love

Have you lost hope?

Are you sick of slogging away on sites such as Match.com and eHarmony.com to find the partner of your dreams? Or at least the partner who will put up with your dead lizard collection, your back hair, and your difficult morning breath?

Then perhaps it is time to be honest with yourself. Perhaps it is time to look in the mirror and decide that you should be at the Ugly Bug Ball. Or, more accurately, on it.

The Ugly Bug Ball is a dating site for those who are aesthetically challenged. That is the … Read more

Some of you may well be readers of Glamour magazine. Others may not.

So may I quote this repository of optimism about a certain technologically sophisticated wedding proposal purportedly made in Central Park on Sunday?

"A Proposal Story: This Sweet Guy Proposed in Central Park--Then Threw the Ring! (I Got Teary Eyed!)" reads the Glamour headline. The post is accompanied by a YouTube video of the proposal.

The video purports to show a woman called Kasey who has been lured by a friend to the park, where she is surprised by her fiance in a rowing boat. While … Read more

Some relationships end well. Others meet their demise in a hail of emotional bullets during a dawn slaughter.

Algorithms don't always understand this. They have only ever been in a relationships with coders and, well, such bonds are both stable and lifelong.

One should not be surprised, therefore, that Facebook's algorithms have caused many inadequate, fragile humans to gnash teeth, bash walls and smash wedding gifts. You see, the lovely Facebook Photo Memories feature tries to offer you pictorial stimulation of happy times with those you loved.

The trouble was that, for the longest time, it also offered … Read more

In case you believe that the Web is only being used to cement relationships of a commercial nature, here is a tale that might move you to genuine feeling. Or even to making a YouTube video about the long-lost, ever-missed love of your life.

Kelly Summers, a 53-year-old woman from Nottinghamshire, England, felt the cold chill of a British winter when her boyfriend left her. What made it more painful was that it was actually July. She could have gone to the local pub, sniffled a little over a snifter and poured out her feelings. She could have phoned her … Read more

It's not too late to enter the JetBlue All You Can Jet Giveaway! You only have until 12 p.m. PDT to tweet out this message:

Follow @the404 and RT this for a chance to win 1 of 2 #AllYouCanJet @JetBlue passes. Rules: http://bit.ly/dodRKs #AYCJ

Don't forget that you have to be at least 18 years old and a resident of the United States to enter. We'll tweet a congratulatory message at 3 p.m. EDT today to announce the winners. Good luck!

Apple's yearly iPod and iTunes event goes down tomorrow and we've got plenty of predictions (and dreams) for what Apple will show off. We'll likely see a "Retina display" and a forward-facing camera come to the iPod Touch devices, but Wilson's hoping for a revamped Apple TV that could bring iOS 4, an A4 chip, 1080p playback, 16GB of storage, and a $99 "impulse" price tag.

Check out our Crave poll, submit your own predictions, and don't forget to check back with us tomorrow for official news!

This summer, a hot-springs resort in Atami, Japan, became a vacation destination for men who just can't stand being single. For almost two months, the resort offered players of the dating sim Love Plus Plus a physical location to bring their virtual girlfriends.

Once there, the players visited romantic locations and took pictures next to black-and-white markers on the ground that acted as triggers for the corresponding augmented-reality smartphone app. In real life, it looks like the men posed by themselves, but the app inserted a picture of their virtual girlfriends to simulate companionship. As the only single dude on the show, it's apparently my job to investigate this matter in greater detail, so see you in Japan!

What's with everyone just throwing away animals? First there was the security camera clip of a British woman trashing a cat, and now LiveLinks just posted a video of a young girl chucking puppy after adorable puppy into a river! Luckily, we can rely on the vigilante justice of 4Chan's /b/ thread to come to the rescue in both cases.

The infamous message board is on the hunt to reveal the identity of said puppy-chucker, and they've already narrowed down the location of the river to a city in Croatia; they even found two potential Facebook profiles that match her description, although it could be anyone. She's around 5 feet 7 inches tall, blond, and Caucasian...nevertheless, we're confident that they'll bring the culprit to justice. Just don't hurt us!

Again, there's only one hour left to add us on Twitter (add Jeff, Wilson, and Justin while you're at it) and tweet out the bolded message up there for your chance to win one of two All You Can Jet prizes, courtesy of JetBlue! Good luck to everyone entering. We can't wait to see where you go!

If you visited the Japanese hot springs resort of Atami recently and spotted a disproportionate number of men gazing longingly at their smartphones, it probably wasn't because they were playing Angry Birds. This summer, the beach town became a vacation hub for guys who like to treat their girlfriends to sun-and-fun holidays. Girlfriends, that is, who only exist on-screen.

And yes, there are such men, particularly those enthralled with Konami's Love Plus, a popular dating sim for Nintendo DS that also comes as an augmented-reality application for iPhones. Players of the game know that to keep their virtual gals happy, they'd best spend quality time with them, throw them birthday parties, take them on dates, and yes, shell out yen for beach getaways. After all, at $84, a return fare from Tokyo to Atami on the Shinkansen bullet train ain't cheap (fortunately virtual girlfriends travel free).

Sadly for romantics everywhere, Atami's summer of virtual love ends Tuesday. It was geared toward players of Love Plus Plus, a sequel to Love Plus released this year. The object is to form and nurture a relationship with one of three high school girls with rotating outfits, distinct musical tastes, and clearly permissive parents. (See a game trailer featuring stars Rinko Kobayakawa, Manaka Takane, and Nene Anegasaki below.)

More than 2,000 visitors have taken part in events related to Atami's lovefest, according to reports, with some traveling from as far as South Korea and Taiwan, locals say. The young bucks did things fairly typical of suitors--gaze into their girlfriends' eyes during long sunset walks on the beach, admire their pixilated bikinis, and touch their virtual cheeks with a stylus.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted a 21-year-old Tokyo man as saying the game has encouraged him in his search for his first human paramour. "I hope that this will serve as practice for when I have a real girlfriend," he said. … Read more

The concept of marriage, as I understand it, is a one-at-a-time affair.

You promise to stay with someone forever--that forever being normally between 5 and 10 years--after which you get divorced and subsequently make the same promises to someone else.

So I am rocked to my Converses by the story of a woman who feared that her husband had already strayed from his eternal promise. Lynn France decided to endure the modern form of detection in order to find out whether her suspicions were founded.

Yes, she logged on to Facebook. There, typed in the name of the woman to … Read more

Relationships come. Relationships go. Sometimes relationships outstay their welcome. But that doesn't mean that scars aren't left and bruises aren't felt, in deep recesses, for days, nay, years.

So might I introduce you to a browser plug-in called Ex-Blocker? This fine invention claims to be able to remove all traces of your Tracy or Sam from the lifeblood of your Web experience.

The Ex-Blocker home page is a little light on how it might actually get rid of those who have caused you pain, grief, or merely bankruptcy of pocket and ideas.

However, at the time of … Read more

Love is something that ought to be celebrated.

Yet it appears that Google Street View, the place where we have already seen passed-out drunks, vomiting Brits and even the same woman 43 times, has removed one of the more positive images ever found on its slightly snoopy pages.

You see, a young couple happened to be sitting on the grass in Wolverhampton, England--or just outside of the city, according to Google Maps--and fell into a loving embrace. It was, I am sure, a common occurrence on Common Road.

A Google Street View car was passing by during this amorous moment … Read more