According to the online dating directory, Match.com nearly doubles the number of daily searches of its closest competitor in that regard, kiss.com. Unsurprisingly, the number of searches for the word “sex” eclipses Match.com’s number of daily searches 75 times. That aside, for whatever reason, more and more people are turning to the Internet to find friends, lovers and Russian mail-order brides.
Hundreds of dating sites have sprung up since Al Gore invented the Internet back in the ’90s. Each one tries to introduce something new, specialize or create some sort of gimmick in order to distinguish itself from the rest of the flock. Gimmicks cater to Christians, gays, fetishists, people over 50, as well as people of specific racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Date.com prides itself on being one of the oldest online dating services, matching singles since Valentine’s Day of 1997. Other sites’ attractions come in the way of huge membership totals. For example, the following dot-coms all have membership totaling over a million people: Match, Date, AmericanSingles, FriendFinder, Gay, CupidJunction, LavaLife, Passion, Yahoo! Personals and eHarmony.
You’ve probably seen the television ads for eHarmony.com and its extensive matchmaking system. The system’s “29 key dimensions that predict relationship success” supposedly eliminate 99.7 percent of the people that are not right for you. This site is not for the casual online dater, though, as the cost is considerably higher than other services and because you need to answer over 500 questions before the matchmaking even begins. It seems like an online dating extreme and a little too much of a last resort.
The popular waste of time hotornot.com allows you to rate people as hot or not on a scale of one to 10. Should you find someone especially attractive, you can click to meet him or her. The profile system found on hotornot and many other sites contrasts with the system used by eHarmony, consisting only of a few words and a picture.
You can’t talk about a waste of time or meeting people online without discussing Madison’s newest guilty pleasure, thefacebook.com. With the advent of Thefacebook at UW and at universities around the country, it is now easier than ever to stay in touch with friends, meet new ones or even poke the object of your desire. If you’re unfamiliar with Thefacebook, poking is either just a quick way to say hi between friends or sort of like online flirting. When you sign on, if you’ve been poked, a little finger shows up on your home page and the text reads “you have been poked by so-and-so.” Then you click on the name to view their profile and you have the option to poke back.
All pokes aside, Thefacebook is primarily just a good way of getting to know your friends’ friends. The site allows you to browse profiles of people enrolled at UW and their friends, or look at names and pictures of people from other schools. Unfortunately, you cannot browse complete profiles from other schools unless you establish that you are indeed friends with the people whose profiles you wish to browse. The profile system is extensive but not excessive, and the site serves as a great way to fill your procrastination needs, not to mention a way to reconnect with the other half of that random drunken make-out session from last semester.
Online dating isn’t just about meeting up with people in person. Some people use it to have actual relationships by means of computerized intermediaries. I find this to be a little too impersonal and disagree with only knowing someone’s instant messaging persona. Anybody can sound cool if you give him or her enough time to proofread his or her conversation. Still, there are others who engage in and maintain long-term online relationships and a lot of them end up meeting at some point, if only for a few weeks out of the year, and this is satisfying to them.
Personal ads have been around for years and their online counterparts are merely a newer, more extensive form. Some people are skeptical, but according to the online dating directory, 44 percent of Americans believe that people have a better chance of meeting a partner online as opposed to meeting one in a singles bar, and 8 percent believe the chances are equal.
And now, here is the common-sense, obligatory-P.S.A. portion of the article. Trust your instincts and stay away from anyone who even gives you the slightest sense of creepiness. Make sure to ask how old your online friends are to establish that they are old enough to date or that they are not old enough to be your father. Talking on the phone before meeting is a good way to get an idea of whether or not you’ll click in person and also to find out if they are a creep or not. Finally and most importantly, only meet in public places and, if they push to meet at their home or in some other private location, chances are their intentions are less than honorable.
