Title: I Love You, Let's Meet Author: Virginia Vitzthum Publisher: Little, Brown and Company Publish Date: 2007 Pages: 304 Genres:: Non-Fiction, How-To Guide Reviewer: Chris R. Morgan

Rating:

There will come a time when technology will reach the apex of having an 'e' serve as prefix for almost every aspect of our daily lives. Think of e-driving, e-justice, e-sex changes. None of that has officially come to the fore, but the act of e-dating certainly has. While the very notion of seeking friendships via chat rooms, instant messages and social networks was best left to the youth, sites like eHarmony, Match.com and even the MySpace empire have opened a whole new world to anyone born prior to the rise of the Reagan regime. But just because Baby Boomers can now find love on the Web doesn't make it more manageable or even mature, a sex columnist from—appropriately enough—Salon.com has any chance of a normal social life for you to give you the fullest of hers, and others’, experiences.

In this book, Vitzthum goes in depth into the rise of online modes of communication, from modest AOL chatrooms in the early 90s to more mass-media savvy websites for mouse-click matchmaking. A combination of research, analysis, interviews and subjective insights, I Love You, Let’s Meet is more than a how-to guide to find Mr./Ms. Right/Right Now. Vitzthum's accessible, occasionally witty prose displays her ability to be informative on modern sexuality and her curiosity of how traditional perceptions of sex and relationships fit in to the decidedly complicated new etiquette put forth by these sites. Her findings bare mixed results. On the one hand, access to people and the ease in which those who date online can weed out those less compatible, clears the fogginess of barroom banter. Yet the deception remains. Vitzthum, as well as others, stumble upon potential dates who lie about their age and their marital status and show various other attitudes unbecoming to most decent people.

A vast host of complications arise within the world of online dating. She summarizes the dubious intentions of websites by saying, "The less people trust each other, the more money online dating can make." Profiles and compatibility quizzes double as matchmaking made easy and easy-made advertising dollars. Users "brand" themselves for the dating pool and the corporate suits. Vitzthum also states that sites play off the anxieties of people's fear of lifelong loneliness to make a buck here and there.

Vitzthum fills the book with a diverse range of interviews varying in generations, careers, etc. It's obvious that these sites now have something for everyone. Some or more involved than others, some are more successful than others while the rest feel just as bitter as they would have if they dated without clicking a mouse. Her portrayal of the individuals is effective in bringing the human out of the profile. These subjects have various views, preferences and uses for online services. In interviewing some of the subjects, she noticed a shift in the perception of "hotness." Whereas hotness is traditionally based on literal physical attributes, the self-branding aspect kicks in again and it becomes almost a state of mind, attitude or hype that enhances a basic online profile.

One interesting anecdote, one of the more amusing ones, was her experience with profile consulting. Vitzthum is fascinated by the time put into making profiles, another aspect of the mass media self-branding she finds common among online daters. She drops $50 to essentially have a complete stranger criticize her Nerve profile—provided in the book—as generic and, at times, "gross." Suffice it to say, she rejects the advice.

In this age when online dating is basically mainstream, I Love You, Let's Meet serves as useful in sifting through the muck of it all and getting a few chuckles in the process. Her sex columnist prose serves her well, but the book could have used some more coherent organization. She covers quite a bit, and there is indeed a lot, and it can be hard to follow. The book doesn't dissuade people from joining eHarmony, JDate or posting a tongue-in-cheek hookup request on Craigslist. Nor is it really muckraking the industry. What Vitzthum does is essentially show how little online dating does in making relationships and sex less complicated. In the human business, one can only expect more than a few malfunctions in the product and skewed promotional campaigns from the middlemen and the product his/herself. The possibilities have promise, but are far from perfect. Personally, I'll stick to using the Internet for porn and Wikipedia, and use the bar for sulking thereafter.