Step outside your little world
You get to talk to a pretty girl
She's everything you dream about
But don't fall in love
`Cause if you do you'll find out she don't love you

--The Tubes, "She's a Beauty"

There you are on MySpace, buying into the concept of social networking, believing you might actually encounter someone of life-altering significance through a free website. You'll meet the woman you'll marry, the A&R rep who will sign your band, the publisher who will pay you top dollar for the tell-all book, right there. Yes, one day you'll look back on a life of adventure, enabled by the people you met on MySpace, and think, "Would all of this have happened if the Internet hadn't existed?"

With this in mind, you login and encounter the Match.com ad. There is the embodiment of your most hopeful fantasy: a thin, mid 20-ish girl with full lips who's also logging in hoping to escape her hermetically-sealed life. She looks like a wholesome girl-next-door, yet like a tart at the same time, a great combination. All you have to do is click to join your destinies together!

Without even having sampled the service, I can tell you the girl depicted above is not on Match.com. Nor is her cousin who looks like a funhouse mirror copy of her. Even if they are there, if you think they're any more likely to hook up with you because you cut-and-pasted a layout with a 10-year-old picture of yourself and listed Mystic Pizza as your favorite movie, think again. Microchip technology has not improved your odds of sleeping with Kelly Bundy.

I haven't been on Match or eHarmony, but it seems to be nothing but a desktop version of what you can experience anywhere. Girls who know they're cute/sexy post 14 pictures of themselves, which in itself is the mark of a narcissist, and wait for guys to send little "hello" e-mails. And then...nothing. But now they have a inbox full of confirmations they're as cute and sexy as they think they are.

You may think me merely bitter, but even a superstud local celebrity like Tim Rhodes is of a similar opinion. Check out his account of his first-hand experience with online dating services here.

This has been a public service announcement courtesy of Art's Bar & Grill.