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Stories of online disaster dates 

By Joseph Hong

The Internet provides the perfect medium for fantasy. Alone at the computer, you can log on to a chat room and instantly become anyone you (or others) want. On the other end, you imagine you’re hooking up with a Keanu Reeves or a Sung Hi Lee look-alike. Some of us are looking for love, and others seek friendships or maybe just a cyber “one-night stand.”

It can be a risky affair (pun intended). According to some psychologists, rarely does online chemistry transfer to old-fashioned love. Most online dates end in disappointment, despite, or because of, the expectation of love, romance, or sex. AsianAvenue.com, one of the most popular Asian American cyber meeting places, polled 21,489 of its 1,324,000 members and found only nine percent had successfully dated another member.

In all fairness, any dating, off-line or on, can prove risky or disappointing. And it’s easy to laugh at the trials and tribulations of people trying to connect with one another, especially for those of us comfortably ensconced in the socially privileged position of coupledom. After all, the Internet is really just a virtual reflection of the influences and desires we human beings experience in our socially constructed realities, including the intense pressure to couple, and to find our “one true love”.

Perhaps the truly significant insight to be gleaned from the following candid accounts of online dating fantasies, crushed by the face-to-face realities of human relations, is that our culture of romantic love is based on the same principles of perceived scarcity and mass marketing as our consumption-driven economy. As early as 1970, Philip Slater wrote about how we Americans are raised to believe we must find that one special person who will satisfy all our desires for love, sex and intimacy. When we don’t, we are driven to work and consume even harder, similar to the donkey chasing the carrot on the stick. It’s a set-up for failure, turning us into a nation of workaholics obsessed with sex, love and body image. Think about how many times you’ve stayed late at the office or chowed down a bag of potato chips or a carton of ice cream when you didn’t have something better waiting for you at home. Ouch!

These personal anecdotes reveal things to be aware of when running after online fantasies — deceit, chauvinism, physical discrimination — as well as the possibility of forming unusual and special friendships in the process.

“What started as a charming prince turned out to be an evil man.”

Jane, a 37-year-old Chinese American Silicon Valley software engineer, says she’s done the casual partying and dating, but now wants a husband and kids. She just needs to find Mr. Right.

“I never met a man who wants to get married,” Jane says. “I don’t know what’s wrong with men. They just want to wait and wait.”

For over two years, she’s been using Internet dating services, such as match.com, which charge anywhere from nothing to $24 a month to register. Jane, however, hasn’t gotten lucky — in her search for a husband. Often, she meets someone and dates him once or twice, but then, they “don’t see each other again,” she says.

But two years ago, it was a different story. Through match.com, she met the man she thought she would marry. According to Jane, Dan is white, divorced, has three kids from his previous marriage and is eight years older than she.

“When I first met Dan in person, one of the first things he said to me was ‘I want to marry again and I want her to be Chinese,’” she says. “I was immediately very attracted to him. He went to Harvard, his father was a dentist, and he founded his own company. He’s a very charming and very handsome guy — he knew what he wanted.”

She adds: “His resume was beautiful.”

Jane dated Dan the entire year of 1999 with the assumption that it would lead to marriage. She also says she loaned him $200,000 because he was having financial problems with his company. Then, without warning or explanation and without paying her back, Dan broke up with her in early 2000.

“His parting words were, ‘I know you always wanted to marry me, but I am a special person, you are just a nobody,’” she recalls. “Needless to say, I fell into a severe depression.”

Jane says she recovered from her depression with the support of her friends and by seeing a therapist, and focusing on her new job as a software engineer at a dot-com. But in September 2000, Jane couldn’t resist the temptation to call Dan, just to talk. She found Dan was happy to hear from her. The relationship was on again.

“I know people were saying, ‘What a stupid girl you are for going back,’” Jane says. “People do foolish things for love. What can I say?”

Soon after, however, Dan confessed to Jane the reason he broke up with her — it shocks her even today: During their relationship, Dan started seeing a Chinese American woman, some 28 years his junior. And they are still seriously involved, believes Jane.

“I am a professional,” Jane says. “I am a dot-com millionaire and he dumps me for a teenager. What gives?”

Needless to say, Jane no longer sees Dan. Late last year, she hired a lawyer to try to get back the $150,000 Dan still owes her. But, she says, no amount of money will heal the emotional scars Dan inflicted on her.

Though she has given up on Internet dating, she’s already taking new steps in her quest for love — or at least a suitable husband.

“My next move is to pay these dating services that charge around $3,000 to look for a man for you,” Jane says. “I don’t have time to waste on another jerk. I’m really in a hurry. I’m 37. I need to have kids.”

“Why would a guy drive all the way from Virginia to New York to see a girl?”

Korean American Nathan Suh, 29, of Fairfax, Va., has his fair share of Internet horror stories. His quickest date, though, ended before it began.

A decade ago, while still in college, Suh had a part-time job as a computer lab assistant. With loads of free time in the computer room, he got in the habit of chatting. “This was before AOL,” Suh says. “It was one of those black and white screens, DOS-based telnet things.”

He began chatting with a woman, a student at another college. She told him she was white, a resident in rural Michigan, living with her father. After some five months of online bantering, they planned to meet in person. Suh made plans to drive 700 miles to her home, where he would stay for a few days. Not.

After spending 10 hours on the road, he finally made it to his date’s driveway.

“I saw a middle-aged guy — I guess her father — coming out with a shotgun,” Suh recalls. “Oh, shit. I put the car in reverse and never looked back. I drove all the way back home.”

Suh tried contacting the woman by telnet after the incident. She never replied.

That didn’t stop Suh from jumping back into the Internet dating pool, however. In 1998 while chatting on AOL, he met Yujin, a Korean foreign exchange graduate student who was studying graphic design in Amherst, N.Y.

Suh, who immigrated from Korea to the United States during his teen years, felt an immediate friendship connection. They spent a few months chatting online and on the telephone, in both Korean and English.

Then, Suh and a few of his friends decided to visit Yujin in New York. The two met in Manhattan and spent the afternoon in Central Park. After dinner, they went to a Karaoke bar. They had a wonderful time, he says, but he thought of her more as a sister than a girlfriend.

They continued to keep in touch through the Internet. When she was getting ready to graduate, she told Suh her family, who lives in Korea, would not be able to make it to the ceremony. Suh decided to drive up to New York, this time without his friends, so she wouldn’t be alone.

Afterward, the two again traveled to Manhattan.

“I was ready to get a motel room when she said, ‘Don’t worry about getting a motel room; you can just stay at my place.’ I was like OK, that’s cool,” Suh says.

Yujin lived in a studio near Amherst. Exhausted from walking all day, Suh just wanted to go some place to get some rest. They sat on her bed, just watching television; then, Suh fell asleep. When he woke up in the middle of the night, his friend was completely naked.

“It happened in the middle of the night so I couldn’t go to a motel or anything,” Suh says. “I just moved down on the floor and I just fell asleep there.”

But she followed him to the floor. Suh headed straight for the bathroom.

He says: “I locked myself in and then I fell asleep in the bathtub.”

Early in the morning, Suh left her studio and checked himself into a motel. He slept for a couple of hours, and then went back to Yujin’s studio to say goodbye.

“I told her I didn’t want anything more than a friendship,” Suh says. “She was nice. She had features that I looked for in a woman. Long black hair. Soft hands. Very sweet.

“I should of, could of, would of, but it was wrong and I didn’t expect anything more than just a friendship. She took it as, ‘Why would a guy drive all the way from Virginia to New York to see a girl unless he had something on his mind?’”

At her studio, the two talked and laughed about the incident. She told him she didn’t have any money but wanted to show him appreciation for his kindness.

“I was like, ‘Whoa! Hold up. Is this how you deal with your friendship?’” Suh says. “We laughed, I gave her a little hug and then left.”

Yujin tried e-mailing and phoning Suh, but he didn’t take her calls.

“If you think about it, it’s kind of dirty and strange,” Suh says.

“Either I’m going to be really disappointed, or I’m going to be the happiest man in the whole wide world.”

Last year, Suh’s colleague introduced him to a Vietnamese American woman. Suh used AOL instant messenger to correspond with her. They also talked on the telephone. The Internet messages and phone correspondences became more intense. Suh talked to her at work, home, and while driving — almost every day.

Though she seemed honest, she was also mysterious. For example, when Suh asked for her picture, she said she didn’t have any.

“I believed her, but my co-workers and I became very curious as to what she looked like,” Suh says.

In the summer, she invited Suh and his friends to drive to Houston, where she lived, to celebrate her birthday. Suh accepted, not only because he was curious about what she looked like, but also because by that time, he considered her “a good friend.” He flew to Houston shortly after.

“I figured she didn’t give me a picture because she’s drop-dead gorgeous and didn’t want to share pictures with nobody, or she’s butt ugly,” Suh says. “Either I’m going to be really disappointed, or I’m going to be the happiest man in the whole wide world.”

After arriving at Houston, Suh went to check in at the hotel, where they had agreed to meet.

At the check-in counter, Suh heard a voice saying, “Nathan is that you?” He turned around, hoping to find a bodacious babe. Let’s just say that the genuine article fell really short of those hopes.

Nevertheless, they decided to drive to San Antonio for lunch. On the way, Suh’s colleagues called him on his cell phone, asking him how she looked.

“They told me to score her one to ten,” Suh recalls. “She was right next to me. I can’t tell them, ‘one’ or ‘two.’ So I tricked her by saying to my manager, ‘Press number one key and the program should work.’

“My manager was like ‘Nathan I don’t understand what you mean’. So I said again, ‘Press number ONE!’ He still didn’t get it. Then, my co-worker called and I said it again.

‘He was like, ‘Oh my god. Nathan, if you want to come back now, I’ll pay for the change of flight schedule.’”

Suh decided to stay and celebrate her birthday, though. The first day, they spent the whole time in San Antonio and came back to Houston that evening. Her friends had a dinner for her the following evening. After that, Suh brought her to his hotel room and gave her a box of chocolate, then they said good-bye. The following morning, Suh flew back to Virginia. He says he still speaks to her once in a while, but not as often as before the trip.

“She was very nice,” he says. “The thing was the whole time I was there, I loved her voice, and her personality was more than anyone could ask for, but when I looked at her face it just turned me off. It was like the voice and her face did not go together.”

Suh finally gave up Internet dating for good a few months ago.

“My Internet dating experiences have been very disappointing,” he says. “The two people I actually had a serious relationship with I met at church and at my friend’s wedding — not from the Internet,” Suh says.

“For online dating, I’m looking for physical relationships and instant gratification.”

James Nguyen, 22, a Chinese-Vietnamese American, is a fourth year economics major at California State University, Hayward. Two years ago he chatted with “hundreds” of women online — and out of those, he went out on dates with about 10, ranging from 19 to 22 years old, all of them Asian Americans.

“Most of my efforts were on AOL,” he says. “That is where I pimped on a lot of my girls.”

He says the main reason to chat was to meet the opposite sex and to fool around. He wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship — or even a friendship.

“For online dating, I’m looking for physical relationships and instant gratification,” he says. “I’m into physical beauty. If I’m attracted to them then the date is good. If not, the date is bad.”

Nguyen says he sometimes exchanges pictures before a date, but not always. From his experience, people who do not send pictures aren’t necessarily beautiful or ugly.

“All the girls complain about their body and are insecure about their looks,” he says.

On the other hand, one time he met a woman who complained about the way she looked and refused to give her photo. “I thought she was just exaggerating, but when I did meet up with her she was … uh … actually telling the truth,” Nguyen says.

Some of Nguyen’s first face-to-face dates took place just hours after their initial online chats. Other times, Nguyen built the online relationships for a few months and talked to them on the phone before their first physical encounter.

“In my experience, girls generally don’t say, ‘Oh let’s go meet up.’ So the guys have to say, ‘Oh, let’s meet on the phone’ or ‘let’s go meet up at a certain place,’” Nguyen says.

About half of his encounters have been what he considers “horrible” dates with women he’s not attracted to.

“If it’s a bad date, I usually just end up driving her around because I don’t want to spend any money on her. Then I just drop her off,” Nguyen says.

A so-called “player,” Nguyen says online chatting is the perfect pick-up place for him.

“You got to enjoy typing to meet girls and you have to be patient — it’s a lot like fishing,” he says.

Now, however, Nguyen says his online “pimping” days are over because he’s looking for a serious relationship.

Nguyen says: “There were a lot of bad dates because they were ugly and some good dates, but I don’t regret it because you got to try it at least once.”