If you’ve been a somewhat regular user of an e-mail service, then you’ve probably received them. Advertisements for online dating services, picture-rating Web sites (with an option to meet the person you’re rating), chat rooms and message boards all compete for your attention - and your dollar.

“Meet the guy or girl of your dreams for only $9.95 per month!” they say proudly, accompanied by a picture of a deliriously happy couple.

What’s astounding about these things is their rampant success. What started out as a novelty has become a booming business filled with service charges and advertising. Essentially someone has created a business model for the human heart and attached a rate card to it.

These companies literally sell people by the dozen. After having received a good hundred or more e-pleas from these various companies to check out their services and browse through a free sample, I took a look out of curiosity. If it didn’t bring enlightenment into the e-pimping business, at least it’d make a good column.

At first glance I thought that it’s just a toy that bored college students and single folk play with. Maybe for some people it is. But for others, after reading the messages these people write, there’s something more. It speaks of a deeper need and longing for companionship.

But if you’re lonely, why search on the Internet, of all places?

As a journalist, it’s obvious to me what power the written word can hold. It can convey information, emotions and feelings that were otherwise not a part of the reader. Yet, it can only do so much.

A glowing monitor can hardly be a decent substitute for the music of a real laugh, the awkwardness of an uncomfortable silence, a mischievous grin or an self-conscious toss of the hair. Things like this can’t be communicated by ones and zeros.

Yet, throngs of people young and old continue to pay their $9.95, looking for Mr. or Ms. Right.

Except sometimes Ms. Right might be called HotBabe52181 and might actually be a 13-year-old boy in Sweden playing his idea of a practical joke. Mr. Right may in reality be a married grandfather writing you from an Internet cafe while hiding from his wife. And those are only the mildest of falsehoods that could come into play in this new dating game.

I can see how some might find the anonymity of their computer comforting. After all, you could have your first meeting in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt and nobody would be the wiser. Looks aren’t as important when you communicate with a keyboard and a mouse, which is a blessing for some who are a little insecure about their appearance.

And it’s nice to not have to respond right away to an e-mail or online message, enabling you to be far wittier and charming than you could ever be in real life.

When you get right down to it though, there simply can’t be the same sort of experience you’d usually find. The “rules” are different, the setting is different and even the kind of stimulation is different. There are different hints to pick up on, if any can be conveyed at all by a few keystrokes and a set of otherwise incomprehensible acronyms and abbreviations. And suddenly, the combination of a colon and a parentheses is full of meaning.

Maybe that’s the key to the whole thing. The differences are what make it so appealing to those who make use of these Internet services. For those who find real life so daunting, there is a safety net that they can create using only a phone line and a computer.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. People half our age are carrying around cell phones and laptops, notebooks are replaced by PDAs, (and despite the topic, that’s not meant to stand for public display of affection) and e-mail is a more standard method of communication than the telephone. It’s only expected that a crowded, noisy gathering of people be replaced by a digital amalgamation of images and text in that unofficial search people go through to find “the one.”

I can’t say I’m entirely excited. Personally, I’d rather spend an evening pulling in secondhand smoke, listening to bad music played entirely too loud and bumped against masses of other disoriented, uncomfortably hot people, forced to interact with them rather than send a picture of myself, type my likes and dislikes and hope for the best.

But it looks like it’s coming to where I’m almost the minority in this.

The future is upon us, my friends. And it wants to know “a/s/l where r u from? :)”

Chris Boyer is the State News opinion writer. He can be reached at boyerchr@msu.edu.