online dating is about vanity. Simply put, I think that I'm too attractive, too interesting and too young to need to subject myself to the trauma of courting on the Internet.

　　我讨厌网络相亲的最大原因在于其虚有其表。简而言之，我认为自己太有魅力、太有趣也太年轻了，根本没有必要去经历网络求爱这种精神创伤。

　　But there's another reason, too—it's that I love a story. One of my favorite parts of dating is a charming "how we met" anecdote. And I'm sorry, but there's nothing charming about Harmony. So when someone I know admittedthat part of getting over his first love meant realizing that he'd been "in love with the story"—the two of them met in the desert in Israel— I immediately recognized my own experience.

　　不过，这其中还有另外一个原因——我喜欢有故事的爱情。对于约会，我最钟爱的部分便是“我们如何相识”这件迷人轶事。真抱歉，“网络红娘”根本跟迷人不沾边。因此，当我的一位朋友承认结束其初恋的部分原因是他明白到自己一直以来只是“与那个故事相爱”——他们两人是在以色列的沙漠中相遇的——我立刻想到了自己的经历。

　　Specifically, I recognized my Missed Connection. It was the Internet that brought us together, ironically, but there was plot. We made eye contact on a Brooklyn-bound train and then found one another through the Missed Connections page on Craigslist. I posted the ad, for the first time in my life, and he hadn't even heard of the site until reading about it in the Times Book Review two weeks prior.

　　具体来说，我想到了自己一段错过的联系。讽刺的是，让我们找到了对方的正是网络，当中还有情节。我们在一列开往布鲁克林方向的火车上有过一面之缘，随后在“克雷格菜单”网站的“寻人启事”页面中找到对方。我发布了平生第一则寻人广告，而他是在前两周读到《时代》杂志的书评时才知道这个网站。

　　On our first date, he unassuminglydisclosed a critical mass of Ideal Boyfriend qualities: he was six-foot-five and a lawyer for a labor union. He asked me questions and read the New Yorker. He had become an ordained minister online so that he could perform the weddings of both of his younger sisters.