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■ GOLDWORKS
9 JRXVRLRY ART YTUDI^
JEWLERY ART STUDIO
169 E. Broadway • 343-2298
Mon.-Fri. 10-6 p.m. Sat. 10-4 p.m.
Se habla espanol
Meeting someone
to date in our
high-tech, high
speed world is
just a click or two
away, but falling
in love over the
Internet might
not be the
answer to a
person's need to
hook up
By Sara Jarrctt
Oregon Daily Emerald
Information gathering isn’t the
only thing that the Internet has
made easier and faster to attain.
With an ever decreasing
amount of time and energy need
ed to acquire knowledge on an ex
haustive list of topics, this ad
vanced computer technology
made it possible to graduate from
college without ever stepping foot
inside the campus library.
So too, is it now feasible to have
a fruitful and fulfilling dating life
without stepping foot outside the
front door.
If repositories of ideas are in
jeopardy of being thrown to the
wayside in favor of the super
stealth caches in cyberspace, is the
same fate to be had for lovers’ tra
ditional meeting places?
Replacing a first glance with a
first mouse click is dangerous to
society because it breeds a new
mass of relationships started with
out body language, says Rod Met
zger, a professor of sociology at
Lane Community College.
This void of intimacy, tradition
ally the major buil ding block of ro
mance, is indicative of the kind of
empty relationships that are being
forged from across computer
screens, he says.
Internet romance is also harm
ful because it is “somewhat ro
manticized and idealized,” says
Diane Rogers, who owns
Amethyst Counseling Services in
Eugene. She says she has coun
seled her share of individuals who
thought they were entering a
utopian world, only to be left love
less over the lines.
“The Internet is not just a fast
lane, but a super fast lane,” Met
zger points out. “It’s sort of like
that cud cl ich6 you get out of a rela
tionship what you put into it.’”
Metzger regards relationships
as harder work than a few strokes
on a keyboard. At least with tele
phone interactions, voice inflec
tions give a clue as to the dia
logue’s sincerity, the two
professionals agree.
Many participants, however,
seem to like this aloofness and ad
mit to being stimulated by the
melodrama it creates.
“It’s almost an addiction at first
because it’s something new and
different,” says Scott Lilleboe, a
geography major at Oregon State
University.
“I’ve always hated the first date
deal,” he says. Lilleboe admits he
would rather get the awkwardness
of initially getting to know some
one out of the way over the com
puter.
That approach concerns Met
zger, however, who says that
on-line, you encounter people you
have no overt awareness of. You
can’t identify any facades or
masks of those you meet in cyber
space. If that weren’t so, Metzger
says, we wouldn’t be so con
cerned about letting children
roam freely on the computer.
But people lie all the time.
What’s to stop somebody from ly
ing at a bar, wonders Lilleboe. He
acknowledges that he has dated
six women whom he initially met
Catharine Kendait Emerald
on-line.
While only a handful have last
ed longer than a month, his cur
rent relationship with Anna Tau
fik, an OSU graduate, is nearing its
half-year anniversary. After a
year-and-a-half of searching, he
says he has finally found what he
was looking for all along.
Even though the Internet pro
vides more room for fantasy and
wishful thinking, Rogers points
out, Lilleboe maintains that his
on-line activities were not about
being someone he’s not.
“I always planned on meeting
someone, so I never said anything
false,” he said. Nor has he been
duped by women who embell
ished their self-descriptions.
Mike Vial, Lilleboe’S roommate
and fellow OSU student, wit
nessed his friend’s practices first
hand. He has even personally dab
bled in the services from time to
time.
“Scott must either spend a lot of
time on the Internet or he must be
really good at it because it seems to
really work for him,” Vial says. “I
couldn’t take it seriously enough to
make it work for myself. Scott
[spent] a lot of time being a nice guy
and I think it paid dividends.”
Lilleboe says he was turned on
to the new dating concept after
seeing the happiness it brought his
mom; she recently married a man
she met on-line.
Lilleboe first tried on-line cruis
ing one day dining the summer of
1998, while bored at work.
Turn to Internet, page 9B
Eugene Ballet's
elia
The classic comedy ballet of love, envy and mistaken
Saturday, February 26, 8pm • Sunday
Hult Center for the Performing
Tickets available at EMU and Hult Center Ticket