinating though what such sites tell us about the intersection of technology into human lives. While these forums might provide options to people stranded socially because of a busy, hectic existence, and allow people to be more forward, more ‘themselves’, or engage in role-playing not possible elsewhere, even if a real liaison eventually results from an online proposition, this process is so isolated and lonely compared to what we of course get out of face to face interaction with other people. There’s a soullessness and something very important missing when we can essentially ‘shop’ on the internet for who it is we’re going to have sex with two nights from now. I’m not talking about moral issues here -though that’s probably something worth assessing for many as part of this discussion- I’m talking about how in so many aspects of our lives technology that is designed to free us so often merely pushes us further and further away from each other.

Consider the individual who is able to –at significantly reduced cost- scale down the size of his multimillion-dollar international business to three men working in cubicles in a gated community in Colorado. Profits might be improving, but the small joys we get from talking bollocks around the water-cooler with workmates of an office day can’t be adequately replaced by email banter. In the same turn we’re undoubtedly losing many important intangibles –perhaps from the way we learn to communicate and interact with others to something as arguably flippant as the art of romance- when we jump onto yet anotherwww.comeandfuckemenow.com website.

And while I can appreciate the benefits of looking for fun online –I’m sure many people have absolutely no interest in putting themselves at the feet of another seamy night trawling singles bars- don’t mistake convenience for being something that makes a situation any easier. The ratio of men to women on these websites looked like something along the lines of 5:1 in most cases. That means women getting lots and lots of offers, lots and lots of ‘cock shots’, and undoubtedly lots and lots of offers that can compete in an emotional sense with the kind of physical aggression females have to fend off on a daily basis when they’re out of a night. In the same turn, rejection online isn’t necessarily any easier than in real life, either- propositioning twenty people at once thanks to the way a site is laid out and receiving zero replies may be even more painful than getting bounced back on the dance floor at your local club.

But these sites aren’t going anywhere soon. If anything, their membership grows quite literally by the hundreds with each passing day. Profits are soaring and, for many, orgasms with total strangers are roaring. It will be interesting to see in the future if we continue to compartmentalise and manage as many aspects of our lives as possible with the simple click of a mouse button. Until the trail of lemmings or evolving common sense leads me that way I’ll stick with trying my luck out on that dance floor, talking to real, live human beings, and whipping out another one of my fail-safe pick up lines.

Now honey, did you say you liked your eggs in the morning scrambled or fertilised?

Fail-safe, I tell ya'.