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It's Valentine's Day, and Monica would like to meet somebody new.

An impersonal example of how romance and etiquette have eroded? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

She's 26, part of the New Greensboro. Her friends say they've met the guy just for her at The Blind Tiger. They say he's cute and he could be the one. But Monica worries. That bar is dark. And after a few beers, you gotta wonder.

So, like many 20-something professionals, she Googles the guy. She scours the Internet for any information before she goes through that first awkward conversation about hometowns, family and familiar favorites.

That's love, American-style, in the 21st century. You Google.

Sure, it's a company in California that powers a popular search engine. But it's also a 21st-century description of how you can corral information in a few clicks to avoid heartache and erase the constant fear of the unknown.

I call it Google Love. But what do I know about the dance of romance? Not much. Just ask my wife.

But Evelyn Rice knows. She's a relationship expert in Greensboro. She heard about Google Love two years ago, and in this ever-expanding age of technology, she's not surprised.

"We all get so bombarded with news and negativity that we've all learned that we need to be careful, and that reinforces our fear," said Rice, author of the 2001 book "Finding Your Soul Mate Handbook."

"So, with so much information available on the Internet, it's good to be wise to that, because the decision you make (about a potential partner) could impact the rest of your life."

Rice says it's a generational thing. For folks 40 and under, Google Love is an indispensable part of the new terrain of dating. But for people 40 and older, Google Love is as foreign as finding Texas-style barbecue in Lexington.

You figure those older folks and that includes me want that face-to-face contact. That's what makes "Sex and the City" and our city's own weekend mating ritual so much fun to watch. Google Love seems so unromantic.

Not so, Rice says.

"These kids, that is all they know," Rice said of technology. "It's not wrong. It's different, and it helps them create more compassion for their style of seeing the world."

I heard about Google Love two months ago. I was hanging at Ganache, talking to single 20-somethings about building trust in a new town, when I overhead a young woman looking at a well-dressed guy by the bar: "Who's that guy? Does he have a ring?"

I mentioned that conversation to a friend of mine, who's 25, and she tossed off this comment: "Oh, they'll probably Google him when they get home."

Huh?

Well, she looked at me like I had three heads. And in this gig as a columnist, I sometimes wonder if I do. But like anyone stumbling onto some pop culture phenomenon, I wanted to find out more about Google Love.

So, a few days before Valentine's Day, I sat down with a few 20-somethings. But on one condition: I couldn't use their names because Googling is a frowned-upon faux pas.

Everybody they know does it. But they told me you can't talk about it because it's, like, the scarlet letter of their generation.

So, I let them pick their own names: Monica, Tiffany, Tina and Brad. After an unscientific survey at a coffeehouse, here's what I found out:

* Girls Google more than guys.

* A good Googler is detective gold.

* Stay away from MySpace and Facebook, which allows daters to put their best face forward.

But Google, which markets itself as the "ultimate answer machine" on the Web, unearths the warts-and-all details that allows potential daters to say yea or nay.

"Things have changed," Monica told me. "You hear all this sketchy stuff about people, and you hear about dating mishaps and bad dating experiences, and it's nice to find out about that bad (information) before you give it a chance."

But can you trust it? That's the question from Evelyn Rice. Still, she said she believes Google Love is no passing fad. It's the new cyberCupid, and it's here to stay.

"We've gotten smarter about meeting someone," she said. "We want to know about their lifestyle, their values, their goals in life. It all reminds me of this song called 'Love Ain't Enough.' And that is so true."

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com