Writing to meet your match: Rhetoric and self-presentation for four online daters

After ten years, Internet dating has become mainstreamed with members producing and consuming a great deal of written text before meeting face-to-face. Through a twenty-one-prompt questionnaire and follow up interviews, four case study participants describe their efforts at self-reflection, self-representation, and interaction with other members. The following chapter analyzes email questionnaire responses and interview excerpts that discuss each participant's perceptions of the rhetorical process of writing profiles, interpreting others' profiles, and exchanging emails to facilitate courtship. In addition, this chapter analyzes the discourse of participants' self-presentations in comparison with their reported self-perceptions and impression management strategies. Findings suggest that more effective members composed their e-texts after a methodical process of understanding the communication genre, the expectations and behaviors of their target audiences, and their own relationship objectives. Further, participants with greater experience with cyber dating have more positive experiences, which led to positive attitudes and greater satisfaction with e-dating.