All he’s doing is googling his opinion and linking us to every source that supports his opinion. It doesn’t even have to be a credible source. As long as the source says he’s right and others are wrong.
Shit, extraordinarily un-impressed. Un!
Too late. No backsies!
Arrgh, damn it! I guess this means you all win, gah! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
wow, what the hell is that? I see a pig and an upside down table & I am impressed. :eek:
oh, really stopped by to say I don’t see Jumpy as being hostile. other than that, carry on.
Yup, he’s not hostile just angry. Carry on.
PS. It’s an emoticon. Pretty common stuff on the Interwebz.
It’s still both a bit bemusing and amusing to me that this has become such an emotional topic.
From a societal standpoint, I find it all quite fascinating, the way technology has changed our lives and our ways of relating to each other. While some don’t find the 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 figure impressive, it seems to me to represent a rather fundamental change in how people find each other. One generation ago, online dating barely existed. The closest analogues would have been matchmaking services and newspaper classified, and how many people did any of us know who used those routes of meeting people? I didn’t know a single person. Now, online introductions have become the third most common way of being introduced to a person for dating, over-taking traditional meeting points for singles like bars and churches. I don’t know about you, but I find that pretty damned fascinating, and up there with email and social networking in fundamental changes in my lifetime that have happened of how people relate, communicate, and meet each other.
And I’m 37, an old fogey technologywise. I think the generations under me are much more in tune and comfortable with internet based interaction, and I expect the percentage of people dating having made their initial contact via internet to still rise a bit. I don’t ever think it will outpace those who first meet IRL, but I still think there is some growth to be seen. Maybe up to 25-30% of all relationships.
Regardless of your opinion on it, or those who use it, or whatever, from a sociological standpoint, internet dating has made quite an impact.
Right, but you’re not looking at both sides of the same coin if you know what I mean.
Sure, it’s great that you can meet people on the Internet, but there are negatives. Many people use it for cheating. There are a lot of people that have deceptive profiles. There are a lot of people who are socially inept (online I mean). Asynchronous communication becomes annoying real fast, especially if you’re like me. I like immediate feedback. Also, you don’t really know the person.
It had an impact alright…
On my wallet.
If I knew what I knew now, I wouldn’t have touched online dating. No way.
Please note that I am not making any value judgments or commenting on the good or bad of Internet dating. While I did have a good and fun experience with it, I’m not ready to say I prefer it to traditional avenues. I’m merely staying that it has made quite a large impact on how people find each other.
remember a few posts ago when i asked you what your standpoint was, because you seemed to be arguing that anyone who had success got lucky?
you never answered.
but the stats are to show you there is a metric for success–it’s not some nebulous opinion that you can wank on about. there’s a metric.
what i don’t understand is if you legitimately care about the topic, why aren’t you even remotely interested in the data?
you all say "data-shmata. you can statistically prove anything.’ well, ok. statistically prove that it’s not a very successful mechanism, with stats.
…because i tried to google those, too. the best i found was from a men’s health magazine calling it a waste of energy, but it contained no stats.
i can’t find any stats proving–or suggesting–a lack of success in online dating.
perhaps you can, since stats can prove anything?
the thing is i don’t think you have a rational interest on the topic.
which is fine…
yes, but only so long as they are directed at you, MoL, or MM. i can assure you there’s a reason for this…
And your point is rational? It depends on the source. Statistics can be fabricated pretty easily. Statistics are great for marketing because the common person thinks that they prove everything. Also, they never believe that statistics are false.
How can stats prove everything? I think you’re holding on to statistics like they are the holy grail.
What reason is that? Oh my, someone disagrees with you. Time to get hostile!
There’s enough bitter in this thread to make a manhattan the size of Manhattan.
yes, i got it–a rational evaluation was never the intention, as you pre-hated the topic and nothing would sway you from your stubborn opinion.
it doesn’t make the data irrelevant. bigger brains than ours have a great interest in such matters (see: the pew research center, et al).
and the 1-in-6 is impressive. i agree.
but, on the last part, explaining the message-to-gender ratio isn’t the same complaining about it, which is a factlet you seem to emphatically need to clutch on to.
that will never make it my opinion.
i understand that method–you cannot attack the rationale or the facts from which i speak, so you say the facts don’t matter and then you need to make it personal and imbue some false nonsense on “what i think” just so you have something to claw at. “we will side-step the logic and say you think girls have cooties and are jealous!”
neat.
but the only butthurt i see in this thread are the three amigos who all failed miserably at online dating and desperately, DESPERATELY need that failure to be the system, and not their personal experience.
…but it *is *your personal experience. and as much as i dislike all three of you, i can still be adult enough to say that failure probably wasn’t anything more than circumstance–not because your personal shortcomings.
i know fuzzy called you a loser, but i don’t think you are. and i know you called him (and bizarrely yourself?) “bad people,” but i don’t think that’s the case either–
some things just don’t jibe with some people so they have lesser results. doesn’t make everyone else a loser or a bad person.
pulykamell has it right–like it or lump it, it’s a fascinating and large mechanism, and it seems to be only growing.
i guess the thing you three have failed to realize is that you have basically villainized the whole thing because it simply didn’t go well for you. all i am trying to say is that’s wrongheaded. there’s tons of both anecdotal and statistical evidence it works.
“no one cares about the data,” yes yes i know–but only because it conflicts with that you already decided to believe. that doesn’t make the data untrue.
do you have or know of any statistics that back up your opinion?
…could you post them?
Yes, given that the 17% number comes from a survey commissioned by Match, you have good reason to be skeptical of that number. What other surveys there are seem to corroborate that number, and that lines up with my personal experience in the wedding industry. Now, I live in an urban area and my clients tend to be busy young professional types, with the occasional hipster thrown in, and I would think my experience perhaps over-represents the average. I would guess around 20% (from a sample of about 250) of my clients met through an online dating service.
Now, stats don’t prove whether internet dating is good or bad (and I wholeheartedly agree with the criticisms you have leveled against it in your last response to me. I don’t know why you thought I was unaware of that side of the coin), but they do suggest that it is a relatively common way of meeting a mate these days. That’s all.
there’s a lot of data out there, even if you want to avoid anything associated with dating sites themselves.
as i said, it’s interesting and there is a large industry making a lot of money, so people really do care about the metrics.
i read an article last night on the algorithms used between match-pair type sites and how the guy who started Match actually has little interest in romance or dating–he’s a mathematician and a stats guy. he knows about sterile equations and things of that ilk, not the intricacies of love. he admits he isn’t sure how they have such a high match percentage but i think that might be false modesty.
the stats don’t prove it’s a good thing or a bad thing, it just shows how effective and/or successful it is.
the problem i have with this thread is the mindset “this didn’t work for me so [insult to the people who use it].”
MoL keeps saying CLEARLY it doesn’t work because it didn’t work for her and (however many) people she knows who tried it.
it’s just…we can actually suss out how well it works to some degree. people are tracking it.
there’s actually a quantifiable answer to “how well it works.”
…all this and i dislike it. yeah, i met a friend or two in the 4 weeks i was on, but my personality is not conducive to online dating…i’m not outgoing enough for that junk. i will never be the guy screaming loud enough to be heard above the roar of a crowd. so i am firmly in the “it doesn’t work for everyone” camp, which is a totally reasonable evaluation.
but that doesn’t mean it’s a total waste of time, useless, everyone there is terrible, etc etc etc. it just means some people like coke and others like pepsi. not that pepsi drinkers are inept idiot-loser retards and all this vitriolic nonsense.
You’re really not bright, are you? I can’t speak for Fuzzy, but we’ve been on these boards for a while, have never had any unpleasant interactions with him, so I’m going to guess he doesn’t think I’m a loser. I can speak for myself, however, and can say with great certainty I don’t think of myself as bad people.
I’m really not sure why I keep bothering responding to you, but tonight is one of those nights when I don’t have a date. 
In any event, I think you misunderstand me when I say I don’t care about your cites. You seem to think you need to settle down are waging a war on data, when really, I’m just saying your data hardly makes the case you think it makes, and moreover, if even if your data proved that online dating is better than a rich girl with huge tits, that doesn’t mean you’re not whiny. I, of course, am skeptical about link after link of Match.com data, including cites that you claim are independent, but had you read them, realize they again cite Match.com studies. In any event, 17% doesn’t sound entirely unbelievable, so let’s just go with it. Not an impressive number at all, so bringing that out like it’s your trump card seems a little silly. “A small minority of recent relationships began online!” Wow, so very, very underwhelming.
Also, I like how you keep saying “OMG, people don’t like it cos they FAILED SOOO BAD at it!” as if that’s some kind of a sick burn. Yeah, because using the internet to find a date is some kind of accomplishment. I mean, maybe I was bad at it, but I got a lot of messages (too many), everyone I messaged wrote back, and I went on a date with everyone I wanted to. Unfortunately, there was an absurdly small number of people I found that I wanted to go out with. My biggest beef is there are just too many people sending you too many messages, and then even after you sift through it all to get through to the people who seem attractive and nice, you can’t tell if you’re going to like the person in real life, so you end up going on date after date, and maybe there’s a connection, and maybe there isn’t. It’s easier to know if you’ll have a face-to-face connection with someone if you meet them face-to-face, for reasons which should be obvious.
I’m gonna go have a drink now. We’ll argue some more about this tomorrow. Just kidding, no we won’t. We’re just repeating ourselves now and this has officially grown more tiresome than online dating.