Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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Online Dating: Which Site Do I Choose?
I'd like to say online dating worked for me, but it must have been around the time the guy appeared one foot shorter than he had listed in his profile and asked if anyone ever told me I looked like Bjork, that I knew that match.com was not the way to go.
I'm passed wondering if online dating is a good idea. I've heard it both work and fail for different people (case in point: my friend got matched with her brother), but I would like to give it a fair try. So imagine my disappointment at the Bjork experience.
Perhaps I'm just not on the right site?
From my own experience and the collective experiences of my friends, it seems the bigger sites like chemistry.com, eharmony.com and match.com are perhaps just that--too broad. By seemingly appealing to everyone, they don't really work for anyone. As anyone and everyone goes on these sites, you end up with a lot of people you don't connect to. It's paradoxical; instead of feeling like there are plenty of fish in the sea (pun somewhat intended), you feel even more alone among all the people you can't relate to.
So I thought, maybe I should look for more specific sites. My friend forwarded me info about the new dating site, IvyDate. Students and alum from the Ivy Leagues and other top notch schools can connect with likeminded people. The thing is, the site is new, so I'm not sure how many members are on it, and I'm not going to pay an exorbitant fee to have one person from California email me and say, "Visit me when you're in Stanford." (True story).
Then there's BestDailyDates (also recommended by a friend). The good thing about this site is that it's free. People suggest date ideas, you accept or reject said idea, and meet up if both parties are interested. The idea is to have the online part of online dating be kept to a minimum--the site seems to really encourage meeting in person and going from there.
However, I'm not sure how much you can really learn about a person from a suggested date (though I suppose if anyone suggests going sky-diving rather than having dinner that says a lot--also there is a profile you fill out for the site, which is how you get dates suggested to you), so perhaps it's worth a try. I'd just like there to be a little more of a filtering element.
What do you guys think? Are the more traditional sites too broad to ever find someone specific enough to suit your fancy? Have you heard of/tried these two sites? Any other suggestions?
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- From: IrisLily22@xanga
- Name: IrisLily22
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Comments (20)
i've heard good things about okcupid, but i don't have any personal experience with online dating. i've got like 3+ friends who are on okcupid, and they're all mid-20's indie types. none of them has settled down per se, but they've all met a decent number of decent dates.
I was on OkCupid, where I met my boyfriend whom I've been dating for seven months now! The "match" rating they assign you based on how you answer questions is amazingly accurate.
okcupid is good :)
i met someone off there i dated. and it went well.
i have heard good things about okcupid too. i thought about joining but once i saw my ex was on there.... not happening. lol
I met my fiance on plentyoffish.com it's worked well for us. My mom also met my stepdad off of eharmony. Sites can be good for meeting new people, but just like meeting people off sites you have to be careful.
@Morris1127@xanga - Thats the site I used :)
I went on plentyoffish to meet my boyfriend.. We've been together for over 3 years now... Its free, and you will meer some creeps.... But for the most part its good :)
I'm on okcupid. It's a really fun site, even aside from the dating. Has very good matching algorithm, tons of tests, and recommends 3 new people for you everyday. It has a lot of ways to match you to others based on your personality, and is just very neatly organized. The writers of okcupid also have a very cool blog you can read. From what I've seen, though okcupid is free (though you can go premium) , it's probably one of the best out there, comparable to ones you have to pay for.
let me preface this by saying that i think any form of online dating only caters to attractive people, so if looks aren't your strong point, you might want to seek elsewhere. (that being said, if you're a girl, i suppose there's no investment on your part in online dating anyway.)
i think to go to any pay site is a little foolish, cause their business interest isn't aligned with your interest. that's okc's philosophy. match.com (or maybe it was eharmony) had some scandal a few years ago where they were exposed for having fake daters in their system so that they could meet their guarantee of getting you a date in 6 months.
as far as ivydate, no matter how you look at it, if you're going to restrict yourself to a subset of schools (as i used to do), you can't complain about a small dating population. lol at the stanford guy. but give him a break, that place is kind of a cockfest. coincidentally, the founder of okc went there, so don't write off all of them just yet :p there's another "site" (that's not online dating but an organization) called ivysingles, which is a similar concept except they're much more stringent upon which school you attended. in fact, i think it's strictly ivy + stanford + mit, iirc.
My friend used plentyoffish.com and met someone almost immediately and now they're married. There's always going to be creepers and weirdos on any of those sites though.
I'm a fan of okcupid! It's a lot of fun there. I've found that plentyoffish is full of creeps..
Xanga.com
I met my guy from a social networking site. I wasn't looking for anybody though and didn't intend to use it to find a date, so there's no pressure and things just happened when I least expected it. one day I got a message from a guy and my first thought was, omg, he's hot
he thought my profile was funny, so he messaged me. I like my privacy so I never put any real info, I was just joking around on it with outlandish answers to the profile info, and that caught his eye. I posted a vague pic, so he didn't message me because of looks. I didn't post pics to protect my privacy, so all the things I did was to remain anonymous, yet it somehow turned into meeting the man of my dreams
lol so what worked for me was just destiny as cheesy as that sounds.
I met my husband on match.com. I'll be honest, I didn't pay for it. I snuck my AIM screenname into my profile in such a way as to get past the site's monitoring, but still give a clue that that's how you could contact me. Until I did that, most of the guys I met were duds. My husband was the only one who figured it out, which told me he might actually be worth my time.
Meanwhile, my brother met his fiancee on plentyoffish.com, I think it was. It was one of those free ones, anyway.
Basically, the site doesn't mean anything--you have to be picky and be willing to wade through the toads to meet your prince no matter what site you use.
-Katie
used to use okcupid! i'd say it's pretty fun, though i'm not using it anymore because i'm not sticking around this city anymore. out of the 4 people i met:
1st guy: nice, looked like his picture, but so boring!
2nd guy: looked NOTHING like his picture, made me feel extremely wary, we did not click offline.
3rd guy: looked like his picture and we really, really hit it off. because of my own stupid mistakes, things didn't work out. he's awesome though and we had a great time for the time we had.
4th guy: nice, funny, and charming. looked better than his picture and it was just a one time thing, but still had a good time!
i'd definitely agree with everyone else about okcupid so far! sure, there are the creepers, but it's a fantastic self-esteem boost!
OKCupid didn't really work well for me, to be honest. The site is great for women seeing as they have their pick of the litter, though - usually women are getting many, many messages each day, and men are putting themselves out there. However, I've also noticed that the women on there tend to think very, very highly of themselves.
Then again, it could just personally be me. I was on there for about.. 3-4 months, and met practically nobody. Messages I sent out got very, very short replies that didn't go anywhere.
I didn't give online dating much of a chance, but I did determine that we're incompatible at this point in my life. May I suggest picking up hobbies that you enjoy that also force you to spend time with people of the opposite gender instead? Online dating typically caters to people who are attractive and socially very well-groomed and who value these characteristics (highly) in other people. Personally, I'd rather find someone a bit 'off' who shares some of my hobbies.
After having said all of this, commitment scares the ever loving bejesus out of me. I'll always rationalize my fear of commitment with the thought that I've managed just fine on my own, so why do I need to settle-down. Truth is I'm just scared to be alone for the rest of my life and eventually (hopefully) that fear will super-secede rational thought. The older I get, the closer I get to that mentality... haha.
I have to say, I really really enjoy online dating. It gives you a chance to get to know someone for who they are on the inside and focus less on the outside.
However, I am shallow. I've met guys on dating websites who were great, but I wasn't attracted to. I felt like they shared so much with me online because they didn't have to worry about being shy or have me laugh at them in person and make them feel embarrassed.
Online dating is a bit risky because the person could be lying to you [although they could do it in person too] and you don't ever actually no what a person really looks like... certainly they're not going to show you a bad picture of them.
I am not saying not to try online dating, I enjoy it and like everyone else has said, there are going to be weirdos, but ignore them and give it a try... you may find that it's worth it.
I've tried plentyoffish and the personal section on craigslist and really enjoyed both. My mom met her husband [who lived in Denmark] in a chat room and they have been married for almost ten years now:)!
It really comes down to how much work you're willing to put into the experience. I've tried three, Plenty of Fish first, which was horrible, then eHarmony, which got old fast after each match they gave me turned out to be a dork or a loser and finally Match, which is nice, but I get creepy emails from guys that are obsessed with my profile pic, which prompted me to change it. All things considered, I say go with Match.
I met my boyfriend on OKCupid. :)
Cool blog... defnit read for people interested in online dating