I met the love of my life on match.com. It’s getting increasingly common. There are psychos out there, but those exact same psychos must neccessarily exist in real life as well.
My opinion of Match is that it varies a lot based on your age. For people my age (20s) it’s pretty much a meat market - basically every single person I know has tried it with little success, because they’re not the breathtakingly attractive types that seem to dominate. Unconventional interests and stuff like that - forget it. If you’re not looking for a hot guy/gal to take to the bar, it doesn’t offer much.
With older groups, it seems more relationship-focused; my mom met my stepfather on Match in her 50s, though of course it took a lot of dates.
If you’re younger, I’d try OKcupid which allows for a bit more information and is more of a “social networking” type site. It’s also free. I definitely wouldn’t recommend eHarmony for the same reasons mentioned above - it’s exclusionary (I managed to pass the profile somehow; perhaps I put I was agnostic instead of atheist. It was about a year ago, though they are still hammering my fake email address with nearly a message every day.)
Apparently, this site is pretty good at matching people up. There are a bunch of Doper Couples who met here or at Dopefests. 
Straight Dope Dating Forum? Anyone?
Seconded!
(or at least … can we have a “single/looking” similey to add to our sig lines?)
I’ve never done online dating but I know some people who use it. Mostly they just seem to go through a string of dates that never quite fit. It seems to me if you can’t attract people in real life (presumably not because you work as a lighthouse keeper or something), why would you attract them online?
You haven’t been to www.ePenis.com?
What constitutes “real life,” msmith? Bars? Work?
The problem with the former is that if you’re a late life marrier (as in, late 20s and onward), you don’t really have the time or inclination or health-based stamina to sit around getting shitfaced in sleazy bars all the time. The problem with the second (especially for those of us with careers as opposed to temporary jamba juice jobs) is sexual harassment laws*.
I’d say for the late 20s+ crowd most people seem to go for
a) Friends of friends setups
b) the internet
c) A subset of people who find spouses through houses of worship/hobbies
I’d say option A is actually the best to date, but believe it or not, option B is pretty common these days. You strike me as someone who managed (somehow) to hook someone in his younger days and like you’ve been out of the dating scene for a long long time, which basically puts you in the category of old-smug-married-cane-waver. What makes Match.com so much more pathetic than accidentally connecting with someone through Facebook, or a blog or a messageboard? Or for that matter, spilling beer on some sorority girl’s head?
Plus, I think your sample size is kind of skewed-you may just know a bunch of losers/commitmentphobes but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone finding love through the webz is a basement dwelling mouthbreather.
*We’re talking for the average person.
has never been on Match.com but is young enough to know better,
A.
A lot of people (like myself) may not want to go some places to meet people. Like bars and churches, which are the most commonly recommended places.
I don’t drink, so bars are out. I’m an atheist, churches are out.
The internet has just become another place to meet people.
I’m another Yahoo personals user - I married the guy I met through it just this Saturday! Of course, I did have to wade through a lot of crappy profiles before I met him, but I’d say anyone who is interested in meeting people to date ought to consider online sites like that one. Why not?
I’ve only been on a few online dates, but the last guy I met I still keep in touch with. He was cute, interesting, well off and over-educated. I asked him what the hell he was doing on OkCupid and he just shrugged and said he was tired of chatting up drunk girls in bars, and there really was no good way to meet new people after school. He asked me the same question, and my answer was about the same. I’d rather meet someone online, where we can at least confirm some common interests before we actually start talking to each other, than at a bar, where people are simply going to talk to me because they’re drunk and I have breasts.
Why, no! Tell, me, is it SFW?
I had decent luck with Match.com, but I think you have to pay in order to get anything out of it. I did date a few guys for several months each, but in the end none of them worked out.
I finally decided it wasn’t worth slogging through all the vanilla guys to find the kinky ones I like, so I got off Match and put a profile on Bondage.com instead. Again, dated a few people, didn’t actually have any bad experiences, just a couple first dates where it quickly became clear that the chemistry we had when we were IMing didn’t translate to real life. And then I met my boyfriend, and we’ve been together for 15 months! But if our families ask, we met through Match.com. 
So in the end, my recommendation is to look for a site that caters to a more specific group than places like Match and OKCupid.
Well, yes. Bars, work, the park, the Jamba Juice down the street where you apparently do not date people who work there. Anyplace that isn’t a) your appartment and b) online.
First of all, unless you live in rural Pennsylvania where everyone seems to marry their high school sweetheart, I don’t think late 20s is considered “late life” marrier.
Second, instead of hanging out in “sleazy bars” or college bars, find more upscale bars that cater to professionals in their late 20s, 30s and 40s.
As for work romance, it may not be the best idea. Then again, you are at this place 40+ hours a week. My last company, a management consulting firm (one of the busiest jobs there is), had all kinds of romance going on, including two of my staff consultants who met on the job and married a few years later. You’ll have to use your judgement based on the culture of your company.
The point is, I think people are people whether they are online or walking around the street.
Well that’s the big question, isn’t it? Are they losers because they are on the web looking for love, or is it they haven’t found love because they are losers? They don’t have to live in their moms basement. But they simply might have something about their personality that turns people off (or at least fails to turn on).
Woah, that was fast. 
Just for a laugh, I went back to eHarmony and filled out the forms, except I entered that religion was very important to me.
Surprise, surprise, they accepted my info.
Hypocrites!