By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
September 2, 2002
In a dating rut? Maybe a few Rules are in order.
Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider are betting enough singletons are fed up with being fixed up that they will give online dating a shot.
And they’re counting on women to be desperate enough to pick up a copy of their latest book, The Rules for Online Dating (Pocket, $12).
Like their other dating/mating books, Fein and Schneider lay out a stringent set of rules for the Rules Girl to follow when she saunters online to troll for a date: Don’t e-mail the man first. Don’t reply to any e-mails before 24 hours. Don’t waste time instant messaging. Don’t go online on the weekend even if you have nothing better to do. Don’t call him first. If he hasn’t asked you out by the fourth e-mail, delete his notes and move on to the next guy.
Gee–sounds a lot like “don’t have any fun” to me.
Whether a guy would fall for this probably depends on one of two factors: the hotness of your posted photo (although the Rules ladies caution against posting suggestive pictures) and the loneliness of the man sitting at his computer terminal.
Still, the authors insist their method works. And Fein may need to take some of her own advice since she’s now divorced from her husband of 16 years.
My advice? Use common sense. Don’t pull a “Swingers” and inundate the guy with multiple phone calls (or e-mails) before he has had a chance to even consider getting back to you. Give out a cell phone number until you’re comfortable with the man you’d like to get to know better. Don’t expect him to look exactly like the online photo he has posted–One online Lothario tried to pass off a photo of male model Marcus Schenkenberg as himself.
And by all means, write the guy first if you feel like it. This is 2002.
