Dating and other bad habits.

As social media and the internets become more readily available there is much less left to the imagination, eh? You can Facebook stalk someone’s photo albums and know when they’ve been dressed up like Liberace on Halloween (or last Tuesday). Check out Foursquare and find out where Mr. Could-Be-Right has checked-in so often he never had to run for high office. Lounge around LinkedIn long enough to find out if she’ll be the first female CEO at her current company (you never know).

Whatever happened to mystery?

Not that I’m not guilty. I’ve Google-stalked my way through the web and many a crush. In fact, if you can’t find someone online, isn’t it a little suspect?

I haven’t done any web wandering in quite some time, being a boring old lady and all, but recently this Mashable article caught my eye. And the points this young lady makes are beyond valid——there is an etiquette to everything, including hunting a mate in the modern online age. Which reminds me of a story…

I can remember standing in a bar, a handsome man offering to buy me a drink and making the flirty small talk that crowded spaces and whiskey invite. He was cute—like a young Jamie Foxx—but there was something a little boring and pretentious about him. still, I was intrigued, even as the Burrito rolled her eyes. And then, he whipped out the Blackberry.

Armed with my first and last name, his fingers quickly punched in the letters and…SHOCKER…up came this blog and the magazine column that preceded it. The title of the column, “Where Can I Get a Boyfriend For Hire,” immediately raised the supposed Bahamain prince’s perfectly manicured eyebrow.

“Oh a boyfriend,” he said, so casually. “That’s what you all want, isn’t it.”

Um. No. Not all we want. Not all of us.

“Read the article,” I said smiling and walking away with my gratis drink, Burrito giggling next to me.

Googling someone in front of them is just so uncouth. Especially if the Googler in question can’t read the column in question, much less read between the lines.