Zyada asks:
Well, I would be pleasantly suprised to find a girlfriend, but I rather expect to experience the horror stories.
As it is, something unusual has happened. The heavens have opened up, dogs and cats are living together as friends, and I scored a real vacation next week for the first time in over a year and a half.
I’ll have to put my plans on hold temporarily until I return, but I’ll let you know what transpired.
OK, I guess I should do confessions here.
I’ve done the interenet dating thing, and what I have found out is the following:
There’s lots of sites: webpersonals.com, match.com, matchmaker.com, and a hundred other bit players.
Each site has different aspects. Match is big, webpersonals only charges you for sending emails, matchmaker has more ‘to the point’ essay questions.
Men seriously outnumber women on these sites, or at least the men have to do the legwork of introducing tehmselves. The exception to this is if you are reltively young and there area lot of older women online.
As I mentioned in the above pit thread. Don’t overdo it with introductory emails. Avoid mentioning their photo if they have one, try to make them laugh. Remember that a good joke is a way to tel if they share your sense of humor. Lot’s of women claim they love a guy with a sense of humor, but maybe not your sense of humor.
Men: Watch out for code-words like “career oriented”, “upwardly mobile man”. This means the woman wants a guy with a big salary. Women: watch out for codewords like “athletic” or “healthy” (there are other words). THese mean that the guy wants the girl to have a hot bod.
Women: There are way too many married men online. Be afraid. Married men: you should be ashamed of yourself.
Men: If the girl’s picture looks like it was a picture of her and her last beau, with the beau cropped out, don’t hold it against.
Women: Be prepared for guys with big salaries, “MBA” in their nickname, and no personality whatsoever to overwhelm you with responses if you even so much as hint at being sexually active in your profile.
Men: Be prepared to be ignored. Don’t take it personally.
Men: It rains or its a drought. You’ll get no responses for ages, then three women in will repsond at the same time.
Check the site at least daily if you want results. If you wait a week the person of your dreams might have been overwhelmed by all the other jerks.
Coffee Shops are your friends. Meet people there first and see if you want to go on a regular date with them.
Keep your perspective with a platonic friend who is the opposite sex. They can act as your personal jerk-a-derm or bitch-patch
I’ve had some modest success with online dating. I met a girl who I almost married until other problems came up. But I am still good friends with her.
I’ve had no disasters, but I have had a couple of dull dates and annoyances:
a) One girl who turned out to be rather vapid, in spite of some shared interests. We ended up talking about our cats. Never talk about the cats on a first date for more than a minute.
b) One lady and I had a great conversation, but it turned out she was doing a report for a magazine on online dating, and she had already made up her mind that it wouldn’t work. In spite of some great conversation she wouldn’t talk to me again.
c) One woman I met long-distance who was coming to my area…We got along great in email and chatted for several months. When she finally arrived we realized we didn’t click so well in person.
d) There’s a few others, but I’m having hardtime remembering them.
Anyway, the key is to avoid the serious horror stories, and I think item #12 is very helpful in that regard. Just make sure it is a friend who doesn’t want you for themselves. 
<sub> So, is the Hi Opal! reequired in lists?</sub>
And try to start some sort of conversation. flyboy’s brother did what I call fishing. I wouldn’t respond to them unless there was no other responses, and then it would be something along the lines of “What did you like about my ad”.
No shit. I nearly flamed several, but it wasn’t worth my time.
One more thing - if you want a quality relationship, don’t be vulgar first. rjk will tell you that I’m a dirty girl with a seriously dirty mind and I enjoy talking dirty (among other things 
). But the guys who started talking dirty before they knew me, or I them, turned me off completely.
When my ad is active on Match I look for a couple of things in my responses. First, they need to be reasonably well written and spellchecked. I don’t demand absolute perfection, but I mention in my profile that I’m a writer, so a guy who doesn’t pick up on the fact that those things might be important to me doesn’t get a reply.
How much they say in the first email doesn’t matter much, I always check their profile, they’ll get a response if there is something compelling there. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t answer any of the questions and only write a sentence or two in their descriptions.
I’ve also learned that I’d rather meet sooner than later. I like to establish that we have something in common with a couple of emails and phone calls, but I really don’t want to expend a whole lot of energy having a romance before I know if we will click in person.
I’ve met plenty of really nice guys this way, only a couple of relatively icky ones, and nobody who scared me. I haven’t really clicked with any of them to go beyond date two, but I would have no problem setting them up with my girlfriends, if I had any that weren’t married.
Occasionally it works out. My last single girlfriend just got an engagement ring from the first guy she wrote on Match. It does happen. In the mean time, I’m not paranoid about finding a relationship. It gets me out of the house and it’s nice to get random emails.
My friend put an ad on craigslist.org & got 50 responses in about two hours, she didn’t even post a picture. Actually it was her friend who posted the ad.
I still think Internet relationships are the easiest of all relationships.