I was on one of my guilty pleasure “urban” celebrity gossip sites when I read something that led me to believe that my computer had a virus/spyware combination and the news blurb I read was one of those trick pop-up ads.
According to the site, supporting blacktress Essence Atkins – most recently seen on the CW semi-hit show Half and Half – is getting married to a man she met on match.com.
Ladies and gentlemen (but mostly ladies), the end of the world is not any of those scary biblical prophecies featuring fire and horseman … it is official when eligible celebrity black bachelorettes resort to computer love.
Okay, it might not be the end of the entire world – but the dating game as we know it for the single black female might officially be a wrap after this one.
Everyone knows that black celebrities lead and ordinary people follow. Even though Essence Atkins isn’t necessarily an A-lister, her decision to take it to the web with respect to find a man will raise a few eyebrows as well as interest in the curiosity of the online dating phenomenon.
It’s no secret that we are actually light years behind our Caucasian counterparts with respect to online dating. However, I don’t believe for a second that the idea of that E-harmony man playing Cupid is considered normal dating behaviour … even among white people.
I’m not talking about Facebook flirting or Myspace hookups (which people do, then admit and laugh about the ridiculousness of it). I’m talking about going to “one of those” sites with the intention of “finding a compatible life partner/soul mate” based on the several criteria … you know, whatever the spill that the man says on the commercial.
I know a friend of a friend (it’s not me, I promise) who met her husband on eHarmony. According to my friend, every time they go to a dinner party or some kind of intimate gathering and the subject of how they got together comes up, the world stops spinning. All eyes are on them and everybody at the party picks their brains (and picks apart their relationship) about “how it works.”
She admitted to my friend that the whole situation is annoying – but she and her husband must grin and bear it as they are prodded about their relationship from their first date to the trip down the aisle and beyond.
The eHarmony hook-up wife is white, but the curiosity crosses cultural and ethnic lines when she attends my friends’ “sista girl sessions” on occasion.
“She seems happy – well, other than the fact that folks seem to think the intricate details of her relationship are public domain just because she met her man on the internet,” my friend said as I asked about them – yes, I did it too.
My friend was even inspired to create an eHarmony account and says she was literally meeting matches by the minute – even though she was too cheap to pay for a subscription so the action fell off when the free trial ended.
“It was fun pretending to get to know people, but I just couldn’t see myself hooking up with somebody I meet on one of those sites,” she said. “I mean, how desperate do you have to be to follow through with it? And you could meet a for-real psycho.”
This was the same person calling me two and three times a day about her “potential matches!” She even developed an elaborate cut-and-paste system to send me pictures of her potential matches for my opinion FOR 30 DAYS STRAIGHT.
In all fairness to her, she never logged on again after the site threatened a subscription fee. But I say, “What’s the difference?” … for her, of course. I mean if you did it for free, you might as well do it for a fee, right!
Personally, I don’t see myself doing it in the near future (especially after my Facebook fail), but not because – well, not only because – I’m concerned with other people’s opinion of my dating practices (or lack thereof).
I’m just way more interested in real-life than cyberspace when it comes to love. In my opinion, some things are better done the old-fashioned way. Am I wrong?