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The city is full of people we can’t reach. We pass them on sidewalks, sit across from them in the subway and in restaurants; we glimpse their lighted windows from our own lighted windows late at night. That’s in New York. In most of America, people float alongside one another on freeways as they drive between the city and the places where they live. To lock eyes with a stranger is to feel the 1)gulf between 2)proximity and familiarity and to wish—at least sometimes, briefly, for most of us—that we could jump the hedges of our own narrow lives and find those people again when they drift out of sight.
In a sense, the explosion of online personals speaks to the 3)fervency of that wish. Match.com alone has more than doubled its traffic over the last 2 years (from March 2010 to March 2012) to a 4)whopping 14 million 5)unique visitors a month. And those are only the unique visitors! Match also sees close to 50 million visitors each month, meaning they’re not only attracting new users, they’re building a loyal consumer base that visits often, and views almost 20 pages a session.
And that’s just one website—one of many. In the same amount of time, speeddate.com has expanded from about 0.5 million unique visitors a month to over 5 million; benaughty.com has risen from the same starting point to almost 10 million. Even the newcomer justhookup.com, which got its start in May 2011, already has just over 6 million. In every way, online personals and dating are going through an explosion of growth.
The 6)societal reasons for this fury of activity are so profound that it’s almost surprising that online dating didn’t 7)take off sooner: Americans are marrying later and so are less likely to meet their 8)spouses in high school or college. They spend much of their lives at work, but the rise in sexual 9)harassment suits has made workplace relationships 10)tricky at best. Among a more 11)secular and mobile population, social institutions like churches and clubs have faded in importance. That often leaves little more than the“bar scene” as a source of potential mates. Many single people I spoke to saw this as their only option, 12)aside from online dating.
Improved technology—namely, the 13)proliferation of 14)broadband and the abrupt 15)ubiquity of digital cameras—partly explains online dating’s 16)surge in popularity. More critical still is the fact that the first generation of kids to come of age on the Internet are now young adults, still mostly single, and for them, using the Web to find what they need is as natural as using a lung to suck in air. They get jobs and apartments and plane tickets online—why not dates?
Still, a fair number of people continue to feel some kind of 17)stigma about dating online, ranging from the 18)waning belief that it’s a dangerous refuge for the desperate and 19)unsavory to the milder but still unappealing notion that it’s a public bazaar for the sort of people who thrive on selling themselves. The shopping metaphor is apt; online dating involves browsing and choosing among a seemingly infinite array of possible mates. But those who see a transactional approach to coupling as something new and unseemly would do well to pick up a novel by Jane Austen, where characters are introduced alongside their incomes. There is nothing new about the idea of marriage as a business transaction. 20)Serendipitous love is what’s new: love borne of chance, love like what 21)engulfed my grandparents after my grandfather, then a 22)resident physician at a Chicago hospital emergency room, happened to remove my grandmother’s appendix. Serendipitous love as a romantic ideal is a 23)paean to cities and their 24)dislocations, the unlikely collisions that result from thousands of strangers with 25)discrete histories overlapping briefly in time and space. And online dating is not the opposite of this approach to love, but its radical extension; if cities erase people’s histories and 26)cram them together in space, online dating sites erase both cities and space, gathering people instead under the virtual 27)rubric of a brand.
这座城市到处是我们无法接近的人。我们在人行道上擦肩而过，在地铁和餐厅里相对而坐；我们透过自己亮着灯的窗户瞥见他们亮着灯的窗户。这就是纽约。在美国的大部分地区，当人们驾车行驶在从纽约通往各自住处的高速公路时，人与人之间飞一般地擦肩而过。定睛凝视一位陌生人就像感受亲近与熟悉之间的鸿沟，而在那些人从我们视线内漂离而去的瞬间我们又突然希望（对于大多数人来说，至少有时候是这样）可以跳过自己狭隘生活的藩篱，再一次找到他们。
从某种意义上说，网络交友的火爆证实了人们对这一愿望的热情。在过去两年里（从2010年3月到2012年3月），单是Match.com这个网站的访问量就增加了一倍多，每月的独立访问者多达1400万人，而这仅仅是独立用户的人数！Match.com网站每月还吸引接近5000万的访客，这意味着他们不仅吸引新访问者，还建立了一个忠实的客户群，这个客户群频繁地访问该网站，每次登录后的浏览量将近20页。
而这仅仅是其中一个网站的数据——类似的网站还有很多。在相同的时间跨度内，speeddate.com网站每月的独立访问者已从约50万扩大到500多万；benaughty.com网站的访问者也从与前者相近的起点上升至1千万。连新登场的justhookup.com网站（成立于2011年5月），也已经有超过600万的独立访问者了。从各方面来看，网络约会这一行业正在经历着爆炸式的成长。
网络约会活动的激增其实有着深刻的社会原因，时至今日才刮起风潮，这也着实让人惊讶。美国人相对更晚步入婚姻生活，所以在高中或大学遇到自己的伴侣的可能性就减低了。他们将大部分时间都花在工作上，但性骚扰诉讼的增多也让办公室恋情变得尤为棘手。在人们变得更世俗化、人口流动性更大的情况下，教堂和俱乐部之类的社交场所已日渐失色。这常常使“酒吧”成为一个寻求潜在伴侣的渠道。与我聊过的许多单身一族都把这看成是他们除了网络约会之外的唯一选择。
科技的进步——也就是说，宽带的广泛应用和突如其来又随处可见的数码相机——在一定程度上解释了网络约会人气攀升的原因。更重要的是，第一批与互联网共同成长的孩子们现已进入了青年阶段，但他们大多数仍然单身，对于他们来说，利用网络找到他们所需要的东西就和用肺呼吸一样自然。他们通过网络找工作、找房子和购买飞机票——那为什么不可以通过网络约会呢？
尽管如此，有些人还是会觉得在约会交友网站上寻觅伴侣似乎有辱名声，也会觉得其中危险重重，是“急婚恨嫁”和“不被青睐”的怪人们的天堂，稍微温和些但仍带鄙夷的看法则是，约会交友网站就是个市集，最适合那些爱张扬、爱自我推销的人。“买卖”这个比喻倒是贴切；网络约会意味着浏览一众对象，在无限看似有可能成为伴侣的人群中挑选。但如果你认为这种“挑货”似的婚恋是新事物且不合时宜，我建议你去找简·奥斯汀的小说看看，里面的人物角色出场总免不了要介绍其收入水平。将婚姻作为一种商业交易早已不是什么新鲜事儿了。偶然邂逅的爱情才让人觉得新鲜：因巧合而生的爱，就像我爷爷奶奶之间的爱情。那时候我爷爷是芝加哥一家医院急诊室的住院主治医师，碰巧帮我奶奶做了阑尾移除手术。缘分碰撞而生的爱是最理想浪漫的爱情，是城市生活及纷繁世态中的一首赞歌，是城市中成千上万有着各自不同故事的陌生人在时空上短暂地重叠在一起而产生的不可能的碰撞。网络约会不是这种偶然相爱方式的对立面，而是这种方式的激进延续；如果说城市抹去了人们的过去，将其投进同一拥挤的空间，那么网络约会便同时抹掉了城市与空间上的差异，让大家在约会交友品牌网站的虚拟平台上相聚寻缘觅爱。
In a sense, the explosion of online personals speaks to the 3)fervency of that wish. Match.com alone has more than doubled its traffic over the last 2 years (from March 2010 to March 2012) to a 4)whopping 14 million 5)unique visitors a month. And those are only the unique visitors! Match also sees close to 50 million visitors each month, meaning they’re not only attracting new users, they’re building a loyal consumer base that visits often, and views almost 20 pages a session.
And that’s just one website—one of many. In the same amount of time, speeddate.com has expanded from about 0.5 million unique visitors a month to over 5 million; benaughty.com has risen from the same starting point to almost 10 million. Even the newcomer justhookup.com, which got its start in May 2011, already has just over 6 million. In every way, online personals and dating are going through an explosion of growth.
The 6)societal reasons for this fury of activity are so profound that it’s almost surprising that online dating didn’t 7)take off sooner: Americans are marrying later and so are less likely to meet their 8)spouses in high school or college. They spend much of their lives at work, but the rise in sexual 9)harassment suits has made workplace relationships 10)tricky at best. Among a more 11)secular and mobile population, social institutions like churches and clubs have faded in importance. That often leaves little more than the“bar scene” as a source of potential mates. Many single people I spoke to saw this as their only option, 12)aside from online dating.
Improved technology—namely, the 13)proliferation of 14)broadband and the abrupt 15)ubiquity of digital cameras—partly explains online dating’s 16)surge in popularity. More critical still is the fact that the first generation of kids to come of age on the Internet are now young adults, still mostly single, and for them, using the Web to find what they need is as natural as using a lung to suck in air. They get jobs and apartments and plane tickets online—why not dates?
Still, a fair number of people continue to feel some kind of 17)stigma about dating online, ranging from the 18)waning belief that it’s a dangerous refuge for the desperate and 19)unsavory to the milder but still unappealing notion that it’s a public bazaar for the sort of people who thrive on selling themselves. The shopping metaphor is apt; online dating involves browsing and choosing among a seemingly infinite array of possible mates. But those who see a transactional approach to coupling as something new and unseemly would do well to pick up a novel by Jane Austen, where characters are introduced alongside their incomes. There is nothing new about the idea of marriage as a business transaction. 20)Serendipitous love is what’s new: love borne of chance, love like what 21)engulfed my grandparents after my grandfather, then a 22)resident physician at a Chicago hospital emergency room, happened to remove my grandmother’s appendix. Serendipitous love as a romantic ideal is a 23)paean to cities and their 24)dislocations, the unlikely collisions that result from thousands of strangers with 25)discrete histories overlapping briefly in time and space. And online dating is not the opposite of this approach to love, but its radical extension; if cities erase people’s histories and 26)cram them together in space, online dating sites erase both cities and space, gathering people instead under the virtual 27)rubric of a brand.
这座城市到处是我们无法接近的人。我们在人行道上擦肩而过，在地铁和餐厅里相对而坐；我们透过自己亮着灯的窗户瞥见他们亮着灯的窗户。这就是纽约。在美国的大部分地区，当人们驾车行驶在从纽约通往各自住处的高速公路时，人与人之间飞一般地擦肩而过。定睛凝视一位陌生人就像感受亲近与熟悉之间的鸿沟，而在那些人从我们视线内漂离而去的瞬间我们又突然希望（对于大多数人来说，至少有时候是这样）可以跳过自己狭隘生活的藩篱，再一次找到他们。
从某种意义上说，网络交友的火爆证实了人们对这一愿望的热情。在过去两年里（从2010年3月到2012年3月），单是Match.com这个网站的访问量就增加了一倍多，每月的独立访问者多达1400万人，而这仅仅是独立用户的人数！Match.com网站每月还吸引接近5000万的访客，这意味着他们不仅吸引新访问者，还建立了一个忠实的客户群，这个客户群频繁地访问该网站，每次登录后的浏览量将近20页。
而这仅仅是其中一个网站的数据——类似的网站还有很多。在相同的时间跨度内，speeddate.com网站每月的独立访问者已从约50万扩大到500多万；benaughty.com网站的访问者也从与前者相近的起点上升至1千万。连新登场的justhookup.com网站（成立于2011年5月），也已经有超过600万的独立访问者了。从各方面来看，网络约会这一行业正在经历着爆炸式的成长。
网络约会活动的激增其实有着深刻的社会原因，时至今日才刮起风潮，这也着实让人惊讶。美国人相对更晚步入婚姻生活，所以在高中或大学遇到自己的伴侣的可能性就减低了。他们将大部分时间都花在工作上，但性骚扰诉讼的增多也让办公室恋情变得尤为棘手。在人们变得更世俗化、人口流动性更大的情况下，教堂和俱乐部之类的社交场所已日渐失色。这常常使“酒吧”成为一个寻求潜在伴侣的渠道。与我聊过的许多单身一族都把这看成是他们除了网络约会之外的唯一选择。
科技的进步——也就是说，宽带的广泛应用和突如其来又随处可见的数码相机——在一定程度上解释了网络约会人气攀升的原因。更重要的是，第一批与互联网共同成长的孩子们现已进入了青年阶段，但他们大多数仍然单身，对于他们来说，利用网络找到他们所需要的东西就和用肺呼吸一样自然。他们通过网络找工作、找房子和购买飞机票——那为什么不可以通过网络约会呢？
尽管如此，有些人还是会觉得在约会交友网站上寻觅伴侣似乎有辱名声，也会觉得其中危险重重，是“急婚恨嫁”和“不被青睐”的怪人们的天堂，稍微温和些但仍带鄙夷的看法则是，约会交友网站就是个市集，最适合那些爱张扬、爱自我推销的人。“买卖”这个比喻倒是贴切；网络约会意味着浏览一众对象，在无限看似有可能成为伴侣的人群中挑选。但如果你认为这种“挑货”似的婚恋是新事物且不合时宜，我建议你去找简·奥斯汀的小说看看，里面的人物角色出场总免不了要介绍其收入水平。将婚姻作为一种商业交易早已不是什么新鲜事儿了。偶然邂逅的爱情才让人觉得新鲜：因巧合而生的爱，就像我爷爷奶奶之间的爱情。那时候我爷爷是芝加哥一家医院急诊室的住院主治医师，碰巧帮我奶奶做了阑尾移除手术。缘分碰撞而生的爱是最理想浪漫的爱情，是城市生活及纷繁世态中的一首赞歌，是城市中成千上万有着各自不同故事的陌生人在时空上短暂地重叠在一起而产生的不可能的碰撞。网络约会不是这种偶然相爱方式的对立面，而是这种方式的激进延续；如果说城市抹去了人们的过去，将其投进同一拥挤的空间，那么网络约会便同时抹掉了城市与空间上的差异，让大家在约会交友品牌网站的虚拟平台上相聚寻缘觅爱。