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.