online dating
Facebook, as many people know, is a social networking site for keeping in touch with the people you know, and for sharing things with those people. I've found that it strengthens the weak bonds I've had with people I've met a few times and gotten to know, and has re-united me with people from my past whom I regretted not keeping in touch with. There are still people who haven't joined—I should just send them an email—but for those that have I've found things out about some of them that I really should have known anyway (including a pregnancy) and some I don't want to know much about (relationship details).
The above ad sometimes appears in my Facebook News Feed. It's fairly clearly marked as a sponsored ad, and while a little too close to looking like information about my friends for comfort (and why on Earth would I want to share an ad I didn't seek out?), the site has to make a dollar, and they do that through advertising. I see a problem with this, however: why can't the above ad have at least something to do what it knows about me? Facebook seems not to be aware of the fact that I'm in a relationship, something I explicitly told the site! It's a little shocking that here are in 2007 with contextual ads being all the rage and the website that has the most personal in both qualitative and quantitative can't figure out my status. I'm tired of Facebook thinking that I'm tired of being single, especially when it knows I'm not single!
Consumating, an online dating site with tagging and a slightly different approach to online dating →
I hear a lot in the press the experiences of people who have had success with online dating—that is, the sites where you set up a profile, buy "credits" and then search for local people you think look attractive based on that profile then contact them. Just as a general impression, though, the same people that are successful with online dating (successful defined as physically meeting someone at least a few times as the result of the communications happening on an online dating site) are the same people who are successful in offline dating. That is, people who are willing to smoothly and unproblematically "make the first move" in a physical setting, i.e. extroverts.
As I say, that's a general impression, and I hear a story or two of nice, shy people meeting online, getting together, and finding that their personalities are compatible for a romantic relationship. Online dating doesn't seem very well suited for the people that most need to get out of the house and hang out with friendly members-of-the-sex-they-prefer. The stories are few and far between, though, so I wonder, those that consider themselves shy, what have their experiences been? I'm more interested in the guys' perspective, but I'd also like to hear about the shy girls' experiences.
Laren: “Through my blog, I have corresponded with and met incredibly smart, diverse, interesting people, who all have expertise in areas in which I have none (Brazilian culture, lesbian erotica, panties (well, I have some expertise in panties, although I tend not to use the word so often)), which makes for scintillating conversation. And although I have not yet met any dating prospects through blogging, it sure beats online dating. I'd rather spend an evening having pizza at 2 AM with a group of cool women chatting about The Straight Sign and food, than on a shitty online date with someone who, although he may seem charming and smart via email, is entirely lacking in wit and/or social skills in real life.”
Tanya: “Did you know that as many as 25% of new relationships started via an online dating site or online dating service, according to recent statistics? I can believe it, actually. The two people that I have recently been in relationships with have both been from an online service.”
In the comments, Tanya cites an article from Online Dating Success! and the fact that she has had two relationships resulting from online services. In the latter case, she's making the mistake of taking herself and extrapolating a generalization and in the former she's taking evidence from an article which does not cite the source of its figure. The figure also says "as many as". It could technically be "as many" as 100% of relationships, but it isn't.
I can therefore safely call bullshit on that statistic.
al3x: “I’d rather be alone than suffer any more online dating fiascos. Self-fulfilling prophecy. It could be worse, is the basic premise.”
Anna Bahney: “While the Internet has sped up modern dating and made encyclopedic records about love interests more readily available, the magic of digital erasure allows the other end of a relationship, the bust-up, to be just as seamless: the lovelorn can simply delete away the pain.”
The article later discusses the stuff that can't be deleted, such as the postings to websites over which you have no control or, say, Usenet newsgroup postings. There are some things that I've written on websites over which I have no control that I'm not proud of, but I'm doing my best to say to myself "it was an accurate reflection of how I felt at the time" and move on.
Laren: “I would imagine that, in a situation where I was seriously invested emotionally with someone and it didn't work out, that I'd like to do something similar to a digital shoebox -- maybe burn everything onto a CD and file it away somewhere. I even printed out a bunch of emails from a particularly traumatic breakup a while back and put them into the appropriate shoebox. But regardless of my method of saving -- I'd never erase them permanently. Each relationship is part of who I am, and zapping it into cyber-oblivion is not the answer for me.”
I deleted a bunch of emails from a friend who I had crushed on—I'd like to call the crush a rookie mistake, but that was not the case—and a year or so later looked back thinking they were still there. Before that I burned every note and card my ex gave me, because I didn't need the reminder of not only how bad it was, but how good it was.
Burning the notes and cards and deleting the emails happened so long ago that I don't remember whether or not I regret doing either.