It seems like it’s gotten harder and harder to meet people. Making new friends and finding romantic partners has largely become another online marketplace and real world encounters have become more suspect by default.

With all the meet ups and the match ups (which have served their niche well), it sometimes feels as though the old fashioned technique of striking up a conversation with a total stranger has been thrown out with the bath water.

Where we once felt drawn toward certain people by pheromones or looks or conversation or charisma, we now have the opportunity to examine a person’s profile, the one they choose to portray anyway, make our assumptions based on that profile and weed out our options.

I wonder what that ultimately does to our most primal instincts. Human relationships are based so much on the inexplicable. We are frequently drawn towards or away from one another for reasons that support the notion of past lives or destiny.

This new model of seeking companionship through technology narrows our range of priorities and enhances the probability of superficial encounters. What people might have in common is based on finances and sexual tastes and numbers of children they may one day have together… These things are definitely important factors in a relationship but there is no room in that for the unexpected.

There are many contributing factors to new fangled “hook up”. And this new way of socializing is not altogether bad. I know many people who have met and gotten married as the result of Internet dating. I’ve known people who have found community through online groups. But I also know many people who never would have looked twice at one another based on a profile or a picture who are quite happy and have been together for a very long time. They would never have dreamed that their partner would have been their type but the mysterious magic of attraction brought them together.

I love to believe that there is companionship out there in the world for everyone and I sometimes wonder, in our isolation, if it’s easier to find our people from a stock pile of possible matches or by going out into life and bringing it back home with us.