Over the weekend I read an article about a newlywed couple that had met as children years ago through the website Neopets. For the unfamiliar, Neopets is a virtual pet website where you can take pride in raising digital pets. That's it. I was obsessed with it as a teen. This couple became online friends and eventually IRL friends which led to them becoming IRL lovers. Now they are married all because of a bunch of digital animals with names like Elephante and Tuskaninny and a role playing guild on the site called “Evil Jellies.”
I initially belittled their love the same way that an older generation might criticize dating apps. "How do people virtually cosplaying as pet owners, something you can easily just be in real life, find one another and fall in love outside of their parents' basements?", I found myself wanting to retort. But I suppose that deciding a bartender is cute and giving him your number is just about as forced as messaging back and forth through Neomail. Who am I to judge? By the time I finished reading their admittedly very sweet love story, I wondered to myself, where else could my potential future partner be hiding on the Internet? I have the regular apps but those have proven to be mostly fruitless. Maybe I’m on the wrong network. Maybe I need to open up a shoppe in Neopia and wait for a lover to darken my door. Where should I start?
I was actually asked out once via the career networking site and refuge for upwardly mobile individuals, LinkedIn. To date, it’s the only message I’ve ever sent back and forth through that website and I got a good make out session in a Philly dive bar out of it. Unfortunately, I can't endorse him for that. Perhaps that’s God’s way of telling me to give it all up and become a housewife. I’ll update my profile to reflect that. Upside is you can see how good they look in suits and if they have marketable skills. The latter will be helpful in child-rearing years.
NameCheap Customer Assistance LiveChat
The other day I had a really fulfilling conversation with the customer help representative on the hosting platform for a website I made a few years ago. There was undeniable chemistry and frankly they were obsessed with me and my needs. Chat rooms like this are certainly breeding grounds for substantive relationships. When they ask “how can I help you today?” you really are given an open platform to unload. I would say downsides to this approach are that I had no visual on the person. Upside is you can complain to upper management if they break your heart.
Ello
Ello was the brief flame that "threatened" to take down Facebook and was promptly discarded as uncool in nine days. But those nine days, when everyone was posting "Who has an invite to Ello?" on Facebook and Twitter, felt electric. It felt so promising. Ello hasn’t really been active since 2014 but I imagine there are some eligible bachelors fiddling on the docks waiting for a beautiful woman like me to row up and greet them. Odds are in my favor. I’ll arrive with some witty banter and an invite to Facebook. They won’t be able to resist me.
HQ Comment Section
If you haven’t downloaded, played, and deleted HQ then you’re really missing out! It’s a trivia game that offers thousands of dollars in prizes if you can sit through manically annoying hosts and theme music. There’s also a livestream of comments that are mostly people shouting out their hometown and occasionally racial slurs. Really great stuff. I’m sure if I took the time to sift through 34,000 comments that say “no homo” I could find a promising dude. And honestly, give me two more months on Tinder and I’ll be down for the challenge. We’ll spend our trivia winnings on our honeymoon.
Texting The Number Above or Beneath Yours
Life is short and love is fleeting. Why not just text the phone number above yours (your number but the last number would be, say, a 7 instead of 6) or below and just see what happens. You know they live nearby you! That’s convenient. And isn’t that all you can ask for in this world? A convenient love?
Spam Folder
I’m getting fifty spam emails a day, so surely one of them isn’t a bot right? One of them is likely a real person just reaching out to say hello but they also went on a very long tangent about penis enhancement and routing me money through a bank account they’ve set up. Aw, they set up a bank account just for me? That’s...so thoughtful. In fact, I’d love to meet up with them. How does Saturday work? In Nigeria? Sure. I’ll be there soon.
