You can find anything on the Internet

A few weeks ago, a friend who's a somewhat recent transplant to Boston and I were chatting about dating in Beantown.

"A lot of people have offered to set me up with different guys," she said. "I'm not sure I even need to use the Internet. What do you think?"

I told her that personally I would have a very empty date book if it weren't for the Internet. But when I thought about it more, I realized that even if I did have friends who wanted to set me up right and left, I'd still want to meet guys from the Internet.

The last guy I dated before Moustache, in my pre-Internet days, was a banker named White Pants who funded open-top mines. He made a good living in an incredibly boring and even (in my opinion) immoral way. Without revealing too many details, here are some of the guys I've met from the Internet:

• An artist who made futuristic machines and participated in lots of international exhibits
  
• A man who was famous for winning several hundred thousand dollars on a TV gameshow
• A comedian who worked for one of the most well-known comedy troupes in the country
• A writer who quoted the New York Times review of his book on his OkCupid profile (it was negative)
• A lawyer who specializes in welfare cases
  
• A painter who teaches underprivileged kids at a local university and hunts for mushrooms in his spare time
  
• A musician who was named one of the country's most promising young songwriters
• A scientist who studies the importance of play
• A man who trained people all over the world in mediation

Plus a whole slew of other guys with only slightly less interesting jobs. Moreover, all of these people (with just one exception) were really nice guys. I met all of them on OkCupid, which you don't even have to pay for. And when I briefly tried a paid site -- Match -- the guys I met were far less interesting.

Why would I want to be set up with my friends' boring accountant friends and lawyer cousins when there's the Internet? Seriously, it's a no-brainer.