Girls'N'Boys
Photo illustration by Paul Kotz / KANSAM
Many students have decided to forget the conventional ways of meeting dates and instead are surfing the Net, looking for love without ever leaving the house.
Finding love, friendship and dates on the Internet
By Kimberly Crabtree Special sections reporter
On-line romance may sound corny, but some students are finding more on the Internet than chat rooms and study aids.
"The possibilities are limitless for finding dates on the Internet," said Gia Preston, co-founder of LYNQS Internet Service and the author of several Internet manuals. "People get to know other people before they see them. I'm not fat, I'm not ugly — if you get to know me first."
Getting to know people well before meeting them face to face could be the attraction students find in Internet dating.
Shannon Adamson, Bonner Springs junior, met her bean, Paul Kilgore, a senior at Washburn University, through America Online.
"We were talking about music, and we found out we both like Hootie and the Blowfish," she said. "He's from Topeka, and he asked me, hypothetically, if he got tickets to the Hootie concert if I'd go with him. The next day he said he got the tickets, so we went out."
Although Adamson had gone out with one other person she met on the Internet, Kilgore never had dated anyone off the Internet.
"I just got on to talk to people," Adamson said. "I might have thought maybe someday you would meet face to face, but not this soon." Adamson and Kilgore met after chatting for about a week.
John M. Munjak, Lenexa senior, said he was surprised when he met a woman after chatting with her on the University of Kansas' FALCON for two weeks.
"I had no intention of meeting the person. I was content to talk over the computer, but she insisted we get together,"
Although no love connection was made, Munjak said he and the woman still were close friends.
Muniak said.
"We talk almost daily, even now, roughly eight months later," he said. "We just get along really well."
Munjak had not thought of using the Internet to find dates.
"It's interesting to see who is out there and will talk to you, but at the start, I have no intention of seeing, much less going out with, someone after one conversation," Munjak said.
Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is the most popular method of finding romance on line, but not the only method, said Sheminoly D. Petaway, a dedicated lines salesman at Databank Inc., 1473 U.S. Highway 40. Some programs include high-tech personal advertisement sections similar to those published in newspapers.
Petaway used the Yahoo search program. Some ads are organized by regions of the country, but others are more specific, such as by race or sexual preference.
"I would think it's pretty popular," Petaway said. "It's just like any other advertising venue, but here it can be more graphic."
However, meeting people through the Internet still requires caution, just as traditional dating does, Preston warned. Meeting dates on the Internet could be dangerous if you do not follow the same precautions you would in going out on any date, she said.
Still, she praises the Internet as a meeting place.
"It is the only prejudice-free way of communicating," she said. "There is no race, no age, no gender even, on the Net."
10 Planet Lawreite
*Hill September-13, 1995*