A wise man* once said, “Women, can’t live with ‘em, pass the beer nuts.” The older I become, the more this makes sense to me. I find myself content with my day to day each passing year, and see women as luxuries I simply can’t afford. This is probably dangerous thinking considering our culture. I may be shunned by the community or worse yet, burned at the stake as a heretic. What can I say? It’s hard to not become jaded about dating in this crazy bubble we live in here inUtah.

There is good news, however. The great thing about searching for your soul mate in this day and age is technology. Nowadays you can meet and greet the opposite sex without even opening your mouth. This is a fabulous tool for the chronically passive dater. Ah yes, the wide world of online dating. Wow-wee, there should be a professional guidebook to this whole approach. It’s very interesting how social media has affected us and our dating habits. With the world-wide web, it’s inevitable that people would be open to the idea of meeting new people via online communication. To patronize those willing to boldly date where no one has before, there are a slew of online dating sites. Some you have to pay, others are free. There’s even ones specializing to connect those with similar religious beliefs; including Mormons! For our purposes today we’ll focus on the free one that we’ve all heard of called LDSLinkup.com.

As far as I can tell, this site was originally set up as a multi-purpose social network site for LDS people. It seemed to use the same basic template as MySpace and was established before Facebook really took off. In its early days, one could use it to connect with mission friends, college buddies, old ward members, and establish new connections such as finding a date. With the conquering of the internet by Facebook, all the aforementioned purposes, save dating, were pretty much made obsolete, mostly, I feel, because Linkup refused to adapt and kept its same antiquated model. Thus Linkup became the premier free LDS dating site. Let the fun begin!

Over the years many of my friends and I have had our fair share of time logged on Linkup. To say the least, it’s mostly a waste of time, mostly. Some friends have had the willpower to delete their accounts, some shun it for a while and come crawling back. Some even decided to face the real-world and get married (sell-outs). Love it or hate it, it’s its own culture with its own rules. During my time spent on Linkup, I’ve noticed some interesting trends. Keep in mind these are from the average, cynical male perspective.

One thing I can’t figure out is why the majority of the women seem to be either liars or a bunch of sheep on there. Throughout my countless hours of research, I found a number of recurring themes in the female profile. For some reason no one affiliated with this site ever seems to ever watch TV. Everyone says , “I don’t watch TV,” or “I don’t have time to watch TV,” or “TV is a waste of time,” or “I’m too busy living each day to the fullest by rock climbing, snowboarding, helping under-privileged children all whilst maintaining my unparalleled good looks to waste precious minutes to watch TV.” To that I say, whatever you gotta tell yourself, toots. It’s kinda like how no one will admit they ever eat at Mickey D’s. It says right on the sign, “BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF HAMBURGERS SERVED.” Somebody’s got to be eating that crap and watching that rubbish besides me.

I also love it how every girl seems to put “working out” or “going to the gym” in their interests. Oh yeah, don’t we all just love going to the gym! It’s definitely one of the most fun things I can think of. I personally love lying on a sweat-encrusted, germ-laden bench while pushing on a greasy bar as hard as I can till my head explodes. Free weights not your speed? Well then I enjoy a good vigorous jog on the treadmill in a poorly ventilated room filled with the sweaty masses while watching “Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns” and reading the closed captions. Oh wait, I forgot. I don’t watch TV; it’s a waste of time.

What do we men want in a lady? A “man’s woman”. Hells yeah! We want her to be like those babes on beer commercials. Drop-dead gorgeous, sports savvy, fashionable, able to open a bottle with her teeth and can start a fire with two twigs while wearing high-heels. At least, this is the impression I get from the most recurring theme that usually appears in the ‘About Me’ section. Usually it says something along the lines of, “I like to be a girly girl; and get all dressed up for a night on the town but I also can get down and dirty going camping with the boys.” It’s either this or “I have fun going out all dolled up or be just as happy staying in curled up on the couch to snuggle watching a movie in my sweats.” Sound familiar? If not, see just about ANY FEMALE PROFILE on the site in question. If it’s not there, it’s because she didn’t fill out anything in the information section, which is another interesting phenomenon.

Why is there always the mysterious blank profile? Did you fill out half the info and then drive off a cliff? How the heck am I supposed to charm the socks off of you if you can’t provide so much as a helpful hint about yourself? It’s not like I can be successful by sending you a so-called “Quick-note” because it’s another obligatory requirement for all females to state “I don’t respond to Quick-notes” in their profile (A Quick-note is a pre-composed email greeting written by the website, such as, Hi, I like your profile, or How you doing? Etc.). So throw me a bone here; put that you like reading Spiderman comics or something even if you don’t. At least it’ll give us some sort of in and you’ll be able to weed out the nerds if any dudes respond too excitedly over that fact.

Lastly, I always enjoy a good disclaimer to the rapists, perverts, sickos and douche bags. I think it’s a very up front approach for the ladies to say, “If you’re a perv or just looking for a booty call, I’m not the girl for you.” Or “Please no rapists, larcenists, drug addicts or porn fiends… etc.” This has gotta be the best deterrent in keeping away the drooling idiots hunched over their computers like Gollum looking for their next ‘precious’. Undoubtedly, these twisted individuals will read this sentence and move on until they find a profile that has no such declaration. Then, who knows? Maybe they too can find a love connection.

In the end, I believe this online dating thing to be a lost cause in the most and pure entertainment in the least. My conclusion after being immersed in the online dating world is such; the better looking you are, the more successful you’ll be. This in itself is kind of a contradiction in that why would you need to seek companionship online if you’re a looker? Some may call this a viscous cycle. I call it the last hope for the hopeless, myself included in that statement.

*By the way, who was that wise man? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weBbZ11d5LM

-Briton