On-line Dating
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It's been an experience.
My brother met his beautiful bride on-line. Partly for that reason and partly because I'm not sure where to meet someone romantically anymore, I signed up. As have countless many others.
Here are a few lessons from my journey so far:
As in real life, guys prefer to approach. Against the recommendation of an on-line-dating veteran, I reached out a few times when I first signed up. I got no response or the assumption that I just wanted to hook up. Yuck. Upon inquiry, a friend said that when women message him on-line, it seems "too aggressive."
On-line dating is tedious. Even if you aren't on-line browsing profiles, you still get winks and messages and notifications that require review or response. Just the back-and-forth of messaging takes time you'd rather spend somewhere else.
Women get a gazillion messages. Most messages say "Hi" or "How are you?" or "I like your pictures" or are canned paragraphs because men believe getting responses is a numbers game. This makes on-line dating even more tedious. Note to men: Reference something in her profile. If you take a little time, your odds will improve.
Dating Web sites spoil people for choice. Studies of consumer behavior show that if you give someone too many choices, she often chooses nothing. Same goes with on-line dating. After a while spent on dating sites, people are stymied by the possibility that they may make the wrong choice or that better options are out there. So they never pick one.
First dates with people met on-line are odd. Unlike almost every other initial encounter, you know a great deal about an on-line date before you meet. In fact, you may know more about your date than you know about many friends. Yet you're still strangers.
People are terrible at self-selling. It's hard for even fun, charismatic people to write well about themselves. And photos are static. This makes on-line dating profiles terrible indicators of someone's attractiveness. (And people who are good at selling themselves may have been doing this a while.)
Have you done on-line dating? What’s your take?