Exposure: 10
Cost: 5
Quality: 5

If you remember, I made a point to try ALL of the internet dating sites. I'm even on one called "heart detectives" (I can't even write that without shaking my head in self-disgust) that I'm like 95% sure was just a scam to get my credit card info. In a junk e-mail to the Yahoo account I look at once a blue moon, there was an ad for Yahoo Personals. I didn't join, but I posted my profile and pictures just to be thorough in this endeavor.

In a nutshell, Yahoo Personals sucks. It's just slightly cheaper than Match, has fewer features, and fewer people on it. It's like driving up a souped-up Accord with a spoiler and chrome exhaust when you could have just spent a few more dollars and bought an Infinity. And be picking up girls elsewhere than bowling alleys. The quality of the site is one of the reasons I say lightning struck.

I got a message from a girl whose initial picture looked way too good to be on a dating site. The rest of the pictures in the profile were even better, to the point that I was sure one of you were playing a prank on me. I still wasn't a member at this point, so all I could send back to her was one of six canned responses, "I bet you say that to everyone." Which, made very little sense in context. She responded.

After drinking about it for a few hours, I decided that the chance or anything working out was well worth the $18 or whatever to join. So I joined, we messaged, and after missing an opportunity to meet up downtown because I was being a pussy, we started talking on the phone. The Saturday after Christmas we finally met up, and she looked even better than her pictures. There was chemistry; there were sparks. As much as you all want to see pictures, I want to show them to you. You would high-five me. My one friend that met her did.

On top of being normal, her life story was just as colorful as mine. Shorter and more colorful in fact. You wouldn't believe me if I listed all the similarities between our lives. I could go on, and on. The point of all this is not to be a sappy asshole, but to justify that there are actually people who are worth dating on the internet. In this particular instance we never made it to the dating portion because of bad timing, but it definitely had the potential. You can't help but love the bittersweet irony that I ran this little experiment to document all the freaks and geeks doing it, and ended up finding something better than anything I've found at a bar in the last couple of years.

So unfortunately, as much as I have, love, and will continue to make fun of internet dating, I can't say it doesn't work. Best $18 I ever spent. So back down into the trenches. Although from the proverb lightning never strikes twice, I'll be flying a kite in the rain until it does.