Online Dating

Online Dating

I am on a dating profile website.

Well, ok, technically speaking, the website isn't restricted to dating. It's designed to encourage both gays and lesbians to communicate and forge friendships from the privacy of their homes. The site has a chat function, updates its news service every few days, and offers a regular medical-advice column. So it ain't exactly matchmaker.com.au. To keep things fun (with the possibility open for cattiness), profiled people are able to rate each other on a scale from 1 to 10.

The thing is, I worry incessantly now about my rating, whether my profile is grammatically correct, and how easy it is for people to identify me from the photo I put up (the less obvious the better). Even worse, there's a guy who's been e-mailing me, on and off, for the past 3 months...in spite of the fact that I've only contacted him twice during that time, and on both occasions have deliberately kept things impersonal. I'm not interested, but he persists with his advances. He's perfectly polite, but his behaviour seems vaguely stalkerish to me. What's disconcerting is that he lists "Asian men and boys" as his interests, and I'm not sure which category I'm supposed to fit into. He's also a good deal older than I am. I'm not sure what troubles me more: his online stalking or his potential infantilization of me. He lives in Sydney, and I am often in the area. As a friend pointed out, he may well be sending these e-mails to several people. Maybe it's just that I've seen plenty of those internet action and horror movies, like Sandra Bullock's The Net or the German schlockfest, Fatal Online Attraction. Has anyone else had this experience? What should I do?