So does he think the stereotype holds true-that today’s young urban gay man is more interesting in hooking up than developing a stable, monogamous relationship?

"I wanna say ’Yeah,’ but I realize that’s not fair," Mauro says. "It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. Is it that we’re more notoriously interested in fast sex because it’s the only thing we can ever have? Very possibly. I think we’re conditioned for that. It was pretty unthinkable, certainly in a public context for a gay couple to just be known as a couple in the ordinary world until relatively recently.

People want to put up the best picture of themselves so they end up using something taken while they were in college.
Nevertheless, he sees the internet as an invaluable tool for helping to further forge monogamy in the gay, even if he is slightly ambivalent about the results.

When you’re looking for Mr. (or Ms.) Right, as opposed to Mr. Rightnow, honesty is the best policy. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make sure that you don’t put yourself in the most flattering light possible.

"People obviously want to advertise themselves in the best way possible, but the best way to do that is to just say ’here’s the realistic me,’" says TrueDater.com community relations director Jamie Diamond. "If you go to Sears and get the glamour shot in the perfect angle in the perfect lighting that’s probably going to throw somebody off."

TrueDater is an online dating watchdog group of sorts, developed as president and founder Mark Geller became dismayed over the misinformation, misrepresentation and outright falsification that kept cropping up on the personal profiles on online daters.

"Almost everyone dates online, so the issue is not whether it’s acceptable anymore or whether the questionnaires are useful," Diamond says. "The number one issue with this giant cultural phenomenon is honesty."

After surveying its users, TrueDater found that physical appearance was most misrepresented in online profiles, followed by age and marital status. Of those polled, male voters ranked weight first with 45 percent, and general physical appearance second with 20 percent. "Marital status" ranked third with 13 percent, while all other categories mentioned-height, income, marital status and other-received 10 percent or less.

With female voters, general physical appearance ranked first with 36 percent of the vote, followed by weight (19 percent) and age (16 percent). Surprisingly, female voters said men were more likely to exaggerate weight and appearance than height and income level. Also, more men than women complained that online daters had been dishonest about their marital status. The results are not scientific; True Dater is simply a free site that allows its users to post reviews and critiques of online pictures and profiles and provide support for isolated web wanderers who find that their match-ups had been less-than-forthright.



"A lot of times, people don’t even realize what they’re doing," Diamond says. "They want to put up the best picture of themselves so they end up using something that was taken eight years ago while they were still in college."

Nevertheless, Diamond also says that true frauds abound on the online dating scene. "You’ll see someone posting a supermodel photo and a fancy IM name, and the next thing you know they’re asking you to put money in an ivory coast bank account," he scoffs.

Louisa Praver is straight, but her experiences match up with the kind of experience many--too many--people, straight and gay, have in trying to find dates online. In March 2006, she flirted with a guy she met on Match.com. After posting pictures and a profile of herself up, Praver, 26, who lives in Parkland, Fla., got a response from Matt. The pair began exchanging e-mails and then instant messaging.

"We talked for three hours," she recalls. "He kept saying he wished I was at his house at that very moment, that he wished I was sitting in his lap, that he wanted to massage my shoulders, run his hands up my sexy legs."

Intrigued, she arranged for a meet-up and planned to go out with him that Wednesday night. She thought he seemed nice enough when he picked her up. As they were about to leave, she realized she’d forgotten her purse. "I’ll be right back," she told him and left him waiting in his car, its motor still idling in the driveway. When she returned, "He just drove off!" she says laughing. "I didn’t even see him leave!"

She suspects that she’d chosen an exceptionally flattering photo and failed to meet expectations in person. "I don’t care," she laughs. "He was ugly anyway."

Sound familiar?

"Ultimately it’s another doorway, another tool," Mauro says of meeting online. "It gives you access to people you ordinarily wouldn’t have access to. But all the other situations and scenarios involved in getting to know someone and forging a relationship comes into play. The Internet masks a few of these because nothing is more impactful than chemistry. All your stats and inclinations could match up perfectly with somebody else, but it could turn out to be lifeless. You simply don’t connect. That’s a tough thing for a lot of men to digest."