Y Not Love? >BY Helene Stapinski

American Demographics, Feb, 1999

Unlike the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romance in You've Got Mail, Gen Y singles may meet someone through a personal ad, but then they connect in a chat room. Schreiner says that experienced chatters know within the first five minutes whether the other person qualifies as potential soul mate material. "The greatest pursuit of all time is the pursuit of the love of your life," explains Schreiner. "Imagine the number of people you can contact online in three or four hours?"

Once onliners hook up through e-mail love letters and online chats, they generally "go to voice." Translation: they resort to old-fashioned methods and have a telephone conversation. Then, if all goes well, the meeting takes place. In chat room speak, that's F2F-or Face to Face. Hopefully, the online courtship will culminate in the Cyber Vows chat room, where people "get married" online by a "love doctor." People invite 20 of their closest friends and, after the hour-long "ceremony," open the chat room to their guests. It's a reception for the new millennium.

Schreiner says it certainly won't replace more traditional weddings. "But some people use it as a dress rehearsal for the real thing, or as an addendum to the real wedding."

College professor Richard Booth, author of Romancing the Net, a book about finding love online, says the trend will continue to grow, but controls need to be stricter for online searches to be more successful-and safer. The biggest problem online is misrepresentation: sending fake photos or telling lies, he says.

"We're not that far away from chat sessions where you will be able to see the person," says Booth. "It will change the nature of online dating, but it will make it more useful in the long run."

And it will help the younger generation do what the generation before them and the generation before that may have found impossible: finding that one true love through accelerated-yet fairly safe-trial and error.

"In the '70s, people were like bees, wanting to get a little nectar from every flower in the garden. But this generation seems more concerned with finding that one man, one woman," says Schreiner. "And, you know, I gotta say, it's kind of cool."