online dating: altered reality?

online dating is an altered reality, very different from real world meeting people who come across our path, or who we get introduced to by well meaning friends who find our singleness uncomfortable.  It may not be the answer to the real world problem of finding a mate for everyone because it doesn’t have a high success rate.  It’s great when you meet a happy couple who have escaped the odds & found each other online.  But there are probably many more stories about disappointment & dis-spiritedness than we can even imagine.  So many people looking for love and not enough getting that from online dating.

I read a thoughtful article in the Independent Would like to meet: The truth about internet dating: Internet dating may be all rainbows in the adverts, says Rhodri Marsden. But the truth is that many more hearts are broken than matches made.  Here are some of its points:
In 1966, The Supremes explained to us that you can’t hurry love. Sixteen years later Phil Collins concurred: “You just have to wait,” he sang, additionally noting that love don’t come easy. Those words of wisdom still apply, and particularly so if you’re one of those participating in the seemingly eternal worry-go-round of internet dating.
The search for love in any context is a lottery, of course. The odds are stacked Jenga-like against us. What are the chances of two compatible people turning up in the same place at the same time? Internet dating is meant to tip those odds in our favour – and it can work, of course it can. But the people I’ve spoken to who’ve been bruised by it are unanimous as to why that happened. They believe it’s a problem inherent to the process. So if you’re doing it, and you’re feeling down, don’t worry. It’s not you. Well, it might be. But it most likely isn’t.
The vernacular of online dating makes everyone sound the same. Rather than reflecting what we’re like, it reflects what we think other people want – because we’re trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Men will lie about their height, men and women will lie about their age, some people even upload photos of other people and pretend it’s them. It doesn’t correlate with real life. And once you realise this, internet dating suddenly feels as random as approaching strangers in a car park and asking them if they fancy you. Which, believe me, is never a good idea.
Searching for a partner online has inevitable similarities to searching for a product. Computer algorithms have the herculean task of returning a perfect match from its database based on our own vaguely truthful submissions, and such copper-bottomed compatibility guarantees as whether both parties are fond of cats.
Our natural impulse, encouraged by the way these websites work, is to seek people who like the same things as us. But while I wouldn’t want to date someone who gets a kick out of attending far-right political rallies, it’s certainly true that opposites can attract. I went out with a wonderful woman for seven years who loved Barbra Streisand. I can’t stand Babs. In a relationship these kind of things aren’t an issue, but internet dating makes them into one. After all, when I meet someone in real life that I like, I tend not to say, “Hi, I’m Rhodri, and here’s a list of food I don’t like eating.” The rules of attraction are just too complex to be held in a database and analysed by a computer.
But we’re forced to filter the mass of potential datees, and we do it savagely. We start to adopt a power-shopping mentality, disregarding people for arbitrary reasons; as my friend Sam put it, we cruise past people’s pictures as if they’re caravans in Daltons Weekly. “Yeah, no, no, yeah – ooh, yes! – no, no, ugh.” It’s a compelling, but ultimately exhausting, process that these services have adapted, refined and streamlined because it’s a brilliant way for them to make money. While a service might lure you with a strapline saying “Meet sexy singles in your area”, the truth is more like, “Reject perfectly decent singles in your area while waiting for the maddeningly elusive sexy ones.” Everyone is trading off current opportunities against future possibilities. In a thoughtful moment, you might even realise there are people you’ve had relationships with in the past who, if they appeared as an online match, you might reject. And when you’re the one being rejected, it can hurt.
It’s the usual random process of love-seeking, but cleverly tarted up with psychometric testing and percentage matching and with a monthly fee slapped on it. I suppose it works out cheaper than going out every night and keeping your fingers crossed.

My take on it is that there are dimensions of human connection & relating that data & science may never be able to produce authentic results.  I’m sure everyone has had the experience at some point in their life of having ‘chemistry’ or being attracted to someone who does not physically exhibit the characteristics that normally attract us?  What’s that about?  Well there are more things under heaven than data & science can work out & one of those things that I have investigating is karma or destiny which of course opens up another bigger esoteric discussion.  It’s true there is a subtle aspect to chemistry that even hormones cannot explain.  What has been your experience, let me know in the comments?

Unfortunately facebook despite taking over the internet is also still not guaranteed to be the place to find a potential partner.  The Washington Post elaborates in their article Facebook not yet a mecca for singles to connect:

In theory, Facebook should be a mecca for singles looking to connect. The site already contains pictures and relevant information on hobbies, occupation and location that romance-seeking men and women could use to determine their interest in an intriguing stranger. Moreover, it allows people to see their ties to friends-of-friends, adding a level of familiarity online dating sites can’t offer.

In the past few years, dozens of services and applications have been built to capitalize on the opportunity. But as Nagaraj realized, most of them failed to consider one factor: Not everyone wants to broadcast to the world that they’re single and looking for love.

“I wouldn’t mind telling my five good friends that I’m dating, but I don’t want my loose connections to know,” Nagaraj said. And Facebook, unlike predecessors such as MySpace, has moved away from being a site where people cruise for dates by allowing users to shield their profiles from public view.

“The key lesson for us is that dating is a very serious thing,” he said. “It’s about maintaining control and privacy.”

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