Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.

So Internet dating. It is worse. It is different. The latter is less amusing than the first, so I'll start there.

It is, I admit, different in some ways that do not markedly suck. One convenient aspect is that we both are at least openly owning our desire to find someone. Maybe you just want to 'date,' while I am looking for something heady and deep -- but at least we both know the other is looking for something. This shared knowledge makes first steps far less awkward -- and far more likely to succeed -- than finally acting after months of worshipping from anear the hot blonde in the next office, about whose romantic life you may still know nothing. That part I think is handy.

So, too, do I think the upfrontness of other aspects of it is convenient. If I breed dogs and you hate them, I don't even need to 'talk' to you: I can just read it on your profile page and move on, before being wounded by this damning knowledge long after we've bared our electronic souls. Almost every reasonable 'fact' gets out there, up front, disclosed. Of course there might be lies, but let's assume there aren't: I know you have six kids, you know I am a millwright, you subscribe to Boating World and I make wine. It can sometimes be the details, the minutiae, of everyday life that kills or sustains things in that real life, so having some vague idea from the start as to how this person lives his or her days is not to be dismissed.

But.

On the other hand, we are all so terribly complex. Data don't make a person. And you certainly don't need to share the same, say, reading resume or hobby list, to fall deeplymadlypassionately. Moreover, I can read you off some version of my biography and you still will have no idea of who or what I am. Obviously, culture has its profound effects, but it is not the whole story of what constitutes an individual.

Still, though, I think this deliberateness and candor can act as a helpful filter, and sometimes people who meet first in person do not bother with enough factual information but rather rely on emotional information, which is arguably better turned to later in the relationship, when there is more to go on and a baseline has been set. If there really are things I don't want, such as your six kids, better to know that now than discovering it after I've been smitten with your raffish charm and muzzle-loader collection.

As well, too.

Additionally, it's different because it is cheap and low risk. This is not wholly in the positive column, but there are benefits. It is cheap because you don't even have to pay for a cup of coffee before hard-dropping someone after a series of emails that took a strange or scary turn, and it's low risk because you don't actually know any of these people (well, not usually, and I would hate that). So, if you can manage it, you can cultivate a different set of ethics that doesn't force you to humor fools or spend time with dullards out of a too-expansive sense of politesse. Unlike with acquaintances, friends, or lovers, you can set the exact second of the end of contact. For real, not just in vain hope of it remaining so. (Unless you happen to meet in real life after pushing 'block,' and I would hate that even more.)

It is also cheap because these people really adore coffee shops! Maybe they are all really just alcoholics, and scared that one glass of wine will lead to nine, at which point they will be once more sobbing in the arms of a stranger about the cat and couch they lost in their last ill-starred amour, but more likely it is because it is much easier to figure out how to divide the cost of one Darjeeling and one Oolong than it is a Delmonico, some scallops, an appetizer, a salad, an aperitif, a digestif, and an uneven distribution of glasses of wine. Plus, coffee shops are better lit than romantic restaurants, and the means of egress thus more easy to hold in one's sights.