A friend is considering internet dating services. Advice? Which ones are best, and what's the best way to go about it?
Update No, this "friend" is not me. Other considerations aside, I'm just famous enough that any dating profile I put up would quickly become fodder for much blog hilarity, so that avenue for pairing up is pretty much closed to me. It's an honest-to-goodness friend I'm talking asking for.
Is your friend a he or a she? From what I understand, given the huge male surplus in the online dating universe, just about any service will work fine for women, while nothing much works for men.
Use Facebook. Not a dating site, true, but effective for such if you work it right and more laid back/less annoying.
Blog hilarity is a bad thing? We'd love to hear about how you like long walks in the park and cuddling with your kitten.. On second thought, okay, nevermind.
But seriously, I'm curious why anyone would consider an internet dating service, although obviously many do. Somehow it seems kind of creepy and desperate to me, like buying a personal ad. But then I know absolutely nothing about internet dating services or personal ads so I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
Well, I met my fiancee through Yahoo Personals... but it took about five years, the last two of which I wasn't even an active member but hadn't bothered to take down my profile. That may be longer than your friend is looking for this to take.
I'd tried Match.com, eHarmony, and Yahoo, and despite some procedural differences (eHarmony in particular claims a much more rigorous matching process), they all seem about the same--and have many of the same people in them.
I met my wife (1.5 years) through eHarmony. It works, but there are a number of pretty big caveats for eHarmony.com. 1) You need to be looking for a long-term mate. 2) It helps to be religiously observant. 3) It takes a lot of work (i.e. an hour a day or so looking, e-mailing, etc.)
I met my girlfriend on Match.com, and we've been together for two years. One advantage of Match is its sheer size: the greater the number of members, the more potential mates.
A couple of tips:
1) Only sign up for a month at a time. You can contact everyone who catches your eye in that month. If you've got no luck, you can take a month or two off and come back and there will be some new people on the site.
2) Use a couple of good photos, preferably one that shows you outdoors with other human beings. This sends a subliminal message to potential dates that other humans have associated with you in the past. Avoid the pic of you and your ex with his head blotted out, or the one of you taking your own picture in the bathroom mirror.
3) Look at dozen or so posts written by someone of your gender on the site. See some cliches everyone is using? Don't use those. If you're a woman, that includes not writing some variation of this sentence, "I'm just as comfortable in a little black dress as I am hanging out in sweats and a baseball cap".
I thought female libertarian bloggers had to shoo away tons of suitors anyway.
I don't know if in good conscience I can recommend it as a dating site, but I did meet my wife through of all places Hot Or Not.
I'll second that it matters whether your friend is male or female. I got contacted by a few seemingly interesting (local) women via my profile, but I found a few interesting, attractive, (unfortunately non-local) women through the site, and my wife's experience more resembles that of a female libertarian blogger -- shoo! -- than mine did.
We met, by the way, because I did a keyword search for Firefly. Well, first I did a keyword search for Fiona Apple, but everyone I found that way was 18-22 and sullen.
The photos I see show that we Americans are really paying for the demise of professional portrait photography. Most people haven't sat for a portrait since high school -- including me. It even shows up on the obit page where the best they can come up with sometimes is a 5-year-old driver's license picture.
The Spring Street network wasn't bad when I used it a few years ago. A friend of mine has tried Craigslist and been disappointed.
If your friend is female, she should start a blog.
Amber,
Spring Street Networks (at least before the big controversial change) charged per contact -- something like $1 per, right? -- so that tends to be a better deal for women, who tend to be on the receiving end of contacts more. A guy can literally send hundreds of messages if he wants for $30 or whatever the monthly fee of Match is now.
Megan: I second the motion that we need to know whether your friend is male or female, and their approximate age.
That said, I personally don't understand why people use dating services. If you're a guy who wants to meet girls, isn't it more effective to buy a shiny sports car or a nice looking boat?
And if you're a gal who wants to meet guys, just sign up for a course in firearms safety, or fly fishing, or automatic transmission repair, etc., etc,.
I'm curious why anyone would consider an internet dating service, although obviously many do. Somehow it seems kind of creepy and desperate to me, like buying a personal ad.
You're simply wrong about it being creepy and desperate, at least insofar as the majority of people using the sites now are as normal and varied as you'd run into in any other venue. It's light years past personal ads in newspapers.
I met my girlfriend of a year through OkCupid, which I'd recommend. PlentyOfFish also has a lot of people. Forget the pay sites--they're unnecessary with the quality of the free ones, and there've been scandals where companies like match.com pay female employees to respond to male customers (and even go on dates) to present the illusion of successful dating.
Tell your friend three things:
1. Put up a picture or several. It makes a huge difference in getting responses when someone can see you and say "wow, they're cute."
2. It's a volume business. The problem is that Internet dating lowers the bar to rejecting someone to simply ignoring a message/wink/woo/flower/whatever other mechanism the site has for signalling interest. My experience was that for every 100 people I talked to (or tried to talk to), I actually met 10-15, and dated 4-5 more than once. That's fine if you understand the mechanism--it's like a party where you talk to everyone and try to leave with a couple numbers. Be casual and free about making contact, and see what happens.
3. Just like meeting someone wherever, it's worth giving people a chance that you might not otherwise. Being open to new people has its benefits.
Over three years I dated about 20 different people via OkCupid and PlentyofFish. Most were very nice people who I'd have been happy to meet another way; with several I had more than three dates; a few were just batshit insane. I don't think that's different than if I'd met them in bars, and in fact I met a few people I wouldn't have run into otherwise, like the riding instructor. And as said, I met my girlfriend that way, we've been dating for a year, and it's looking permanent.
Also, a couple other success stories: my friend Nelson just moved in with a girl he met on OkCupid (he's a tech worker, she's a schoolteacher); my friend Craig (another tech worker) met his girlfriend of three years on Lavalife, and a year ago moved to Australia so she could pursue her high-powered career in marketing. It really has become normal people using another means to meet each other.
If your friend is a geek, he/she may be interested in SoulGeek.com.
If your friend is male, I recommend skipping the internet dating scene entirely, going to his local public library, and joining a reading group. It's a good way to meet non-stupid people, and the women generally outnumber the men at least 3:1.
If your friend is female, she should probably also skip the internet dating scene entirely unless she's interested in having short, meaningless flings with married men.
I recommend Spring Street Networks, which interfaces through The Onion Personals, Salon Personals, and others. I met the woman, whom I eventually married, after about 4 months of being on the site. (We were both in the DC area.)
Unless it has changed in the last few years, I would guess that the people on Spring Street Networks tend to be more educated and more politically progressive than on some of the other sites. There are likely some libertarians there too, but it's probably not the best site for someone who wants to date a religious conservative. The matching criteria were rather basic (e.g., education level, smoking/non-smoking, etc.) and the site had some interesting open-ended questions to get to know people, rather than 100+ question matching quiz.
My wife liked the site, too. She did say that men tended to lie about their heights, though.
As far as advice to your friend, I can't think of anything other than, the rather trite, "Have fun" and "Be patient."
Why doesn't she just hang arond at coffee shops and bars near Wall Street? Your friend can find some successful (i. e. rich) investmet banker--he might lnow nothing about St. Augustine or Tolstoy, but he'll be able to buy his way into the best society.
OKCupid tends to attract considerably more intelligent folk, but there's a lot of garbage to wade through wherever you search. Not everyone is there for dating. I've met a few good friends and my girlfriend there.
Zaadz is an excellent non-dating site for intelligent meetups. Very good offline group social events. The design is much better than, say, myspace. And good for an older audience as well.
Best of luck.
Though I have no personal experience, I can say that my daughter has met a number of nice guys through JDate. (JDate is ostensibly a Jewish online dating service, but I gather that it's like Levy's rye bread -- you don't HAVE to be Jewish.)
If your friend is male, I recommend skipping the internet dating scene entirely, going to his local public library, and joining a reading group. It's a good way to meet non-stupid people, and the women generally outnumber the men at least 3:1.
And maybe ten percent of the women will be pre-menopausal.
Regarding JDate - most of the profiles on that weren't live, which is a common problem. I gather that a lot of sites leave old profiles up to make it seem like they have more active users than they really do.
One nice thing about OKCupid, they remove inactive profiles. Maybe that's not so important if you're waiting for people to come to you, but it's good if you're mailing folks who look interesting.
"And maybe ten percent of the women will be pre-menopausal."
If that. Peter nails it.
In principle, online dating seems like a great idea because it allows a faster and more efficient sorting of potential mates based on what you're really looking for. Is religion important to you? Screen for that. Want someone who's into sports? Screen for that, too. Etc.
But in actual practice, I suspect this turns out to be online dating's Achilles heel. It feeds the delusion that you can find a mate who matches you perfectly in all the dimensions you care about.
Also, you can only screen based on "searchable" factors -- those that can be conveyed in text or (sometimes) photos. But you cannot screen for those ineffable qualities like chemistry and rapport -- and those are probably the factors that matter most. The rational response to this limitation of the technology would be to cast a broad net so as to meet, in person, a large number of people to check for the unsearchable qualities. Unfortunately, the perfect-match delusion works against those who would follow that approach.
Glen,
I used to call this the "surfeit syndrome" and it's one that, I think, effects women more often than men. It's not limited to online dating though; I think it's somewhat common in most trendy cities. Thus, you have women who are serial daters in their twenties and early thirties and then suddenly are forced to rethink their expectations as they run out of time to have children. Some settle for more obtainable men, others adopt, etc. Less of an issue for a woman who doesn't want to have children and is willing to date a divorced man with kids (the bulk of the dating pool for forty year old women).
It feeds the delusion that you can find a mate who matches you perfectly in all the dimensions you care about.... The rational response to this limitation of the technology would be to cast a broad net so as to meet, in person, a large number of people to check for the unsearchable qualities.
Glen nails it perfectly. I suffered from this for about the first year, and didn't start enjoying real success online until I figured it out.
I would put one qualifier on it, though: The benefit of online dating is that your first contact with a person is in text, and if you start exchanging messages and email, you have the benefit of building a rapport with them (or not, and discarding them) long before any tension sets in due to physical proximity.
Of the dates I had, most went quite well even if we didn't continue seeing each other just because we'd already built up a conversation when we finally stood in front of each other.
Readers of your old blog all knew the "friend" wasn't you. We know that you sit at home and pine for Ezra to requite your secret love. If you used a dating service, it would only be to make the young Mr. Klein jealous. :-)
FWIW I met my wife of three years on Match.com, and we have several friends, now married, who met that way too. My wife says she got a lot of inquiries, so I'm surprised I made it through the clutter. :) I believe women tend to get way more inquiries than men. That was the case with me and our friends.
I met my wife through a personal ad (10 years ago). Back then online dating seemed to be for people who were in actuality too afraid to really meet anyone. It seems more mainstream now, and I know of a few success stories. Whatever route or portal is chosen, the key things are (1) choose a service that focuses on your target demographic. This will save you a lot of time. And (2) be inclusive. Ask for 'attractive' not 'gorgeous,' etc., stress the one or two most important attributes you're looking for and leave the others wide open. You don't want an opposite-sex version of yourself.
Be a woman. No other advice is necessary or possible.
In principle, online dating seems like a great idea because it allows a faster and more efficient sorting of potential mates based on what you're really looking for ... But in actual practice, I suspect this turns out to be online dating's Achilles heel. It feeds the delusion that you can find a mate who matches you perfectly in all the dimensions you care about.
Exactly. I'll take a break from my usual ranting about too many men chasing too few women to relate a true story about online dating.
I met my now-wife online in early 1997, and in fact we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary last week. It was through a free dating service offered by Prodigy, an early ISP that's now largely vanished into the mists of Internet Past. Online dating was in its infancy back then and very different from what it is today. There wasn't such an absurdly skewed gender balance, but more to the point there was almost nothing in terms of screenable factors. About all you'd find out is the other person's gender, race (sometimes), and approximate age. And that was good. You would make contact with the sort of people you'd normally not consider were better screening available, and far from causing incompatible matches that broke down too-strict standards and prejudices.
I notice that the comments here seem to be depressing for us single men in our 30's. Is it really that bad?
That being said, I have had very poor luck with online dating even when trying to keep an extremely open mind as to potential dating partners. :-/
Hi Joseph Delaney,
You want to go out some time?
My email is naomi_eight@yahoo.com
Look at that, a love connection. If it doesn't work Joseph, you can try out for the next season of The Pick-Up Artist, on VH-1.
I've had no luck. Please post on results.
I'm in Michigan and have no idea how to find a good woman here.
OKCupid.com
I met my bf on that thing. It's free and it has this feature of asking you all these questions and determining your compatibility with other users, so you can sort your fishnet that way, most compatible first. I'm 82% compatible with my bf [and no more than 83 with anyone]. I moved in with him last month. I'm typing this on his computer. We're really happy, blah blah blah.
A friend of mine found his current fiancee on Yahoo. He's really smart and funny and it was his example that prodded me, as I thought "if fellas like Nick are to be found with this device, then I'm in." And hey, people like ME are to be found on it, so what more do you need?
You should take your friend to gun shows and Ron Paul Truth Rallies.
If that doesn't work, have him/her try underground swing clubs. They're dark enough that even Ayn Rand got action in them.
eHarmony uses an algorithm to search for matches based on how you fill in their questionnaire. So do not just flippantly mark the questionnaire as I did and then couldn't go back.
There are a lot of niche dating services out there, up to and including "Online dating for bipolar singles". After all, there's nothing a bipolar single needs more than a relationship with someone else who's bipolar.
I've heard this one is growing rapidly:
http://www.plentyoffish.com/
and is free. Started by this guy in Vancouver out of his living room, apparently.
Match.com -- Lots of younger people on this one. Personally I found a lot of the people I met to be kind of flakey and not sure if they really wanted to be dating anyone, still I made some great friends.
Chemistry.com -- Match's new site, still a bit buggy but I think it does a pretty decent job. Less stressful than match in my opinion. People more interested in actually meeting someone to date than match. I met someone I like a great deal through this website.
These are the only two I've given a reasonable effort with. Good Luck to your friend.
Have your friend do him/herself a favor and skip the free sites, and that includes OKCupid, PlentyOfFish, and (gasp) Craigslist. They are full of unattractive, desperate people who are too cheap to spring the twenty bucks or so for a pay site and and then wonder why they cannot meet anyone worthwhile. No offense meant for those of you who found soulmates at swapmeets.
Yes, it is possible to meet interesting people online. You just have to approach it like mail-order clothes shopping: order many (very many) styles and sizes all at once and then send back the ones that do not fit or flatter. What you cannot get out of the catalog method of finding dates is that necessary yet ineffable sense of chemistry. For that one must do the necessary soul-searching to be able to pinpoint exactly what traits one thinks undesirable and yet finds irresistibly attractive. Without this, one finds oneself forever sending back the perfect-sounding but wholly unengaging dates.
Good luck.
I'm in Michigan and have no idea how to find a good woman here.
Well, running a blog that contains entries like "Why Do Handicapped Drivers Drive Like They're Fucking Handicapped?" and "I Thought We Created Welfare So I Wouldn't Have To Deal With People Like You" probably doesn't help. ;)
That being said, I live in Ann Arbor for six years and often pawed through the Metro Times personal columns. In every issue, there were more "Women Seeking Women" than there were "Women Seeking Men". (And of course the "Men Seeking Women" section dwarfed them both combined.)
I met my husband on Friendster and several good friends on the Spring Street Networks - including one guy I dated for four months and am still in touch with. I'm a big fan of online dating, had a great experience with it, zero horror stories. But you have to be realistic about it. It's hard to find somebody that you click with, on- or off-line. On- or off-line, people tend to fudge details of their flaws when you first meet them. That's life. But dating online lets you spread a wide net and be exposed to lots more people than you could meet just at work or through friends.
My personal rules when I was dating online served me well so I'll share:
1) Meet in person as soon as possible after first contact (if you think you might be interested). I'd usually propose a date at the local coffee place on the second or third email. In my experience, romantic chemistry is 100% mysterious and unexplainable. There are no rules, no little lists that you can make for yourself, zilch. But it's like jazz - if you have to ask, you don't have it. That doesn't mean that romantic chemistry is all you need for a successful relationship, but you won't get anywhere without it. So why waste time with a bunch of obsessively crafted emails building an imaginary picture of the person before you know if you have chemistry in the physical flesh?
2) No expectations. Since romantic chemistry is 100% mysterious, some people will not have it with you. And vice versa. I have had gorgeous, talented guys interested in me that I just wasn't attracted to. I've been madly attracted to quirky guys that definitely didn't have a widespread appeal. Sometimes people didn't reciprocate my interest. It's really nothing to do with merit. The spark is there or it's not. Maybe it's pheromones. Thinking about it that way takes some of the sting out of rejection.
3) Practice, practice, practice. The first dozen blind dates give you butterflies. After that, meeting strangers in a coffee shop starts to feel just like something you do. You start to get the hang of starting conversations and drawing people out - a useful life skill. The truth of that "no expectations" rule starts to sink in. Even if there's no romantic chemistry, you start to get the hang of maintaining casual friendships with people you like. You can invite each other to your parties where either of you might meet a mutual friend you click with. It's never a bad thing to expand your social network.
4) Read lots of profiles. It's helpful if the site is similar to Spring Street which asks open-ended questions which give much better insight into a person than check-boxes. I rarely found people to lie blatantly (except maybe with men and their height) but interpreting profiles is a skill that you develop with practice. Just like getting a sense of a person's character from a quick conversation is a skill we can develop. Not that you shouldn't keep an open mind about being wrong.
5) The medium is not the message. Don't blame the internet if you get your heart broken. Love is a cruel mistress and most people get battered in their pursuit of it, regardless if they go online in that pursuit or not. The internet is just an incredibly useful tool for meeting lots of diverse people. The nice thing is that after you get your heart broken, you won't be able to pretend to yourself that you'll never meet anyone else ever again.
6) No shame. You may hear things like "I thought only losers did internet dating" from time to time. Those kinds of comments usually come from ignorance & fear of the unknown. But it's incredibly annoying to meet someone online who's ashamed of the fact that he's dating online and says things like, "We can make up a fake story about how we met." Dude! If you're having a good experience with it, why would you want to hide it?? Tell other people about the good thing goin' on!
As I mentioned I met my husband online after online dating for about a year and a half. I love him madly and there's no way I ever would have met him otherwise. But I didn't spend that year and a half dating in anguish and frustration because I hadn't met someone yet. It was hella fun! I met so many different people and got invited to so many parties and I have so many interesting stories now. I lost a lot of my social inhibitions and gained in confidence. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I'd say that match is the current leader if you don't want to be auto matched. It has the critical mass of people actually looking for a real relationship. There are other sites for flirting and cyber sex.
I found my love on match and I'd never have met her without it. We bought a house together in May and it is working out better than I would ever have believed.
A couple of suggestions:
1. Use a few pictures that are recent and look natural. Professional posed pictures made me think of digital editing. Ancient pictures are an instant turnoff if a meeting happens.
2. Be honest in what you are and what you want. Heck! Free associate a brain dump, make it readable and use it. Phoniness and turning it into a sales pitch are way too obvious.
3. Do an f2f meeting as soon as possible. The usual Starbucks 'play date'. I've used email forever for work and if it goes on too long I found myself writing a business letter. That's why I'm dubious about long distance romance.
4. The short membership isn't a bad idea. I'd burn out and hide my profile for a break. I think they save your profile for awhile when you let membership lapse.
Good luck to your friend. Love is possible.
Steve
Don't try to save money by going with the lowest price . It wasn't until after several dates with complete bitches that I realized I had signed up for a dog breeding service.
Hello everybody, my name is Damion, and I'm glad to join your conmunity,
and wish to assit as far as possible.