Possible? Certainly. Difficult? I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but my experience is that it most certainly as difficult to find love online as it is in person.
David Brooks (2003) of the New York Times writes that:
[…]couples who meet through online dating services tend to exchange e-mail for weeks or months. Then they'll progress to phone conversations for a few more weeks. Only then will there be a face-to-face meeting, almost always at some public place early in the evening, and the first date will often be tentative and Dutch (Love, Internet Style, para. 2).
It is certainly true in my experience that the time leading up to a first date is longer with online dating than with face-to-face dating, but the failure rates of flirtations leading to a first date seem higher. But I haven’t logged the research nor have I come across any studies to verify that hypothesis’s validity.
I joined Match.com from March 2008 through September 2008, Eharmony.com from November 2008 through January 2009, and registered for Plentyoffish.com in October 2009 but have not been an active participant since February 2009. My motivation for giving online dating a shot fits the pitch of the advertisements of these sites: no desire to meet people in bars, too busy with career to find time to meet and mingle with high possibility of not meeting anyone suitable, etc.
The decision to give online dating a try was a struggle for me, born of frustration with traditional face-to-face dating, rather the lack thereof. As a high school teacher, traditional networks of meeting available single men are virtually nonexistent unless you are interested in dating co-workers. I had just moved back to Indianapolis in July 2007, and most of my friends from college had moved elsewhere. I’d dated a couple of guys casually that first year, but knew there was nothing serious there.
So I decided to give online dating a try, though I felt like I was cheating—like I was somehow selling myself short for not going the more “traditional” route. I suppose I felt the stigma Jennifer Egan (2003) was referring to when she wrote that:
A fair number of people continue to feel a stigma about dating online, ranging from the waning belief that it's a dangerous refuge for the desperate and unsavory to the milder but still unappealing notion that it's a public bazaar for the sort of people who thrive on selling themselves (Love in the Time of No Time, para. 5).
While that was something I was able to get past, my true discomforts were the ones that sat in the pit of my stomach, knowing that this method of meeting bachelors called for me to be particularly skeptical of the men in the profiles that came across my screen.
Knowing that anyone can answer questions on a personality survey or write a few compelling paragraphs of personal description could not account for the fact that I couldn’t look these people in the eye, see if I found them physically attractive, or sense whether or not they had a personality I was truly attracted to. As David Brooks (2003) put it, “All the writers try to show they are sensual yet smart” (Love, Internet Style, para.8).
Despite posted pictures (which were often old, or didn’t clearly depict the person) on candidates’ profiles, they didn’t account for the reduced social cues (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004; 60-61) of body language, eye contact, dress and grooming. Vain as it may make me seem to be, with neither a clear, reliable image of these men nor social cues from the outset, I was left to judge them based on “the facts” as listed in their profiles. When limited to judge based on height, ethnicity, location, age, religion and whether they drink or smoke, and perhaps a blurb or two about themselves to arbitrary questions like “What was the last book you read?”, I find myself judging and eliminating based on superficial information and dismissing them without really feeling like my judgment is based on a valid assessment.
And as quick to discard I may be, the setup of some sites have features that appeal to some users more than others. One such example is eHarmony, which allows users to restrict their “personality profiles” until the owner and interested party have communicated and the owner feels comfortable revealing information about himself or herself. In my experience, this was quite common for people to do, which left me asking questions like “What are they hiding?” The site allows members to also limit direct contact with matches by making them answer five questions before allowing them to learn more, or sometimes even see a picture of their match. (Despite eHarmony's nearly 300 question personality assessment, I never made it out of the pre-communication phase--it was a waste in my opinion.)
The ability to restrict communication in this manner certainly does not support the idea of disinhibition that Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic (2004) discuss in which participants in online communication have a diminished concern for how they present themselves and how others judge them (p. 61). Ironically, these members led me to feel more judgmental toward them, not because they were not willing to participate in “risk taking” behavior, but because I interpreted their withholding such information as them hiding something.
That isn’t to say that there haven’t been any experiences with those who certainly use dating sites for their pursuits of risky behavior as Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic details (p. 70). This was especially my experience with Plentyoffish.com, which has a live chat feature. On several occasions, while chatting with men on this site, I found myself discussing personal things more openly than I would have with someone I had met face to face and often men would openly suggest meeting to “hook up” despite the site’s feature of being able to filter out candidates who were interested in a casual-sex relationship. It was surprising to me that Plentyoffish.com, the only free dating site of the three I tried, was the only one that filtered out matches based on that criteria. I had several people on Match contact me who were listed as “married”, which certainly reflected thrill-seeking behavior from my perspective.
Maybe my lack of success in online dating is similar to my lack of success in face-to-face dating. Regardless of which mode I employ in dating, I have an idea of what I am looking for ideally. Because I get a resume in online dating, I think I am more rigid in selecting candidates to “interview” than in face-to-face dating because I have social cues to rely on in FtF. What I do know is that dating isn’t any simpler online than it is in “real” life, but it does simplify the search for eligible bachelors. As far as the likelihood or success of finding love online, I’m inclined to agree with University of Arkansas psychology professor, Jeffery Lohr, who has studied various internet dating sites for their efficacy at helping people find love. Lohr, who was interviewed by Alina Tugend (2009) for an article about online dating for the New York Times states “It seems to me that everybody is marketing their product far beyond the available evidence. There is none to very little effectiveness in the matching process” (Blinded by Science in the Online Dating Game, para. 4). The online “market” of dating simply allows for singles to find other singles more readily, but love seems to be elusive to most of us for a wide range of reasons.
References:
Brooks, D. (2003, November 8). Love, Internet style. [Electronic version]. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/opinion/love-internet-style.html
Egan, J. (2003, November 23). Love in the time of no time. [Electronic version]. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/magazine/love-in-the-time-of-no-time.html
Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer Mediated Communication: Social interaction and the internet. London: Sage.
Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/internet/18shortcuts.html.
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