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Cyber Love
| Date: |
13 March 2005 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Linda De Jager
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Zaa Nkweta (Carte Blanche presenter): 'A romantic dinner for one?... not quite.'
Thousands of people, faced with one too many Saturday night dinners alone, are turning to the Internet to find romance.
This is Mayflower meeting Truthseeker face to face for the first time.
However, they know a great deal about one another. They have been communicating online for three weeks on a prominent Internet dating site.
Truthseeker: 'Are you good?'
Mayflower: 'Yes, how are you?'
Truthseeker: 'I can't believe we're finally here.'
Mayflower: 'Nervous?'
Truthseeker: 'Ja.'
She described herself as 'a cheeky woman, passionate about life', while Truthseeker said that he was trying to be Zen, but there is a seriously naughty streak in him.
According to the dating site, they would be well matched.
Mayflower: 'I was going to meditate, but I wouldn't have been able to focus, so I just snoozed.'
Zaa: 'Courtship can be defined as 'going steady'... the process of selecting or attracting a life partner.'
Mayflower: 'I really enjoy cooking.'
Truthseeker: 'Ah do you? That's good.'
Mayflower: 'What does that mean? Gee, I have got some ironing as well that you can do.'
Truthseeker: ' I enjoy ironing, I will do the ironing.'
Mayflower: 'Will you do it with a little towel?'
Truthseeker: 'I will do it naked, I will do everything naked.'
Mayflower: 'Naked, Oh I am good with that.'
Zaa: 'Remember this... the butterflies, the dizzy sense of excitement? For many of those hooked on online dating, this is part of the deal, time and again, unless of course you get lucky - and many do.'
Duncan Forrest (Datingbuzz.com): 'Well the best thing for me, obviously, has been meeting my wife.'
Duncan: 'Actually, two months after our first date I ended up popping the
question and we were married another six weeks after that.'
Duncan's perspective of online dating is slightly different to most peoples. He has seen if from all perspectives. Since 2001 his company runs the largest network of dating sites in South Africa.
Although he got to view most of the new profiles as people create them, he never considered creating a profile of his own in search of his own life partner.
Duncan: 'Friends of mine actually said, 'you have built this great thing, it is working for a lot of other people, why don't you show us some faith in your own creation and put your profile up? '
Ruda Landman (Carte Blanche presenter): 'What about him interested you?'
Belinda Forrest: 'A great sense of humour, intelligence, very straightforward and not interested in playing games. In fact, after our very first date he took his profile off-line and said that I am not going to correspond with other people, which was a wonderful declaration.'
This seems like a love story that was just meant to be, despite the fact that it was incubated in cyberspace.
When Duncan called his mother to tell her that he might have met the woman of his dreams, she immediately recognised the surname, Madiatsji.
Duncan: 'In the time of the Hungarian revolution Melinda's parents had fled Hungary and somehow ended up in South Africa - Pietermaritzburg of all places. And so my gran said, 'No this will not do. You will have to come and stay with us'. So Melinda's mom stayed with my grandparents for a couple of weeks 45 years ago. So our mothers have met.
While there are a number of online dating sites in South Africa, the recipe is the same. All you need to do is to type in information about yourself and what you are looking for in a potential mate.
Duncan: 'The real key to the dating buzz technology is the two-way matching engine. It takes all those criteria that people have specified about themselves and about their matches, and sifts through a hundred and fifty five people for you.'
According to the two-way matching machine - basically a software package that links compatibilities in profiles electronically - Mayflower and Truthseeker are close to a perfect match. But what do they say?
Truthseeker: 'I mean I enjoyed the flirtatiousness and the intellectual banter. I mean we knew that we would definitely be able to relate to each other, because I think there is timing and there is chemistry. But there is also something else; there is also common values and common interests, and that is the part that you get to work out first.'
To answer some questions about the boom in online dating in South Africa, Ramon Thomas, Internet research analyst, conducted the first local online dating survey.
Ramon Thomas (Internet consultant): 'In my research I did last year I found that there's about 250 000 South Africans that are using online dating on a regular basis. There is an even balance between men and women and, over fifty, there is actually more women than men that are doing online dating or using it.'
Susan 'Sabriel999': 'I had about 22 responses in the first week.'
Susan is an attractive fifty-something woman with two kids looking for a life partner. On the other hand, forty-something Colleen was looking for fun and meeting interesting people. For both of them, online dating has been a positive experience.
Colleen 'Flutter-By': 'Every day I would say, 'Well let's see how many fans I've got today!' I mean, it's a total ego trip. It really is. It's shocking but it is.
Susan: 'To me, it's more nerve-wracking or intimidating to go to a club.'
Ramon: 'And what it does... [it] allows them to choose who they make
contact with.'
Colleen: 'So here I can say I only want non drinkers and non smokers and I will only get non drinkers and non smokers.'
Susan: 'In reality, you couldn't have hundreds of men parading in front of
you, where you could choose.'
Colleen: 'And I feel that I am pretty much past the pub crawling. All I
will meet is a drunk.'
Ramon: 'Well, in a nightclub you're going to pay between R50 and R80 just to get in, then you're probably going to spend another R100 on drinks. That amount of money could get you a three month or a six month subscription with a website, where you can meet thousands of people and communicate with, on an ongoing basis.'
Zaa: 'While you can use the Internet to make sure that you are both on the same track and have the same interests, online dating is not always a bed of roses.'
Sheila 'Tempting': 'Well, one of the people who contacted me and I had a few communications with, he had a nappy fetish. And I first thought this guy is a paraplegic, he has got a problem, but no. In every single communication he brought up this nappy.'
Duncan says there is no need to worry. Weirdos might contact you, but you don't have to engage with them.
Duncan: 'You remain anonymous until you choose that you actually want to give out your contact details.'
But when you do choose to give out your contact details and agree to a first date, what if the prince turns out to be a frog - and the princess, Cinderella's stepsister?
Ramon: 'The other con is that, after a couple of emails and phone calls, when you meet that person, there may not be that spark after all.'
Susan: 'For me first impressions count. There has got to be that first physical spark.'
Colleen: 'I mean, it is exactly like real life. You might meet someone, ask them out and you just do not click.'
Duncan: 'It could be wonderful, but it could be a tedious experience.'
What to do then? Is it simply a question of...
Susan: 'Thanks, but no thanks.'
Brian of Durban gave up on Internet dating as an option. He says many women just seem to want to wine and dine for free. And it hardly goes any further than the first date.
Brian 'Burner': 'And when I've tried to arrange a second date... let's go to the beach, let's go to the movies, nothing happens. She doesn't want to know me. It seems to be a pattern, ja. Of course there is a common factor. It's me. But you know, I can't believe I am that bad.'
Ruda: 'Did you have an experience where guys did want something that you did not want to give?'
Sheila: 'Ja, a lot of them do want sex, and some of them are blatant in their profiles and some of them will write they're looking for a sensual woman.'
It could be a case of pure misunderstanding, as Sheila's code name was 'Tempting' and her by-line: 'Any normal guys out there?' Brian's code name was 'Burner and he ended up burning his fingers more than once.
Brian: 'I mentioned to her I want a family and I want children and so on, and she said: 'do not go looking for a baby factory.''
A little white lie in your profile is one thing, but when you start fabricating your whole life, it is false advertising. This is a self-portrait of a man who wrote beautiful poetry to a South African woman he met on a dating site.
Poem 1
When first we met
the stars were standing still
the universe waited with bated breath
His profile was convincing - an ordinary type of fellow, with extraordinary traits. I make my modest living translating medical literature from various languages into English. I'm an enthusiastic world-traveller, who enjoys staying at home; an active person who is rather indolent; a gourmet cook, rather fond of fish and chips once in a while.
Lured by his intelligence and sensitivity, Ms X agreed to fly to Amsterdam to meet him, after three months of intense communication.
Ms X: 'Exactly, and even his profile, even the name on his profile was poetic, was intellectual.
The question is, did this man misrepresent himself?
Ms X: 'Yes, he did, because he did not win an American award to a poetic society. He was not the doctor that he claimed he was. He did not own property in Cape Town, like he said he did. He did not admit that he had Parkinson's disease, and it came out in the end too. It was pretty obvious right in the first meeting. When I met him at the coffee shop his hands were shaking and I said, 'Why are your hands shaking?' He said, 'It must be nervousness at meeting you'. How romantic, how untrue.'
Lost love?
Today I watch my world
Sliding
Through the shimmering haze
It was a case of lost love, the last poem he wrote to her, when Ms X was also left to pay all the bills, including the hotels, meals and medical costs.
Ramon: 'I think the same people that lie on the Internet are the same as those who lie in real life, so you have to use a bit of common sense.'
For people like Mayflower and Truthseeker and many others, their online date turned out to be very pleasant, maybe because their profiles were truthful.
Ruda: 'Is there still a stigma around this?'
Duncan: 'A couple of years ago, I think the attitude was that if you are on a dating site, you must be desperate. I think people have come round to the fact that, if you are on a dating site now, you are just saying, 'I want a bit of control'.'
Colleen: 'The fast food generation we are... everything... you're so pressed for time. I have a situation where a lot of my friends are married with children. I don't come across adults in the course of my work, so where am I going to meet people?'
In Cyberspace, it seems.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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