Match Point

It's no secret that I'm struggling to meet folks out here. This seems to be a theme for many people who are new to Seattle, but I don't think I met a lot of people back East either. My specific dilemma is this: I can be solitary for 48-72 hours before going crazy, I only know four people in Seattle, and I'm absolutely terrified of the process of meeting new people. To be sure, I'm drawing a fine line here: I enjoy being introduced to people, which is how I met all the wonderful people I count amongst my friends. But I would rather play with vipers than introduce myself to a total stranger.

This is a pretty bad phobia to have when you're in my situation. The most obvious solution to this is the Interweb. Whether it's meetup or match or myspace, there are a multitude of options to screen and "meet" people electronically. I'm not necessarily looking for something romantic, I just want to find some people. On some level, the impersonality of the web is perfect for me, and frankly, I'm an epically good emailer, while my conversational skills are kind of hit-or-miss. Everyone I've talked to about going this route has wholeheartedly recommended it. I'm an constantly regaled with the stories of how so-and-so met such-and-such online and got to learn about their city and now they're engaged or now they know lots of new people. It all sounds great. Except for one thing.

All of the stories are second hand.

So am I just blessed with friends who are all perfectly happy with their social situations? Are my friends not comfortable online? Is DC just the kind of town where social networking kind of breaks for adults (since everyone is scared about their boss finding out they might have a social life)? I have no idea. But this worries me.

Three other things worry me:

1. My first encounter with match.com was in 2002. A guy I worked with at the time moved to Boise and put up a profile to try and meet girls im Boise. We found the profile in Richmond and spent an hour at work grouped in someone's cube looking at it and making fun of it. That has always stuck in my head.
2. Screen Names. Most people I know (except for my dad, strangely) use something very closely related to their name when picking screen names or email addresses. They don't use "qtpie103" or "ski_luvr" or crap like that. I've moved away from my first AOL name (karttyler) to rtcurtis and tyler.curtis because I want people to know who they are communicating with; I like the genuineness. So when I see the "qtpie103"s of the world, I become very skeptical of what their deal is. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it really, really does. It's why I hate the idea of "blogger communities" where people refer to each other by screen names rather than real names. You know when it was cool to do that? When you played Dungeons and Dragons in 5th grade. And you know what? It wasn't cool then, either.
3. This.
   

[This is where I'll readily admit that I'm definitely going to do match or meetup or something at some point... kind of like buying a Blackberry. I know I'm going to do it, but I feel the need to fight it and point out all the reasons why I shouldn't do it before caving and (hopefully) being really happy that I caved.]

So that's what I'm battling with right now. Huan mentioned something about an East Coast ex-pat group one of his friends is putting together. And I'm starting to meet some b-school friends of Tyler H's (MBA is to Seattle as JD is to DC), so maybe one of those will turn into something.