The Internet was so young back then that they said they were not even able to upload their pictures to the site. (The earliest Match screenshot I could find, from 2000, shows a web portal adorned with cheesy, yet era-appropriate, clip-art hearts and lots of exclamation points.) Both Terri and Tom typed in a few facts about themselves, only taking the Match questionnaire half-seriously. Terri said she liked tennis and reading. Tom said he was Catholic, but not a Bible-thumper, and that he liked rugby. Tom’s profile was the first one Terri clicked on. The questionnaire asked them how far they were willing to travel to visit someone they met through the site. They both entered “500 miles.” From Tom’s door to Terri’s was 499.

The first people to try out a new trend often face stigma, but some are nevertheless willing to defy social norms in order to live their best, truest lives. The revolutionary nature of what Tom and Terri were doing is evidenced by the fact that two years after they signed up, in 1999, Match.com still had only two million subscribers.261 Today, Match and its associated brands have more than fifty-nine million members.262 Online dating, when Tom and Terri were doing it, was so new that it was considered dangerous. “If romance blossoms on line [sic] and you arrange a face-to-face encounter, take precautions,” wrote a New York Times story263 about the trend. “Experts advise that first dates be held in public, preferably in daytime.” Today, it’s probably rare that two people who found each other on Tinder would ever see each other in the daytime.

In the early days of Internet dating, if you managed not to get axe murdered, there was always the chance your social reputation would get killed instead. In 2006, the summer before my junior year of college—libertine, everything-goes college—I connected with a fellow student at my university through MySpace. We quickly migrated to more time-honored forms of courtship, like awkward phone calls and even awkwarder sex. But we had to keep the fact that we had exchanged our initial messages through the Internet a closely guarded secret. Even then, online dating was considered desperate, a nerdy last resort for those who weren’t lovable under normal circumstances. Ugh, you met him through the Internet? Why couldn’t you just spill your Red Bull–vodka on him in a bar like a normal person?

In 2002, a Wall Street Journal264 story described online dating as “at least one rung lower than meeting in a singles bar.” “Even happily matched online couples remain uneasy about telling friends and family how their love affairs started, despite a surging use of dating services,” wrote the Journal reporter. “They don’t tell the truth until things get serious—and sometimes not even then.”