I wrote a bit of fiction yesterday (it was fiction, honest!) which featured a woman who used an online dating agency. And made up an ensuing nightmare scenario for her…
It did make me think, and I got a couple of comments along these lines, but have any of us ever used them?
I’ll jump in. I met my wife in 1998, which I think was a bit young for dating sites, so consequently I never used them. But I was/am quite computer-savvy, and I certainly remember joining some chatrooms aimed at singles. I can’t remember who it was – it might have been Yahoo, and do any of you remember Compuserve? (same kind of thing as AoL, in fact I think the two merged in the end) But it was all very amateur. I never actually met anyone as a result of one of these boards, and never paid a dime’s subscription for any of it. I guess it was before people realised that they could make money from it.
But if I hadn’t have met my wife, I could probably have seen myself using something. I don’t have anything at all against these types of site and I think they’d have been a brilliant tool for meeting people. Of course, I’d have been worried about meeting the axe murderer but that’s true of any first date.
I was just wondering, does anyone else have any stories (horror or success) they feel like sharing?
Why not comment of, better still, write a post and ping it back to this post?
Mister Bump 
These kind of meet/date things were before my time, too – way before, as my husband and I met in high school, and are going on 51 years of marriage now. But, my sister met her husband from a computer dating site (can’t remember which one), and my daughter did the same. They are all happily married after many years, too. 🙂
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My gut feel is that you’re probably every bit as likely to meet someone, `it’s just that initial breaking the ice. You only need to look at some of the things on WP to see that nost of us have more courage when we’re behind a computer, stuff we’d never do in real life.
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I know people who use them. Most of the women I know who use them are looking for someone to have something special with. (Some are just looking for casual sex). Most of the men I know who use them are not embarrassed about telling me they just use them for casual hook-ups with no intention of getting entangled with anything serious. (Some men may be looking for love or companionship, but none of the men I know that use them are looking for that). Goldfinch always used to warn me that if I ever tried a dating agency (which I am not planning on doing so) I should be aware that most men would just want sex.
I would like to be proved wrong about that.
Anyway…I don’t think about them. After being the victim of a serious crime five years ago, I would not take a gamble with random strangers.
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It’s interesting that there are sites out there just for random sex (I just searched), but do these guys prefer to use just normal dating sites instead? I suppose they just play the numbers. It’s amazing, I was always afraid of catching something, I mean, even when you jump in bed the first time, you’re taking a chance. I suppose that must be an age thing, because we had AIDS.
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I think there are some people out there who live heedless of risks. They think they are indestructible….until they get bitten.
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Actually I was thinking about that some more. It does seem dumb, using one of these sites for one reson when the people you’re hoping to meet are using it for a totally different reason. You’d think that at the very least you’d want to meet someone like-minded. But yes, you’re right about risk. It won’t happen to me.
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There could be clashes….or there could be those who compromise because it is not obvious to them that they are getting involved with someone who just wants them for sex.
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Ever hear of Chat Box (I think). I met a guy that ended up very creepy. And then I was set up with friends for a blind date with my husband…. so my chat box usage went bye bye. I was lucky.
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Chat Box sounds very “social media” but no, I never heard of it. It’s probably something my daughter heard of. I suppose the inbuilt trouble with these things is that they do attract creeps. I’d expect every user must have some standard questions to try to discover whether somebody is genuine or not.
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This was before social media as I know it now. It was back in late 1989. It was a box with a keyboard that you typed with and a screen to see active responses and who was online. We already had email, but this may have been the precursor of AOL chat? I don’t know. I’ve been looking for a photo. We got it via AT&T, I think.
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My late husband and I married in the early 80s – he actually built our first PC in ’83 and we did the Compuserve and Prodigy dance. 🙂
So while I’ve never had any use for online dating sites, I did have an online “birthday party” in a chatroom in the mid-90s. A friend of mine “met” the friend of a mutual friend, and the long and short of it is they just celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary…and have a 20-year-old son. So good things can happen online. 🙂
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Gosh you were way ahead of the curve in ’83! 22 is our next anniversary, so there must have been very few places to meet somebody back then.
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My friend uses a dating site and she had two longer relationships and some fun dates as a result. She says that as a woman you need also be proactive and contact men too and you need to have a good profile. And you need to be active. Not just login every few weeks.
A friend of hers, male, told her that some or most women he meets through the app, woman that contact him are woman who like to go on a vacation and like to drink champagne.
I just wanted to add that angle because I feel men are sometimes wrongly perceived as ‘just wanting a casual fling’ and woman being in it for the longer term. Interesting post!
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Yes I never really thought twice about it before coming up with this vague, standard storyline. I never really thought any deeper until I got a few comments along those lines.
I can’t help thinking that, if I hadn’t met my wife when I did, or if I’d been ten years younger, maybe, online dating would have been nothing special. I suppose it has this mystique about it because it was never an option when I was looking.
But I think meeting people is hard work, however you do it. I went out with a few people where the sparks just weren’t there.
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