If sexual excitement is the only goal of _certain_ Netfolks, and if the crowd in alt.sex.wanted is too creepy, some professional women just might meet their needs. As noted earlier in this book, a little outfit called Brandy’s Babes advertised on the World Wide Web—complete with hints of more than just visual stimuli. The babes are apparently off the Net now, but some would say that successors are inevitable. In _limited_ ways the Net and the world of professional sex are much alike: both have their jargon and, for those who seek it, their anonymity. Both worlds are rich in eccentrics. For example, I recently ran across a woman in her late forties who was about to bear a baby with a computer scientist she met on the Net “an hour before April Fool’s Day.” She says the child was accidentally “conceived about two weeks after meeting ‘in the flesh.’ We are having the baby first. _Then_ we will talk about marriage on a serious basis. I’m delighted at the prospect of being a mum at last, and I am not your average clunky woman at all. I generally feel much better about myself. I introduced Tom to sex, and he says he had no idea how cuddle-deprived he was. He’s now quite addicted to me.” Tom and his computer are now part of her household; like many Netfolks he can use his modem to work virtually anywhere, which in some cases is yet another advantage of online romance. Like most denizens of the Internet, the e-mail lovers just mentioned are well educated. And, although the woman was between jobs, Netfolks are normally at least affluent. If they are students, their parents are middle class or better. While the price of Internet service is coming down, and while access is free in some cities and at many American colleges, the Net doesn’t exactly teem with welfare mothers. So what other patterns emerge among lovers who meet through the Net? “I haven’t done a study of the personality curve, the introvert-extrovert ratio,” Avodah Offit, the psychiatrist who wrote _Virtual Love_, told me, “but my experience is just the opposite of what one might expect My ‘high user’ contacts are all very sociable types who hate being out of contact with others at any time of day or night. Of course my correspondents are not generally engaged in romance with me, but they do write to others online in a variety of relationships.” My own observations suggest that while many net.lovers may be introverts, her thoughts would hold true. Judging from lovers whose photos I’ve seen, the plugged-in couples are neither more nor less attractive than the world at large. But the plainer ones can use prose to compensate for looks; this is a medium where words are everything.