Several weeks ago I braced myself for a new encounter. First I logged onto Match.com, the world’s most popular Internet dating site. Next, I registered. This meant clicking the ‘Accept’ button on a lengthy legal document that affirmed I was over eighteen years old and accepted Match.com’s terms and conditions of use. I then created a nickname – TantraTangoTea, a variant on one I’ve used before. A detailed questionnaire followed, replete with multiple-choice and (optional) essay questions. The ‘adventure’ had begun. I was already getting to know not a new date, but a new dating site.

Anyone can take advantage of Match.com’s services, no strings attached. Or so it would seem. You need only specify whether you are a man or a woman. Then you set an age range and enter your location. All members appear by a nickname. Real names are prohibited. This ‘double-blind’ system protects your privacy until you are ready for direct contact. You can browse the entire database or search by region, age, pictures and even astrological sign. You can narrow your search to only those who are currently online. Unregistered browsing is designed to pique your interest. Match.com assumes that once you’ve seen all it offers, you’ll want to sign up yourself.

Like many other online dating services, Match.com is essentially a database. Launched in 1995 it now operates 28 localised sites with members in 230 countries. Listed on the NASDAQ as a division of USA Interactive, Match.com and its affiliates boast a staggering 20 million users – a total roughly the same as the population of Nepal and half that of Spain or Poland.

Besides its massive scale, what distinguishes Match.com from its competitors is its emphasis on compatibility. This is where that database comes in. To register, you answer a battery of questions about your appearance, lifestyle, values and interests. The questionnaire tries to ease you into this in a coy or euphemistic Sex in the City type way – “a few extra pounds” for overweight, “a sweet spot not on the list” for genitalia or ‘‘no way’’ for a perhaps unacceptable proposition (like piercing). The logic of these menus implicitly legitimates every option; differentiation becomes a serial, previously agreed-upon process.

The variability of sexual practices also appears to be categorical and such categorisation makes transgression a moot point. The social process comes to appear as a kind of ready-made. Volition, accordingly, approximates the ability to use a menu.

According to its ‘Privacy Policy’, Match.com and its business partners (‘Co-Branded Companies’) may also use any of this data for other purposes: “In order to operate the Site and to provide you with information about products or services that may be of interest to you, we may collect personal information… financial information… [and] demographic information… [that includes both] public information [and] non-public information.” So compatibility is also a pretext for targeting you as a consumer. Here what really counts is your job, income and location statistics. To justify its zealous information gathering, Match.com points to efficacy; according to its ‘resignation data’, in 2003 over 200,000 members – one in ten – found matches.

After the multiple-choice questions come the supplemental statements and photos. Here, you describe who you are and who you’d like to date (ironically, the refractoriness of this information is almost useless to marketers). If you need help with your pitch, Match.com’s professional copywriters can give it more zip – just like ad agencies do routinely, except here the service is free. Once all the answers are in, you submit your profile and wait a few minutes for it to be approved. Sorry, no dating for married people. Sorry, nothing lewd or lascivious. This is a sanitised site!

Once your profile passes, you’ll find your search results are now rated according to what you seek in a partner. (100% is a perfect match.) Moreover, this enables ‘‘Mutual Matching’’ searches, based on two-way compatibility. If you want to delve even deeper you can take the free Match.com Personality Test developed by ‘scientists and inventors’ Drs. Mark Thompson and Glenn Hutchinson. These results enable an even more focused search called ‘Total Attraction Matching’. Compared to pricey – thus abbreviated – print ads, the Internet is information-intensive and cheap. Of course, a good picture may still be the most important part of any ad. It’s reckoned to increase your chances about seven-fold.

Old-style ads, namely those appearing in print, were typically written from scratch. Despite the various ready-made acronyms, code words and special jargon, with these, the burden of self-representation fell to the individual advertiser. Then, once the ad appeared in print, the wait for a postcard or phone call began. Internet dating has changed all that. Now, almost every print ad also appears online.

In just a few short years, the online dating industry has generated a huge number of sites, each laying claim to a unique format or clientele. Yet, in concert, they have filtered out everything that not long ago seemed illicit or quixotic about personals ads. Instead, they have successfully cultivated an ethos of fun, negotiable sexuality and made seeking it out as convenient as checking email. In turn, the rapid popularisation of online dating has made it all tasteful. Any stigma once attached to personals ads has disappeared completely. As a joking testament to this trend, Time Out New York recently ran a cover story titled Offline Dating, as if that were now the exception to the rule. Compared to print ads, each aspect of any online encounter is more nuanced, less pressured and almost instantaneous. If Match.com’s format centres on tabulating multiple-choice questions, other hipper services typically ask applicants to field a few questions from a list: ‘Last book read?’, ‘Celebrity you most resemble?’, ‘Things found in your bedroom?’, ‘Most embarrassing moment?’ Such an approach is supposed to generate a simulacrum of small talk. Match.com is more automated and its underlying philosophy more behaviourist.

Despite the subtle coaxing, I baulked at writing my own profile. Doing so undercut my presumption of detached investigation – or detached voyeurism, if you will. Although interaction is the point of online dating, I wanted to keep my aloofness intact. Anyway, no one should have to write his own personals ad. But this administered world couldn’t do it either.