The film _Crocodile Dundee_ may or may not have been on the mind of Laura Goodin when she was wandering through soc.culture.australian. She saw “a message from an Australian composer studying in the U.S.,” who told of “an alternative tune to ‘Waltzing Matilda.’” Laura asked for the music. Within months the Aussie proposed, right over the Net in the same newsgroup. “Congratulatory messages came from all over the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.” Today Laura Goodin and Houston Dunleavy are married and living together in the Washington, D.C., area, with a baby on the way. They exchanged more than 1,500 messages during their courtship, not to mention countless sessions of typing together in Teletype fashion, just as Greg and Sue have done. It is not the same as talking the old-fashioned way but can save enough in phone bills to pay for an engagement ring or maybe a more powerful computer. “A long-distance relationship is hellish,” Laura says, “but the pain is eased somewhat by the Internet.”[7.1] This isn’t just happening on the Internet itself. When a New York City woman was testing a service that became America Online, marriage was the last thing on her mind. Nevertheless she ended up married in Virginia to a lover she met via e-mail. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, met his wife on CompuServe, where, supposedly, she had sought his advice on coping with a liberal professor. A chef and a substitute teacher met on Prodigy and flew off to Las Vegas together, thinking they would enjoy the video poker if nothing else; they won $4,000 and each other.[7.2] A psychiatrist has even written a novel about online relationships, _Virtual Love_. “E-mail has been called the singles bar of the 90’s,” Dr. Avodah Offit told the _New York Times_. “And that concept intrigues me a lot. The traditional ways that people meet now do not allow much access to each other’s minds, and that has not led to enduring relationships.” What’s the best place to find out about your potential spouse? By sitting silently through movies or boozing it up in noisy, smoky nightspots, or by sharing intimacies over the modem? “I find people are more open on e-mail,” she says. And I agree.