Be my virtual Valentine. Or Not.

PARIS – Love it or loathe it, there’s no ignoring it. Red hearts on billboards, cutesy stuffed toys lined up in shop windows, chocolate confections and soppy cards.Valentine’s Day is here again.

And as smug couples cuddle up and secretly thank their lucky stars, even the most-determined singletons could be forgiven for wanting to curl up under their duvets to escape such saccharine sentimentality. As lovers the world over prepare for a romantic candle-lit night today, millions of others have a different date – with their computer and the other lonely hearts searching for love on-line.According to a recent study, 35 million people in Europe surf the Net every month looking for Mr or Miss Right.And it’s a profitable business for the on-line dating agencies, which last year generated 88 million euros (about N$650 million ) in turnover in Europe alone – a figure which is set to more than triple by 2009.Match.com, the world’s largest online dating agency which commissioned the study ‘Love Attitude in Europe’ carried out in five European countries by the British institute The Future Laboratory, says every year interest soars round Valentine’s Day.And even though they still haven’t managed to shake off their geeky “loser” image inherited from newspaper lonely hearts ads, match.com France’s managing director Alexis de Belloy believes such sites are just a 21st century take on traditional matchmaking services.Looking for love in cyberspace offers a much bigger pool of potential partners than say a bar or nightclub, but also allows the surfer to refine his search according to his or her own criteria, said De Belloy.”When you’re really busy, and you get home exhausted, you don’t really want to get dressed up to go out, put on the make-up.Internet is available all the time.It’s empowering.”It doesn’t mean you’re a failure.Not at all.It means you want to do better,” he argued.It seems many people agree.Last year 200 000 love affairs were sparked on match.com France ­- or one every two minutes.Emmanuelle (25) and her partner Samuel (27) have been together six months since meeting on-line.”I was curious to see what would happen, and wanted to change things.I was attracted by Samuel’s sense of humour and the way he talked about himself.”But it’s true I was a bit nervous about what I would find when we met for the first time.”For social anthropologist Kate Fox, the growing use of the Internet is almost a return to the days of Jane Austen and good old-fashioned courtships carried out by correspondence.”As the author William Gibson said ‘It’s not really a place and it’s not really a space’.What you get is a state of cultural remission.Where the social controls are relaxed and even reversed,” she said.”Because we see e-mails as ephemeral, and not as permanent as a piece of paper, although that is not true, the Internet can be very liberating and disinhibited.”- Nampa-AFPAs lovers the world over prepare for a romantic candle-lit night today, millions of others have a different date – with their computer and the other lonely hearts searching for love on-line.According to a recent study, 35 million people in Europe surf the Net every month looking for Mr or Miss Right.And it’s a profitable business for the on-line dating agencies, which last year generated 88 million euros (about N$650 million ) in turnover in Europe alone – a figure which is set to more than triple by 2009.Match.com, the world’s largest online dating agency which commissioned the study ‘Love Attitude in Europe’ carried out in five European countries by the British institute The Future Laboratory, says every year interest soars round Valentine’s Day.And even though they still haven’t managed to shake off their geeky “loser” image inherited from newspaper lonely hearts ads, match.com France’s managing director Alexis de Belloy believes such sites are just a 21st century take on traditional matchmaking services.Looking for love in cyberspace offers a much bigger pool of potential partners than say a bar or nightclub, but also allows the surfer to refine his search according to his or her own criteria, said De Belloy.”When you’re really busy, and you get home exhausted, you don’t really want to get dressed up to go out, put on the make-up.Internet is available all the time.It’s empowering.”It doesn’t mean you’re a failure.Not at all.It means you want to do better,” he argued.It seems many people agree.Last year 200 000 love affairs were sparked on match.com France ­- or one every two minutes.Emmanuelle (25) and her partner Samuel (27) have been together six months since meeting on-line.”I was curious to see what would happen, and wanted to change things.I was attracted by Samuel’s sense of humour and the way he talked about himself.”But it’s true I was a bit nervous about what I would find when we met for the first time.”For social anthropologist Kate Fox, the growing use of the Internet is almost a return to the days of Jane Austen and good old-fashioned courtships carried out by correspondence.”As the author William Gibson said ‘It’s not really a place and it’s not really a space’.What you get is a state of cultural remission.Where the social controls are relaxed and even reversed,” she said.”Because we see e-mails as ephemeral, and not as permanent as a piece of paper, although that is not true, the Internet can be very liberating and disinhibited.”- Nampa-AFP