By AMY ANDERSON
Wanted: e-mail order bride.
Seeking young bride of cheery disposition, well practiced in needlework and the baking of pies ... must be mannerly, conversant in poetry and able to tolerate the smell of a pipe ... it is most desirable that she be in child-bearing years as I have need for a male heir to carry on the family name ... send all replies to ...
Maybe that fictional scenario is not so far from the truth, even for the '90s. People have tried every approach from the standard to the alternative to reach the ultimate state of cross-gender association: boy meets girl.
Most often that's easier said than done. It's no wonder men and women have tried everything from the mail-order bride approach to cruising State on Saturday night just to meet each other.
But who says you need to be so elaborate in trying to meet Mr. or Ms. Right? He or she may only be an e-mail away.
Those looking for love in all the wrong places might try looking for love in cyberspace.
Alternative methods for making those tricky male or female acquaintances have been around for a long time and are constantly being reinvented. Needless to say, the decade of the nineties has its own brand of boy meets girl. As everything else these days seems to be going online, digital dating doesn't sound too far-fetched.
In fact, the market for online dating services is quite large. There are well over 150 singles Websites on the Net, with more coming online all the time. Just one service, Match.Com (http://www.match.com), had approximately 100,000 members at the end of 1996 and gains around 6,000 more each week.
From the word 'matchmaker,' the Yahoo search engine provided 69 links to web pages ranging from Pacific Lifestyles International, a service for professionals, to Yenta the Student Net Matchmaker -- in the proud tradition of meddling grandmothers everywhere. The word 'single' was met with even greater success: 1,487 site matches.
So what makes this new age vehicle for meeting people so popular? International Dating Services (http://www.datingasia.com/service) states that 'only on the Internet can you meet anyone quickly and easily from different countries and from all walks of life at any time.'
They also claim that, by using their database, you can shorten the amount of time it takes to find an ideal mate. Whether or not that's all true, meeting people on the Internet can have some very practical advantages.
Because meeting someone on the Internet doesn't involve a physical confrontation, many people find that there are also appealing psychological advantages.
'When you meet someone on the Internet, it's your personality, so it's different than meeting at a party. It's less materialistic and more real,' said Melissa Watson, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies at Northern Arizona University.
With the factor of appearance eliminated, a rendezvous on the Net can be a lot less intimidating than meeting someone in person.
Another strong point of meeting on the Internet the variety; there's someone for everyone. With the ease of going online and becoming very accessible, numerous types of individuals and organizations all contribute to a vast make-up of information available at our fingertips.
So it's easy to find information specialized enough to fit an individual's specific needs. Because of that, there are even several popular websites designed expressly for LDS singles.
LDS Singles On-line, LDS Friends Worldwide and LDS Singles Connection are just three of the more prominent Internet dating services with the Latter-day Saint single in mind.
With the number of hits on their respective web pages climbing each day, just how did the founders of these cyber-love sites carve out their niche on the Net in the first place?
'It takes a clear vision of what you want to provide for the members -- mainly information that is pertinent, particularly to a high standard LDS culture. I hired a programmer to work out the details I dictated,' said Timothy Wilson, creator of LDS Singles Connection.
'It required an uncompromising vision, hundreds of hours of evaluating and promoting, guts and lots of money for the high-end programming required.'
With that much going into matchmaking on the Web, what does a person get out of it? Wilson says his site is set apart from the others by a dozen different features.
'I offer an automatic e-mailing feature. The program scans all new members, knowing who is the best match for you. Then it e-mails you matching data. You don't even have to come to the website to get info. It comes to you. The program also takes into account each member's location with a latitude/longitude awareness, matching you better with those living closest to you if you desire.'
You can't get that from mail-order bride.