Internet Interaction - Year Abroad #3

Next up on Inter:Mission: a bit of an experiment...

After almost 2 months on my year abroad, I decided that I would stop leaving my love life up to the Gods, and I would take matters into my own hands. No more waiting for Jean-Pierre to step around the corner in his stripy shirt and beret and take my breath away, it was time to get proactive. After thinking through my options briefly, and overhearing a conversation between colleagues, my mind was made up; online dating.

I think attempting online dating is the perfect example of something that has captured my year abroad spirit. I can’t imagine that I would create any such profile in the UK, predominantly through fear of cyber-running into someone that I know, but when in France my self-judgement seems to go a bit hazy. I can always say that I did it for an article anyway… Justification out of the way, a bit of research led me to the most popular French online dating website, ‘adopteunmec.com’ or as we could translate, ‘adopt a guy’.

As the title suggests, the website is heavily focused on girls having all the power. While men pay 30euros for the privilege of a picture of themselves and a couple of descriptive sentences, girls get the service free of charge. Not only do men have to pay, but in order to send a girl an email, the girl has to ‘accept their charm’ before one word can be exchanged. I like the sound of this already, no creepy 50 year olds asking you if, ‘you have ever been with an older man’ (apparently that happens). The site continues to amuse with  sections such as ‘sales’ where you can find the ‘best’ guys easily under categories such as ‘geek chic’ and ‘sporty’. My favourite aspect has to be the option to, ‘add to cart’ when you find a man you’d like to chat to, so it is basically just like being on Asos.com (more justification you see). The attention to detail on the site really makes the whole experience quite agreeable, although perhaps more so if you’re a girl…

Without a care in the world, I set up a profile indicating my Erasmus status and a photo chosen by Slovak (read my previous article to find out more about him). It was worryingly easy, within 5 minutes my photo had been approved and I was starting to feel a sense of that phrase Miley has us all arguing over, ‘female empowerment’. Flicking through images of 21-26 year old men within 50 kilometres of Bordeaux, I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that I was being horrendously shallow, but perhaps that’s the point of girl power.

After a necessary cull of many of the ‘charms’ and an addition of a second photo, the seemingly more normal guys began to surface. A few ‘bonjour, ca va?’ messages later and I already have a date night set up with a guy whose profile picture has him holding a puppy. Assuming that it will be a disaster, I really have very little faith, I’ve asked Slovak to ring me an hour into the date to ensure I’m safe. No doubt I will be back at my laptop keyboard shortly writing about how disastrous the whole thing was… I do hope he brings the puppy though.