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The proposal has been made… and has been accepted. This October, the cyber-fairy godmother will have completed yet another cyber-fairy tale— Kelly Hildebrandt will finally be marrying Kelly Hildebrandt. And there is not even a typo in that sentence.

It all started when Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20 years old, got curious with the online social community site, Facebook last year and entered her name on the “search” field. To her surprise, Facebook returned one profile, that of Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, 24. She sent him a message just to let him know that she has the same name. Occasional messages, emails and phone calls became regular and before they knew it,  they were already dating. The rest, as they say, is history.

Some people would find their story out of the ordinary, but it might be happening more often than we had imagined. In India, for example, it is widely accepted and at some point, even encouraged to go online and rummage through matchmaking sites for that someone “to have and to hold, for better or for worse”. Singles have the option to filter their search using preferences such as age, religion, physical attributes and even annual income.

But that is kicking it up a notch.

Now, although demographics alone may not spur romance between two people (for some, it will, but that is their issue), going online does help, in a way, because it would enable one person to find something interesting about another which would otherwise be impossible if the two were living in different parts of the globe. It is actually not a matter of being able to customize the people whom you are going to meet, but a matter of being able to meet new people virtually and not physically. So rather than just wait for someone to introduce him/ herself, or for a friend to do it for you, you can increase your flirting batting average by meeting people via social networking or even matchmaking sites.

A better way to put it: “the more entries you send, the more chances of winning”. It is a free virtual world that we are living in, and it is really up to you on how you would want to roll, be it passive, passive- aggressive or downright proactive. Besides, online romance still follows the time- tested formula for starting a relationship: boy meets girl (or boy meets boy or girl meets girl… Again it is up to you). Just be sure to be thorough when it comes to background- checking. It is a dangerous world out there.

With very basic human relationships such as that of the Hildebrandts being developed within virtual communities, the internet ceases to be just site for storing and accessing information. This trend only goes to show that we are being ushered into the global village slowly, but surely. Right now, it is becoming a very legitimate venue for communication and human interaction, and is a concept much like the King’s Cross Station Platform 9¾ of the Harry Potter Series: it’s not physically there, but it exists.

Within the global village, an individual would have the ability to maximize his/ her reach to the entire six degrees of separation. That means that if each of the eight billion people on Earth could sign in as a member of a social networking site, ideally, we would all know each other.

And like what our cyber lovebirds have learned, it all starts with the knowing.

Right now, Kelly Katrina and Kelly Carl are just too happy to be past that stage, and maybe, they couldn’t care less if they have catalyzed our transition into the global age.