Novelists look at online dating

I can recall something called computer dating when I was in college back in the mid-Sixties. It involved punching holes in cards, if I remember correctly. I decided it was a bad idea and have always been glad I found my wife the old-fashioned way. I am even more glad after reading how three writers skewer online dating sites in their recent novels.

Connie Willis just touches on the subject in Crosstalk, for she is more focused on more diabolical ways of trying to bring couples together. In Mister Monkey Francine Prose shows us a couple meeting through a dating site, but neither of them proves as appealing to the other in person as they appear on the site. Besides she is looking for a husband, he just wants sex.

Dexter Palmer

Even though online dating is never at the center of Dexter Palmer's Version Control, the subject nevertheless returns again and again throughout the story, which takes place in the near future. The two main characters, Rebecca and Philip, meet through a dating site and soon are married, yet the marriage proves an unhappy one.

Rebecca goes to work for the same dating site and learns the company's secrets. Although making possible a few perfect matches is necessary to attract new people to the site, the real goal is to prevent matches, or at least delay them, so that clients will continue subscribing. Rebecca's job is to counsel those who call in to complain and to try to talk them into paying more for a higher membership level, something she is very good at.

It turns out that the true objective of the site is not dating but data. The longer clients remain on the site and the higher their membership levels, the more data about themselves they will share, data the company can then sell to eager buyers.

Later Rebecca becomes involved in making computer simulations so that clients think they are speaking with a real person on their screen, someone who matches their ideal mate but who, in fact, is just Rebecca.

All this seems scarier and more real than the time travel story at the heart of Palmer's novel. Lonely people who read it may be inclined to turn off their phones and computers and go to a bar, a church or a bookstore to look for their perfect mate.