Online Dating

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Online Dating

Online Dating has become an accepted way of meeting other people to date, or people for activity partners. At first, online dating was looked down upon by most of society and was only used by young, Internet savvy singles. There was a time when most women thought it was "scary" to try to meet someone online. It turns out that it is no more scary meeting someone online than in the real world. Now, almost everyone knows a couple that has met online. Young and old now participate in online dating. There are sites that cater to the retiree age group and to teens, there are a plethora of sites for meeting people who share your interests, no matter what that may be--from spirituality to auto racing.

And why not? The Internet is uniquely suited to matchmaking. Online dating is an especially good method for finding a mate outside one's geographic area. There are many people who find it difficult to relate to singles in their own culture or town. The task of finding someone to date is in many ways more degrading in the real world than online.

Here are the options for meeting people in the in the real world: bars, in the workplace, on the "street", in stores, at events, through friends, or through services that specialize in hooking people up in some way. All of these methods have disadvantages when we compare them to online dating. Services tend to be expensive. Dinner clubs that arrange 3 women and 3 men to dine together cost several thousand dollars to join. This is also not a very pleasant situation to be in, especially if you are not comfortable elbowing your way in front of 2 competitors of your gender. Matchmakers (Using video interviews and the like), while a little more dignified, tend to be even more expensive. Meeting through friends can be good, but unless you have a lot of friends, your options are limited. While there are some success stories, workplace romance is almost universally frowned upon. Meeting people on the street, in stores, and at events are actually some of the best places. However, this requires a very aggressive, but "natural" approach which few are equipped to implement. Bars are a similar but worse because of the competition and the fact that most people are "on guard" more than other times.

Online dating provides the following benefits over the above methods. Cost: Online dating is much cheaper than other real world services for meeting people. As opposed to meeting people through friends, online dating can give one an almost infinite number of choices, which might appear to be an advantage, but too much of a good thing can be bad. Many women are inundated with responses. This can make it difficult for men to get noticed. A little like a hyper, online version of the bar scene. On the other hand, Online dating can allow people time to respond thoughtfully and share themselves genuinely.