Dating websites - Why bother with them?

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Yeah, if it's working for you then, by all means, keep doing it. Just cause I have trouble understanding the appeal doesn't make it wrong.

I'm not really sure why people bother with dating websites. I don't really see a need for them.

I think too many use them as a crutch for whatever reason or they use them as an ego boost, never actually planning to date.

From what I have seen through friends, internet dating is actually an art on it's own. It may allow you to know certain things sooner, but that is almost always evened out by the fact that you need to spend sufficient time with someone face to face to find out other things anyway. Like anything else, the pluses and minuses eventually catch up on each other.

It also seems to attract people who are too busy, married, looking to cheat, there for an ego boost, don't have social skills, don't get out of the house much, just broken up with someone, looking for an instant relationship, looking for a hook up etc. Seems to attract the walking wounded hoping for a quick fix rather than doing the work they need to do, in essence.

People also tend to be more picky on the net than in real life, or on the opposite end, just send out mass emails hoping for a hit. I also don't see why you would pass up the opportunity to just get to know someone in person - there would be so many things you would miss out on by not doing that, especially in the beginning.

If you do meet someone on the net, it then brings up the question of why you couldn't meet them in real life. Maybe it simply comes down to location, but in most cases I bet the interests are different and therefore neither spend time at a place where they are likely to meet the other.

Ingredients to meet the right person really boils down to right person, right place, right time. But for that to happen you also have to become the right person, which means if you're not there yet then maybe you still have some work to do on yourself yet.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 21 Apr 2012, 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wolfheart, I think it depends on your demographics, too. I'm a 44-year old single mother with a full-time job. I *never* meet new people in the ordinary course of my chock-full, busy day.

I chat people up all the time, even people I'm not interested in sexually (like, say, the lady in front of me in line at the supermarket). I have no problems being friendly, I just never, ever, ever meet anyone appropriate for me to date. There aren't scads and scads of single men in my age group just wandering around. I talk to people at the gym, I talk to people at my kids' school, I talk to people at stores, I talk to people at bars, etc. But almost no one is single and age-appropriate. None of my friends are single, and none of their friends are single (unless there's a real good reason, like alcoholism, or a serial cheater).

I am no longer 23 and unencumbered, with the world at my feet. Online dating is the only way to target the audience that's out there for me. Otherwise, it's *complete* needle-in-a-haystack for me and people like me.

I hope that opens it up a little for you!

You can receive a quicker response through real life approaching and that's the purpose this thread is making.



In real life, you have to create a first impression again once you get past the website stage of it, using a dating website isn't going to show character, body language, confidence and most of all, chemistry. You might spend 3 months talking to someone on the web, only to find out they don't like certain body language quirks you have or they don't feel the chemistry is there in real life.



Difficult, yes but it can be learned in theory and through practice, body language can be learned. If a person on the spectrum meets someone on a date and they don't know how to escalate the body language or they don't understand body language, they are going to be very confused whereas if they have tried real life approaching, they will have generally enough understanding of when to escalate and when not to.



That would be the internet equivalent of stalking or harassment, if the person didn't know they were unwelcome or unwanted after being directly told so, it's their own fault for persisting. The difference is that doing it at an activity or event, it's supervised and it is in a controlled environment. Doing it on the internet could get you arrested for stalking someone on the internet or even done for harassment.



There are many free activities or cheap activities when don't require money, as I stated in one of my previous threads.



Being forced out of your comfort zone pushes you to reach new limits by making you adapt to it and learn from it.



The point is if someone is being messaged by ten people, they are less likely to pay attention to another random person as opposed to speaking to one person that catches them in real life with their guard down.

Hmm I suppose it can be good in that sense, I guess if you're older and you have a busy schedule or kids, dating websites can be useful.

Many of us here (most?) lack the confidence and social skills to approach someone in real life,
let alone the psychic ability to screen people who would be understanding enough of our quirks/quirky enough themselves to date an Aspie.

Screw a "quicker response" when that response is always going to be "no" in real life since I can't look someone in the face for the life of me. (For instance.)

I'm antisocial, asexual, feminist, and obsessed with social science-
there aren't exactly ideal male partners for me hanging around my local urban grocery.

Interesting combo.