I believe it. I don’t believe the rise of BF college grads is everything, though.
AIUI, traditional BF culture is strongly against interracial pair-ups of any kind. Furthermore, I suspect, educated BFs who move out of that culture disproportionately end up in a kind of academic culture. There multiculturalism is celebrated in theory, but is still practiced mostly as social separatism, and WM is still typed as The Man. Within an academic community, BF/WF couples might even be less unusual than BF/WM ones. Unless I’m just riffing on subtle stereotypes here (which I’ve been known to do.)
You may be fighting human nature itself there, Fuzzy. Dating is, by and large, an awful, suck-intensive endeavor. Why shouldn’t its online manifestation honestly reflect that?
My opinion is that they all suck (and in an earlier period of my life I tried them all) because it’s fundamentally impossible for them to work. (Except in extremely lucky cases.)
Having two people mutually decide that they interested in a romance needs something that can only be realized when they are together in person.
You can message ten zillion people and never know if you’re truly interested in even one of them until you actually meet them. You can meet just one person in real life and know right away that you’re interested in that person.
So, and again I say this is my opinion, the only way to to really find someone is go out in real life and meet as many people in person as you can.
Online dating seems like a shortcut because it looks like it’s a fast way to meeting hundreds of people – but it’s really not. I tried it for years, but every real relationship I ever had, including with my wife, I met in person.
I agree that meeting in person is important; I’ve gotten along great with guys online, only to meet them in real life and discover that we had zero chemistry. But I’ve also had relationships that started online and lasted for a couple weeks, six months, or (coming up on) two-and-a-half years. I ended up prefering the more specialized websites over generalists like eHarmony and Match because I was looking for someone with a particular shared interest. I think online dating can work quite well for some people, while others will have more luck meeting people in meat-space.
The thing is, they’re just SO awful that I’m convinced there’s a way to do them better and make money.
It seems like everyone who tries something new just makes it worse. Eharmony has some secret metric to evaluate your soul and match you with people youre compatible with. It might have been helpful except it doesnt let you search on your own criteria too, which is totally annoying. Of course, it wasn`t at all helpful anyway because literally every single person they matched me to had said that the 3 most important things in her life were her friends, family and her career. And what else would anyone say? The three most important things in my life are gambling, cupcakes, and Chechnyan independence. What?
I think there’s some way to make an online dating site that works more similarly to how people want to meet people. At least enough that it would seriously disrupt the current crap. Unfortunately I already own a business so I don`t think I’ll be the one to create it, but I bet someone will eventually.
