Online Dating

In recent years online dating has become very popular. More people are deciding to go online to look for a potential partner. According to StatisticBrain.com, there are 54,250,000 single people online and there are 41,250,000 that have actually tried online dating. That's a lot of people and it doesn't even include other countries. With that many people trying out online dating, impressions are easily made and deception occurs.

When people create their profiles, they have the power to disclose as much or less as they want. They can choose whether or not they want to share their favorite book or height. Some people share too much online but some share too less. For example, on OkCupid, there are some people that include where they go to school and personal things that may potentially be used in a harmful way. But there are also profiles where someone will provide basic information like age, gender, and religious views. This is not very helpful to the person viewing it because they cannot figure out who you with that information. The information provided will give the person viewing it an impression of who you are. Sometimes the impressions lead to false expectations because the person may think you look different especially if there are angled or filtered pictures.

False expectations are also formed when there is deception. This can come from both the pictures and text on the profile. There are people that create fake accounts and use someone else's information as their own. On an episode of Catifsh, there was a person who used information from several different people, to make it harder for people to figure out the deception. Usually in these cases the person will include some of  their own information, a phone number or email address.

There are a few common deceptions that people will use to make them seem more appealing. People mostly lie about age, appearance, height, and weight. I have noticed people who have a physical insecurity mostly post photos with just their face, or maybe at an angle to get their "good side". The ones with confidence post full body pictures or pictures showing them doing something silly such as making a face or wearing a weird outfit. The fake profiles tend to have very nice, crisp photos. They look professionally done and very planned.

Online Dating

Over these past few weeks we have been discussing online dating and the impact that it has on relationships. One of the key aspects to online dating is to build a relationship of talking and emailing before you meet the person. Statistics say that if you apply that principle there is a 94 percent chance that you meet that person again. I have experienced this aspect of online dating in my own life recently. I met this girl through a mutual friend and we began communicating through text before we even met each other and I can attest to the belief that building a foundation before meeting in person actually helped a lot. Looking back now and knowing about this concept about online dating makes me realize that I already felt comfortable with this girl when we met face to face because I knew so much about her through our communication through texts. When I think critically about this I can’t help but ask the question of how much better or worse some relationships are when they don’t meet online and build that foundation through text, email, chat room, etc. Personally, I dated a girl my entire senior year and we didn’t met online and in the beginning it was definitely a little uncomfortable because we were new to each other and we didn’t have that level of knowing a lot about each other. However, at the same time our relationship ended up being a good experience and I think that’s the ultimate goal for all relationships whether they started online or face-to-face.

When people log onto the Internet and engage in online dating, there are some deceptions that come along with it. For instance, there are always going to be users that lie about things on their profile. They can lie or “stretch the truth” about their age, name, background info, appearance, and pretty much just about anything. The problem with deception in online dating is it causes other users to be deceitful when they encounter deception. In my own experience, I have seen people be deceitful when online dating when I was helping my mom after my parents got divorced. With all of her kids in college or moved out I wanted to help her meet someone and it was obvious that some men were clearly not being truthful in their profiles. The photos of some men were not matching up to the age, height, and assumed weight that they listed. It really interests me why those three topics are lied about most and not things like financial income if listed or hobbies that would boost their profile. To pretty much answer my own question I think it is because age, height, and weight are attributes that can be overlooked by a lot of people and in the long run the person you meet could easily get over it. Lying about income or certain hobbies could really throw someone off and in turn cause problems in the relationship.

Blog #3 - Alexa Prezwodek

The past couple of weeks we have talked about online dating and have watched shows on how online dating has worked or in some cases not worked for people who are seeking future partners. Online dating has become such a huge part of how our society meets people now- a-days. It still is common for people to meet through a friend but many new statistics have came up saying that it is more common to have phone apps or be logged into an online dating site.

One study that I have found done by Pew Research, is that online dating sites have become more prevalent in our lives. As technology develops so do these new systems of dating. About 38% of people who are looking for potential mates and are single have used an online dating site or app to get involved. This makes 1 out of every 10 people have used some sort of site to connect with others. That is a lot of people relying on theses sites for love. Of course anyone who has used an app or site which is about 11% are considered to be classified as "online daters". About 66% of people who have met a significant other online and about 23% have said they met a spouse using such sites.

Demographics also play a large role in who people meet and who actually uses the sites. In their study, they have come with people who are in their mid-20s through mid- 40s are most likely to be involved with online dating. Also with age comes where the people live that impacts who they meet. Just as in the movie shown in class last week, the one women in the beginning had met her husband over seas. Location is a very big factor for some people when they first get involved with people online. Commonly people who are well-educated and live in suburban or urban areas tend to use the apps more.

 Many people now turn to these sites as advantages to help them in their love lives and in return have gotten some positive energy and feed back from using such sites as EHarmony.com and Match.com. Over the spand of  8 years, the researchers had shown that when they went back to the study years later that it had increased and more people started using sites for dating. 59% of people said it was a good way to meet people online where, as 8 years ago only 44% said it was good. Many people about 79% say that online dating is a good thing, giving them a better range and idea of who and what is out there for them.

In looking at this research and the statistics that it had provided, it was clear to see that online dating is becoming a norm and is actually more commonly used than 8 years ago. It is a new trend that keeps picking people up and giving them the chance to branch out. In any online dating site you run into negativities and false information but a majority of people who were interviewed said more positive than negatives.  People go to great lengths to use such apps to find potential mates (39% have paired for certain apps) Online dating is seen more important and real than how it was perceived years before.It is making a good/positive outcome for people.

Alexa Prezwodek

Blog #3 William Brady

Blog #3

Online dating is extremely popular in today’s society. It is a very convenient source for meeting new people. Especially for those that are extremely busy with work and do not have the time to go out. Online dating is also very helpful for those who do not trust people as freely as others. Online dating is better for those because you get to know the person before you actually meet them. The relationship is built over time, and trust eventually comes, at least some sort of it.

One thing about online dating that I found extremely interesting is the fact that people who are more willing to trust people are less likely to use online dating. Once I heard the explanation for this – “People with more trust do not need online dating because they are more likely to meet someone in person, and give them a chance”. I am not saying that they do not use it though. I just found this extremely interesting.

In today’s society online dating is amazing. Like I said before, it is a convenient task for people who are extremely busy with work and do not have time to go out to bars and on blind dates each night looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right. Online dating allows them to meet people when they have the chance to. Online dating also gives you the chance to express yourself the way that you want others to see you.

But with a computer screen between you and the other person it brings some negative thoughts to your mind. With online dating it allows you to hide your true personality. It also allows you to hide exactly what you look like. With today’s technology you can modify anything on the computer. If you want to loose 5 to 10 pounds no problem. If your butt is not big enough, no problem it can be modified. There is nothing you cannot change on a computer to make yourself look better. Just like the commercial we watched in class that showed us how to take multiple pictures that make ourselves look better. We need to make sure that we really no who we are talking to. But how do we know? I believe there is no true way to find out if the person we are talking to online is actually who they really say they are, the only way is trust.

Overall online dating has revolutionized our lives. It has opened up so many doors to meeting people. It has become extremely popular with cell phone apps that allow you to swipe left or right to people you would want to hook up with, and those you would not hook up with. These apps include Tinder and Hindge. Which is an app that you can control who you see. You can modify the age, gender, and distance in miles for the people you want to meet. In this app you swipe right if you like the person and left if you do not like the person. This app is only good if you are judging the person by appearance. Then the other app is Hindge, which is almost like tinder, except for the fact that you are connected to the other person through your friends on Facebook. This means that the person you are meeting knows at least one of your friends on Facebook. Hindge only allows you to see 15 to 20 people a day, which makes it more interesting. With tinder you can swipe left or right all day long. These apps are great for people who are not in a relationship. If you are in a relationship it can cause extreme negative effects.

Online dating is very useful in today’s society. But we need to make sure we are using it for the right purposes.

Online Dating

I think that especially in this day and age, we’re only going to increase our use of online dating. Society doesn’t operate how it did fifty years ago in terms of meeting new people and establishing any type of relationship after meeting. Though I sometimes wish we did live in a time without internet or computer mediated communication, how we interact with one another nowadays is going to continually become technologically dependent.

In regards to online dating, it’s becoming a norm. When my parents and their friends discuss if they would have ever used online dating sites when they were dating, the answer is always a collective ‘no.’ Yet today, single adults are becoming more and more accustomed to the whole idea. I think that this has a lot to do with the pace that our society is going and the fact that people are always running around from one job to the next and half of the time they barely have down time to actually meet someone new and take the time to go out on a date.

  Online dating definitely has its perks but there are few downsides to it as well, just as face to face dating. When people are making their online profiles, they can either tell the entire truth about themselves and take the risk of putting themselves out there or go to the complete opposite side of the spectrum and lie about who they are and what they're interested in. Especially when we were looking at the different online profiles earlier, I found it really interesting and scary at the same time, what people are not only willing to put out there about themselves, but what they'll believe from complete strangers as well. For our fake profile, we found a random picture of a girl in a bikini and just because that seemed appealing to most of the men on the site, 3 different people messaged us and believed that we were who we said we were.

 Though sometimes not everyone will take it to that extreme and use a completely different picture than who they really are, some will still pretend to be someone they're not just because they can when hiding behind a computer screen. Online dating does allow people to develop relationships from shared interests and for some fully express themselves. But for those who aren't completely telling the truth, where do they really think those relationships are going to wind up? Maybe I'm too skeptical of the whole idea, but I don't think I could ever see myself using or making an online dating profile because even though the freedom to fully express myself before I even meet someone is there, the truth from others plays a big factor. I don't think I could trust everything someone says without meeting them in person. Online dating should be used for small initial introductions but I think "relationships" that may be developed online for multiple months isn't really a true relationship.  

Post 3

Though out the past two weeks in our lecture class we have discussed Relationships and Attraction, Friendship, Goup Dynamics, Social Netwoking Diagrams, and Facebook. Today I will be discussing Relationships and Attractions as well as online dating.

The key to online dating is to develop a relationship of chatting and/or emailing synchronously before meeting face to face. When people meet online at first they value anonymity. In other words this means that people value the way in which they can control how much information they can dispute, whether it is a lot or a little at first.  A perfect example of this is online dating. Those people who use the internet to look for a significant other or to pass some time eve. The reality of the matter is that online dating isn’t the only reason why people seek to speak to other online. People go online to have cybersex, to flirt or to just be themselves.

In our lab class we were shown a video of an actual Tv show that was aired where we saw the results of those people who looked for people online to get into a long relationship. We saw a case of a woman who was emotionally involved with a man who cite her at a church and stood her up. However, he did not give up and continued her search she found a man across the globe, who she could barely understand. Someone who she gave her number to after a long time of talking and never called her. One day he asked her to marry him and she went took a plane left … the results? Well amazingly he was real J What are the likelihoods then and now for a person who says they are isn’t really that person? The chances are very big which in my case I was really surprised because I didn’t believe he was real.

                Cybersex or the exchange of synchronous messages. It is believed that Cybersex helps long distance relationships, but how about those who are single? It is not a surprise that more men than women go online seeking cybersex. In the video shown to us there was such a case. A man who wasn’t too confident because of his height so he used the internet in a way that satisfies him sexually. He found an older woman who was rich and even offered him to take him on a cruise at no price. He then noticed that she or cybersex wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted a significant other. After many tries of talking to different women, some of which looked very different from their profile pictures, he found his soul mate. Someone who he highly believed wasn’t the person in the picture. Can you blame him after his experiences with other woman and online dating? No

                They had a few ups and downs but yet again who doesn’t? They fell in love and formed a family. He began as someone who had no self-esteem to someone who had a really high one. Online dating is not as bad it has its risks just like regular dating just a little different, but yet again nothings the same either.

Blog 3 Online Dating

Computer mediated communication is a large part of our lives, the convenience that has come to us by the incorporation and enhancement of the Internet is unbelievable. We can do things we never thought possible in time that seems surreal. So it should come as no surprise that online dating has become such a large part of our dating lives as a generation amounting to roughly 1/3 of all marriages that have happened in the past decade. 

I have always been skeptical of online dating, the way I have seen it portrayed usually tends to be along the lines of serial-killer like and predators, weird people, and just an overall taboo. However that is certainly not the way things are perhaps they were for a brief time but online dating has truly evolved into what is now a normal thing. 

In all honesty when I was told we would be shifting gears to online dating I thought this would e a very weird experience, and while I think I was right to some degree I was mostly wrong,  have a new found perspective on online dating it went from being something I would never do to something I might give a try. 

OkCupid was a very intriguing site, I was a little taken back by the specificity of some of the questions along with a few of the profiles I read but in that experience I saw how interesting and fun of a concept online dating can truly be. It it is now no surprise to meet why the rate of success for online dating is so high, it kind of makes you more focused on the character as opposed to that illicit physical attraction we talked about. 

Because people on online dating sites can pinpoint exactly what they are looking for like minded individuals tend to be paired up, there is a certain intrigue in wondering who you would get matched up with. We have learned that people who tend to use CMC more often are more likely to use online dating sites and with CMC becoming more and more frequent among people we can only assume that online dating will trend up as well.    

Online Dating-- Blog #3

I never had a very positive opinion of online dating. I always assumed it was a method for older people, particularly those divorced or widowed. I pretty much assumed the people that turned to the internet to find a companion were living such boring lives that they didn’t have the social opportunities to meet someone. Being a 20 year old college student I’m surrounded by the opportunity to meet the love of my life every single day (or at least I like to think). To me, and the fellow students around me, it is hard and unrealistic to imagine a world where you have to search through databases of people to find potential partners. Going online to meet total strangers seemed like a dumb and terrifying concept. Talking to someone through a computer just meant you were probably talking to someone entirely different than the person you think you are talking to. It seemed shallow as well. People essentially pick someone who appears in a picture to potentially be “good” enough for them.

However, online dating has changed—and so has my opinion of it. Not only was every assumption I had about internet dating wrong, but my assumption of the crowd utilizing the system was too. College students are actually huge online daters. While most of us are not logging into eHarmony we are still using a lot of other sites that we don’t even realize are methods of dating. Even Facebook can be considered a dating website. People that don’t know each other often start chatting on Facebook. It’s just like a dating site in that you provide pictures and share your thoughts and interests publicly. This allows people to get a good grasp of who you. Recently a friend of mine came across a user on Facebook. He had a picture with a puppy, sitting in a jeep, and he was wearing cowboy boots. My friend’s life aspirations are to own a puppy and a jeep. She was immediately infatuated with the idea of this guy from a single picture She decided to message him. They started chatting, texting, talking on the phone, and eventually went on a date. The guy ended up being her dream man. This is literally the same dynamic of a dating site. This happens all the time with my friends on Tinder too. I know many people who have come across pictures they liked and initiated conversation with someone. So yes, we are just as much in the internet dating scene as 50 year old divorcees. Online dating has grown and adapted. The population it targets has definitely broadened.

All my negative associations with using the internet to date have been proved wrong. I thought it was shallow to determine initial interest in a person based solely off of the way their face looks in a picture. However, in class it has started to occur to me this is actually the exact way dating works, and is supposed to work. At a bar you don’t approach someone and strike up a conversation because you thought they seemed like a nice person from far away. It’s the first look at a person that determines your first opinion of them. If someone looks appealing, you most likely approach them. If someone you find attractive gives you their phone number you are going to call them. If you don’t find them attractive, you’re not going to. This actually is the way the world works.

Also, there is just as much risk in online dating as there is in traditional dating. Just because a guy calls you and asks you out after meeting once doesn’t mean he is any more trustworthy than someone you met through a dating site. According to hubpages 1 out of 10 sex offenders uses online dating sites. This is actually a pretty low number considering the amount of crazies out there.

Hubpages also claims that as of 2010 17% of marriages had met online. My dad met his wife on an internet dating site. They had only known each other for a year before the wedding. When I expressed concern in the rapid transgression of the relationship he wasn’t nearly as concerned with such a minor detail. His reasoning behind not seeing the risk of the rush was that online dating is actually more intimate. He explained to me that from that first profile he knew so much more about her than he could know about someone he had been dating regularly for a month. He knew the answers to questions that you can’t ask, even on the first date. He knew her life goals, interests, and views on intimacy, and everything else you should know about a person before determining compatibility. He knew he could date her before he even met her. When it comes to traditional dating it takes a few dates to know if you can really be seriously interested someone. He knew before the first one. And while they sat there on the first date it wasn’t a test of whether or not they were potential companions but rather whether or not the specific person sitting across from them was the companion they actually wanted.

Online Dating and Friends with Benefits- Ryan Rayer

Online dating has been the topic most focused on in the past two weeks in CAS 283 in both lab and lecture. I believe that many people my age are torn when having to decide how they feel about online dating. When it comes to sites such as Tinder or Grinder, college students may think it is perfectly normal and not very similar to a dating site whereas a site like Match.com or EHarmony would be seen as a typical dating site. In fact, in a recent study done by the daily bruin, more than half of Tinder’s users are college students aged 18-24. The point I am trying to make is that people my age think they don’t use online dating when, in fact, they do.

            There are many factors that I believe have lead to this confusion of whether a college student is using online dating or just simply doing what everyone else is doing. One particular thing that I believe is contributing to this phenomenon is the new commonality of friends with benefits. “Friends with benefits” or FWB’s can be defined as two friends who engage in sexual acts together without the intention of forming a romantic or emotional connection. As with any other Phenomena, there are benefits and disadvantages of FWB, and there have been studies done to better understand what it is and how much people understand it/use it etc. In a study done by Bisson and Levine in 2007, college students were surveyed about their experiences with having or not having a FWB. In the study it was revealed that 58-78% of college students interviewed had stated that they have had a friend with benefits. The attitudes that people had about having a friend with benefits were directly linked to the individual experiences. 81% of students who had a friend with benefits thought it was possible whereas 67% of students who did not have a friend with benefits thought it was impossible. It is clear that there are a wide range of opinions surrounding the idea of having a friend with benefits. The personal struggle for two people engaging in sexual acts while not in a relationship are that it may only be a true FWB scenario for one person while the other person wants something more, a person may feel as though they have a problem when they have feelings for the other person or a person may feel as though they have a problem if they don’t have feelings for the other person. Clearly it is a complicated topic.

            In relation to online dating, I believe this willfulness to engage in relations with a person without the emotional support of a relationship has made my age-group somewhat numb to the idea of what dating really is. This is where I think the confusion comes in. Most college students don’t believe they are online dating because we have been socially molded to look for sex instead of a relationship. For that reason, college students won’t think twice about using tinder while a dating website like OkCupid would be considered too intense because it is notoriously about finding people on an emotional level and not a sexual one. While I have never had a friend with benefits, I have two friends that were friends with benefits for almost a year. In the end, one friend wanted a relationship and the other was only looking for sex. My personal opinion is that in order for a FWB scenario to work, you need to find two people with very little outward emotion and a lot of self confidence. Due to the fact that my self confidence is not extremely high and I wear my heart on my sleeve, it is definitely not something that would work for me.

            The video we viewed last Friday 10/17 was extremely interesting in showing 4 very different online dating scenarios. From the short man, to the woman whose match lived in Prague, to the secondlife couple and then the man who was unknowingly chatting online with the mayor, no situation was even remotely similar to the other. I believe this was interesting because it gives online dating more depth. In other words, it showed that even though each relationship started similarly, no online couple acts the exact same as another. While I have not personally used online dating thus far, the lectures and labs in CAS 283 have opened my eyes and made me realize that it is normal in this day and age, and it is nothing to be ashamed of.