So, wait. You’re saying that as a white guy I stand no chance ?? 
Yanno what? You put it right out there. So few people do in life.
Yeah, I was going to say, to me that’s a rather impressive number. Stunning, in fact, that online dating has become so prevalent and successful. However, according to this, 40 million of 54 million singles in the US have “tried online dating.” I don’t know how active that is, and 75% seems a little high to me. Regardless, the ballpark figure is than that around a quarter of people who tried online dating have gotten hitched. This site says meeting through work/school and friends still contribute more to marriages (36% and 25% respectively), but online dating contributes more than bars/social clubs and places of worship.
So then you’re really 5’10" 
Is this for real? You think people who find online dating to be unsuccessful are people who don’t get on with people in the real world and/or are unusually specific? Do you really believe that?
I was partially being an ass in order to amuse myself, but I was being 100% serious when I said 17% doesn’t impress me, considering how prevalent online dating is these days, particularly among young people.
I have done on line dating for many years. After a while a pattern is established. I seldom have more than 3 or 4 phone conversations before I actually meet. I like to switch to phone after only a few e mails. Average time from 1st contact to actually meeting is about 1 week. I sometimes make 1st meeting a coffee date but I prefer going out to a medium priced restauraunt as I enjoy going out. First dates are fun even if I don’t have a second date.
My search range on line is almost always within 5 years of my actual age. I try to be honest about my intentions and my feelings. I never talk much about my dating history or ex’s. I consider a successful date one that I enjoyed and would feel free to call back or recieve a call from later.
I think about 4 of my online dates have turned into relationships that lasted for a few months or so, many of them have turned into frienships where they call me or I call them and we get together now and then. More than half I never see again after the first date. Maybe 20% I would consider a complete waste of time. Overall I think on line dating has been a good thing for me.
Give it a few years. Young people are using it, but young people don’t rush into marriage, generally. Regardless, it’s an incredible number, especially given how :dubious: many were about it just ten or so years ago.
I briefly dated a woman who had played basketball for a Division I NCAA school. She actually told me that she was so happy that I hadn’t lied about my height and that she could wear her favorite boots when we went out.
Sure. Do you disagree that if you don’t generally find chatting with strangers in coffee shops a reasonably fun way to spend an evening, regardless of romantic potential, that online dating might be less enjoyable than for someone who does? If you tend to see dating as a means to an end, rather than an intrinsically rewarding process on it’s own, online dating probably isn’t for you. After all, it’s just a means of getting you more dates, which is not an awesome thing if you don’t enjoy dating.
Do you disagree that if you have a very specific image of your future mate, you are less likely to be successful with online dating than someone who doesn’t have a set idea of what they are looking for and is open to a wider range? Online dating is great for screening out the really obvious deal breakers, but not so good at honing in on the fine nuance.
I’m not making absurd statements here. These things are fairly intuitive. I know you are really tied to your “online dating is for ugly losers and I know this because I once went on six dates” stance, but you are pushing credibility here.
Well said, even sven. That really nails it.
I would enjoy hanging out and talking to new people and hearing their stories even if it wasn’t about dating. Of course the people who find that sort of thing to be torture in any context would find the online dating process to be painful.
I would say the exact opposite is true in both cases. If you really enjoy meeting people socially there’s no need to online date. You can do it the way people have been doing it forever.
In fact, if you really like meeting new people and getting to know them in person, there’s no reason at all to try online dating unless… you have a very specific image of your future mate. In that case, online dating would be very useful since you can find specific people.
But if you like meeting new people and have an open mind about who you date, then there’s not really any benefit to online dating.
Me too. I said I was 5’4", which is the truth – I’m kind of short. If the women thought that meant I was really 5’2", which is very short, then no wonder I never got any responses.
That’s another reason I did so much better in real life. Online, my height is a big red flag. In real life, it’s hardly noticeable because of my strong personality.
This is only true if your lifestyle readily puts you in contact with people in your potential dating pool. A lot of people aren’t so lucky.
People who are busy with work and school may not feel like spending the few extra hours they have at a bar. People who live in the boonies and/or have long commutes are going to have a harder meeting new people than city dwellers who go everywhere on foot. I have friends, but many are single and looking, just like me (some of them are guys that I’m not interested in dating too.) So they aren’t as helpful in connecting me with prospects as they would be if they had BF’s with brothers and cousins they could introduce me too.
There’s not a lot of science to this. Online dating is just another way for people to meet each other. Lots of factors go into whether this venue will help a person’s love life; it all depends on their personality, their opportunities for meeting people in IRL, their standards, their preferences in a mate, and their desirability to others. Since no two people will be exactly the same with respect to these factors, no one will have the same exact experience with online dating.
I think even sven has a point about being open to meeting lots of people. Personally, I find online dating tiresome precisely because enduring chitchat small talk with a whole lot of randoms over and over again is not fun to me. But the alternative for me would be sitting on a barstool and enduring chitchat small talk with one or two people that are really random. If one method was all that more superior than another, I probably wouldn’t be single right now.
What was that? Sorry I didn’t see you down there.
I’m not saying it’s black and white, but it’s more often the case that the opposite of what **even sven **said is true than vice versa. *Everyone *is busy. Life is busy. People who love to meet new people go out anyway because they enjoy it. If you really don’t, then online dating is going to make more sense to you. That may not be true of every single person but it’s certainly not the case that people who love to get out and meet people are going to be more likely to sit alone on a computer instead of just getting out and doing it.
Likewise, the whole point of online dating is that it lets you find specific people who meet your criteria. If you’re open minded, go out and meet whoever crosses your path. If you only want to date people of a certain height and profession and who love dogs, online dating is a good fit. It’s designed to help you meet people who meet your criteria.
Eh, I don’t you have the data to say something like this. The demographics of people who meet each other online is about as diverse as IRL demographics, in my experience. Some people fit the introverted, shy, socially inept stereotype, and but just as many others are as people-philic and extroverted as they come. Check out a few dating profiles sometime and count how many people have pics of themselves in bars, at ball games, or at parties.
How many people have you gotten to know after meeting them online? I’ve met quite a few, and I can’t say they fit a certain profile that differs radically from the folks I’ve met IRL.
It’s not an either or thing. Believe it or not, one can take advantage of meeting people IRL and online. Just like meeting people at bars doesn’t preclude you from finding dates through family and friends or elsewhere. For most people, it’s not that deep.
Even’s point is that online dating works great if you like meeting lots of people and don’t particularly need every date to be The One to enjoy yourself. And this is true. Being online inarguably increases the number of people you can hit on (and who can hit on you). The same people who like meeting lots of people online probably like meeting lots of people IRL, too.
It is not a case that if you like meeting people online, then you have to have something against meeting them IRL.
To go up to a total stranger and make a good impression is a skill set that many do not have. You can go to bars every night and never hook up. If you don’t have the looks you better have the game and its not possible to learn most of that. Women in bars are usually with dates. If they are with friends they might just be out to relax and are unavailable. And I have been out with female friends and I have seen the disdain they have for guys who try to pick them up or send them drinks. At least online you know they are looking for someone.
That’s like saying that foodies shouldn’t “need” Yelp, since they should be able to just find restaurants the way people have been doing it forever. Or that movie buffs “don’t really have any benefit to using IMDB.” Or that active people should already be active, so what use do they have for MeetUp groups?
Online dating is just a tool for efficiently meeting a lot of single people who have passed some basic screening. That’s it. It’s not something that some people “need” and some people “have no use for.” it’s just a tool in the toolbox.
I have a pretty homogenous peer group right now so I don’t speak for everyone, but most of the people I know who use online dating are:
[ul]
[li]New in town (it’s a GREAT way to get to a know a new city)[/li][li]In high-travel careers where they meet a lot of people who travel for work, and prefer to start a family with someone who doesn’t travel a lot for work so that someone is actually home with the kids and they aren’t always missing each other. [/li][li]Looking for lots of meaningless hookups, and would rather do so outside their social circles to minimize the chances of things going wrong.[/li][li]Slightly type-A, with a strong preference for a dating strategy that is a little more self-directed and quantifiable. It feels good for some people to say “I sent X messages, I usually run Y returns, leading to Z dates” rather than saying “I joined a bocce league and…well, I dunno, maybe there will be a cute guy on it.”[/li][li]Genuninely really busy, and prefer to spend the five extra hours they have a week actually going on dates rather than looking for them. Keeping up with OKCupid can be compressed to fifteen minutes a day on your smartphone, and for women at least it’s easy for that investment to result in 3-6 dates a week. It’s very efficient, especially if going for volume works for you. Indeed, I don’t think even a socialite super model who did nothing but flirt all day could arrange six dates a week from random encounters. [/li][li]In industries and social circles with a heavy gender imbalance (I work with education and NGOs- both very female…my grad program was about 10% male. Work and school, usually pretty fertile ground, can be tough for dating in many industries)[/li][li]Have strong social circles and prefer to date outside of it to mix things up a bit (and perhaps because they’ve already run through the eligible guys in their own set.)[/li][/ul]
I have exactly zero friends who are the stereotypical introvert computer geek. Most of the online daters I know are busy career women looking to make dating more efficient and manageable, leaving them with more quality time to spend with their social circles and less wandering aimlessly through situations where they hope to happen to find someone to chat up.
Do you sell your stuff at pawn shops and garage sales, or do you sell it on eBay or Craig’s List? Does that mean your goods are low-quality? Do you look for a job with the newspaper, or do you look at online listings? Does that mean you are unemployable? If you want to buy a plane ticket, do you go through a travel agent or do you check Kayak? Does that mean you are not travel savvy? Of course not. Using online tools is just a way to make a process more efficient.
The irony is that you’re explaining the social benefits of the internet to an active participant on an online message board.
If it’s crazy to assume that folks posting here are all pathologically shy, reclusive people-phobes with zero friends in IRL, then similar assumptions about online dating are just as small-minded.
I don’t care if you’re 5’8". I care if you’re 5’8" and say you’re 5’10". Just don’t lie about it, regardless of your hair do.
Of course I disagree, and fail to see the relationship at all. There are plenty of people who aren’t chatty or are uncomfortable talking to random new people in public, but do well in one on one settings, especially with people with whom they’ve had some prior interaction. And just because you generally like talking to and meeting new people doesn’t mean you’re going to like every single person you go on a date with. You can be outgoing or social and still not be compatible with the folks you’ve met online. The relationship between internet dating success and gregariousness does not exist. The rest of your post doesn’t matter, as people who are too specific are going to have a hard time finding mates no matter what, but dating online, if anything, seems like it would make it easier considering the much higher number of people out there and screening magic. Sure, you can’t fine tune your way into exactly what you want, but you can definitely filter out the chaff, and if you’re that serious about finding someone, you can easily go out on a date every night of the week.
:rolleyes: Now you’re just making shit up. I just said the guys I went out with were cute and nice, but I simply did not connect with them.
Yeah. In theory, online dating could be a useful tool to supplement your current method of meeting people, but considering the reality of online dating, it really just isn’t worth the hassle if you’re already meeting people the regular way.
In theory, online dating can be used as a supplement. In reality, it’s mostly used as a replacement. And no, the most successful people aren’t using dating sites. They don’t really have a need for it since they can meet people pretty easily.
If you’re able to meet people easily in real life, you don’t need online dating.
Generally, there’s a reason why people are on those sites (and this is from my own experience, so take it with a grain of salt).
I have yet to find a grain of salt small enough.