Slashdot Mirror
Online Dating Advice?
frankgod asks: "I'm a 25/M/US geek who managed to get through school with my singleness intact. I plan on staying single for a while into the future, but I am considering online dating in addition to other methods of meeting local women for casual dating. Any advice on particular sites and tweaking profiles or search results? I've looked at eHarmony , Lavalife (sparse local results) and Match.com (seems to be best of the bunch.)"
I have heard a lot of good things about http://www.underthehuppah.com. Several friends have found dating parters there they are very happy with on the site (I am fortunate enough to already have a wonderful partner, or I would sign up as well).
It's a site geared towards Hebrew Christian and Messianic Jewish dating, but even if you don't fall under one of these categories, it's a great site, with a lot of people.
Good luck!
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
I already posted that I don't think eHarmony is right for this particular person, but perhaps it'll work for someone else. So here's my experience with it, so far.
:)
First, you fill out a *very* long questionare. Once that was done ( over an hour ), it came back and said it had no matches for me. That's pretty depressing. I gradually expanded the search parameters (there are a few things, such as location, that you can control)... before long I had eHarmony telling me there was no one anywhere in the world for me! I had always suspected it, but you hate to have a computer confirm it.
About three or four days later, it got a hit. The next day, it got four more hits. I've yet to figure out the algorithm.... it's not rate limiting, but the hits seem to come in batches. Some people just signed up, but others seem to have been there for awhile.
Anyway, I've been a member since June, and have gotten over 50 hits with it. Of those 50, only 5 have I dismissed right away. Most of the rest never respond to me (if you take the questionaire, you show up as a match, but can't communicate unless you pay the money. No doubt a lot of the never-responders are people who aren't interested enough to pay).
I've actually communicated with only four people from the system, and only gone on any dates with one of them. It's too early to say how that's going...
For me, it works. I'm not the sort of person who wants to date casually... I'm not going to go out with someone just to have a date on Saturday night. If I'm going out with someone, it's because I'm really interested in them, or at least interested in becoming more interested.
I'm not sure I agree with all the tenants of eHarmony... I think they are more interested in creating "stable" relationships then they are in "good" relationships. Their argument would probably be that they can do the "stable" with statistics, and it's up to the people to decide on the "good". Maybe that's fair.
Consider the type of guys who usually hit on women in public. It's often times not a pretty site. I know several girls that are moderately to extremely good looking who use online dating. It's not that they can't get a date otherwise, but they want to find a better guy than they would typically meet in a bar. Not to mention they have a lot more control over the process, like being able to get to know someone over a period of time before meeting up with them. Some chicks do the online dating thing for the same reason as most guys (to get laid), but most of them are probably looking for quality, which is hard to find in bars, malls, or what have you.
Online dating has been one of the most dehumanizing processes I've ever been through. And I used to be in the military.
First things first -- unless you look like a movie star and are super rich, and spend your time jet setting around the world, resign yourself to spending a good deal of money on online dating now. Most dating sites are "controlled" by a subset of women who don't need to spend any money because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is using their credits to contact them. They won't spend a whole lot of time looking for you, because they don't need to. You'll be in a darwinian struggle with a pile of other guys, and if you're not picture-perfect, your not going to get that date you need to show them your personality.
Also remember there are sometimes very good reasons why some of the women you'll meet online are single. I've wound up dating two women who were out patients from psychiatric institions. Now I'm not the kind of guy who stigmatizes people with mental illness, and I think they diserve love and support too -- but these women were too unstable to support any form of relationship, and had serious problems they needed to deal with before they could consider any form of stable relationship.
Also remember that the women you do wind up getting in touch with online often feel like they have a lot of other choices, so if you don't wow them and fill their hearts with desire on the very first date, your chances of a second date are virtually nil. Very, very, very few of the women you meet online are going to take the time to really get to know you -- if you don't immediately fit their expectations, most (in my experience at least) aren't going to invest the time to get to know you.
And if you hold any tenents outside societal norm, you're probably already out of the race. Online dating sites give people the ability to search on specific qualities, and if you don't show up in the average search, you're not going to get anywhere. I'm an athiest and a non-drinker (neither of which I enforce on or expect of others, BTW). My profile doesn't tend to get too many hits (more for the latter than the former, sad to say). I actually had one woman walk out on a date with me when I told her I was an athiest (the site I use doesn't have a selection in their religion combo box for "athiest" -- the closest is "non religious").
(I really hate to pick on so many women as I seem to have done so in this post. I can only guess that many men on online dating sites are the same -- but I don't date men, so I have no experience with their foibles. What few dates I have been on over the years I've been on online dating sites have usually shared their previous experiences, and one common theme with them is meeting men who are nothing like they claim, especially in the looks department).
Remember as well that you're going to be competing with a lot of people who are lying about themselves to make themselves sound better than they are. You can do the same thing -- but most women aren't going to date you again if/when they discover your dishonesty. Still, you're competing with the geekoid down the street who claims he looks like Mel Gibson and Tom Cuise combined, and that makes it exceedingly difficult for you to compete if you're truuthful (and, presumably, don't look like Mel Gibson and/or Tom Cruise).
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter over my experiences. I quit online dating for a long time, but after leaving the military recently signed back on, just to see if things had changed. I'm sad to say that, based on my experience these past few months, they haven't. Now I'm just a bitter old coot nobody would want to date anyway who hangs around /. telling whomever will listen him sad and loney online dating tale :).
Yaz.
Since it's all math based at the core, and you can see how and why you are getting the results, I would think this would appeal to alot of slashdot folks, some of it's a bit silly, and it doesn't take it's self very seriously on the surface, but digging deeper there is a really nifty system running it all.
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
I have to strenuously disagree with you here.
1) I agree, it's best to meet face to face as soon as practical. However, you can know someone for years and still fill in a lot of their personality with wishful thinking. The best advice is to be extremely honest extremely early, and hit the topics that could cause problems as quickly as possible.
2) <sarcasm$gt;Good thing this only happens over the Internet.</sarcasm$gt; Admittedly, in face to face conversation it's impossible for a 300-lb. guy from Detroit to pretend to be a fifteen year old girl, but the point stands. It's the same as any other forum: watch out for falseness and pretension, and don't take anyone at their word.
3) Was this an online dating service? Or a real life one? I've never tried the latter.
4) Evidence? I don't see a huge advantage to having an online service run by someone with a masters in psychology or family counseling, because it's so difficult to apply anything they've learned in their studies to Internet dating. Those who think too highly of their own knowledge will end up running something like eHarmony.com, which (according to another poster) writes off 20% of their potential customers as hopeless.
5) Screw eHarmony. Try OKCupid. The system is pretty straightforward. You create an account, then answer as many of the hundreds of questions in their database as you like. You can also say how your ideal match would answer, and how important it is that they answer properly. Then it looks for people who match you well. It works pretty well so long as you're honest with yourself and actually know what you want.
It's absolutely free. No "Premium Memberships" crap.
To summarize my post: I met my girlfriend there, and I resent the implication that this automatically means our relationship is "screwed up".
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Personally I am a very non-religious sort. Out of the curiosity this string of comments had brought to light I decided to go and take the test myself.
I am not religious, not spiritual, and the only thing I feel strongly about is my computer. I answered the questions accordingly and I was accepted, with 4 matches in a 300-500 mile radius. All of these matches were 10-20 years older than me.
This leads me to believe that maybe it isn't so much that eHarmony is religious (though that does seem to play a large part), but that most of the people who use it are in an older demographic. Or perhaps those who have applied and were rejected just weren't very datable.
They seem to be relying heavily on common interests and "kindness". I personally think that is a mistake, as people are not always great at analyzing themselves. I'm sure more than one person has put that they consider themselves amazingly kind... when truthfully they're a total ass. Or even more common is the person who considers themselves to be a cold evil bastard... when they have a good heart.
In the end no one is very good at deciding on a level from 1-7 how good or bad they are at anything. Dating in this format, as with so many other dating sites, quizzes, and polls... are completely and utterly pointless.
Religious or not, it is highly unlikely that you will find anything more than another lost hopeless feeling individual who you may or may not end up meeting in the future. So then, perhaps you should be glad if you're rejected. Be thankful that you aren't filled with the qualities that would allow you to fall victim to their sick "match-making" game.
Pedaling off false hope for money.
My uncle and his girlfriend of 28+ years (as long as I've been alive) have what I consider to be the ultimate relationship. They live and work separately yet are together more days out of the week than not. They each keep their own home, pay their own bills, etc. Every event they show up together and just seem comfortable and happy to be around each other rather than scurrying to opposing corners to bitch about each other.
If only I could convince the current live-in boyfriend, I'd opt for that style over marriage any day. Granted I don't want kids, that would complicate such an arrangement.
Coupling just seems to mash identities together instead of simply blending them slightly and allowing the individual to remain thus, yet augmented by the the partner.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
OKCupid is great for finding a bunch of people who are a lot like you. eHarmony sounds to me like a good choice for those who are willing to pay a premium in order to avoid the risk of a bad date. I think both approaches are valid.
The reason I got touchy is because you're trying to convince people that meeting people online isn't viable, a claim with which I strongly disagree. But if you'd rather turn it into a sign that I'm insecure about my relationship, you go right ahead.
My impression is, you want the comfort of meeting someone who shares all your most important values, without the discomfort of actually asking the questions needed to find out those values.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!