nick’s (n)-line life

Is it me or are we being just a teenie bit silly here? :)

Online marriage a mixed blessing in China (www.chinawords.blog-city.com)
A recent online survey by 21cn.com shows that, among the 900 netizens who joined the survey, 93 percent of them yearn to experience online love affairs; some 61.2 percent of them have made friends with netizens of the opposite sex and 35 percent of them have online lovers.

In March 2000 the website of the Online Community started the service of virtual families. Since then, scores of Chinese websites have provided a service for online marriage. Until February 23, 2004, in the virtual community of The9, a popular online game portal with 600,000 registered members, 36,342 of them had registered for online marriage and still more members were waiting to join.

The procedure of the online marriage is very simple. First of all, both sides should send a message noting their registered names to the staff of the website which provides this kind of service. After being approved, they “get married” successfully and the website will send the couple greeting mail. The couple’s registered names will be listed on the virtual community daily. Some websites even provide many classical proposal words for those who are looking forward to the online marriage.

Usually the wedding is held in the online chat room and the “priest” in the virtual community is invited to host the ceremony. The couple’s friends on the Internet enter the chat room and greet them. After the “marriage,” the couple can have or adopt their virtual sons or daughters.

According to the report of China Women’s News, so far, more than 100,000 Chinese have registered for online marriage on the Internet. It’s sudden popularity has had a strong influence on traditional marriage in real life.