On Tinder, Ok Cupid, or any one of dozens of other digital dating apps and websites, every photo, comment, swipe or text is a fresh opportunity to judge and be judged.It can be tough for singles to know how to navigate.In the fall of 1964, on a visit to the World’s Fair, in Queens, Lewis Altfest, a twenty-five-year-old accountant, came upon an open-air display called the Parker Pen Pavilion, where a giant computer clicked and whirred at the job of selecting foreign pen pals for curious pavilion visitors. Within a year, more than five thousand subscribers had signed on. It would invite dozens of matched couples to singles parties, knowing that people might be more comfortable in a group setting. They wound up in the pages of the New York subscriber.You filled out a questionnaire, fed it into the machine, and almost instantly received a card with the name and address of a like-minded participant in some far-flung locale—your ideal match. He called up his friend Robert Ross, a programmer at I. M., and they began considering ways to adapt this approach to find matches closer to home. “This loser happens to be a talented fashion illustrator for one of New York’s largest advertising agencies. Women were asked to look at a trio of sketches of men in various settings, and to say where they’d prefer to find their ideal man: in camp chopping wood, in a studio painting a canvas, or in a garage working a pillar drill. 1400 Series computer, which then spit out your matches: five blue cards, if you were a woman, or five pink ones, if you were a man. Men were asked to rank drawings of women’s hair styles: a back-combed updo, a Patty Duke bob."I don't know why you would chose to take it in the bathroom. You get the mutual match on a mobile dating app like Tinder. And that gets so tough because I feel like you'll forget what you learned about them in person and what you learned about them online."On the date, stay offline.How many messages should you swap before you meet for a date in the real world? Your date gets up from the table; you check your phone. "I'm sure everyone does it, but you shouldn't do it. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."Texting after the date: How soon is too soon?

One section asked subjects to choose from a list of “dislikes”: “1. The batteries died on her tape recorder, so they made a date to finish the interview later that week, which turned into dinner for two. Looking back now, he says that he considered computer dating to be little more than a gimmick and a fad.There are some obvious guidelines for good behavior (No, you shouldn't Tinder on your dates.But we'll get to that.) And some less obvious questions of online romantic etiquette (When should you move offline?Much like a scene lifted from a movie, a man based in California promised his dying mother that he'll find a “good woman” to marry.Tim Mc Murray, a 61-year-old Gardena native, sought help from an online dating site where he began talking to several people hoping to make good on the promise.