Despite being a rapidly growing industry, with ten year’s experience, and millions of satisfied customers, online dating still gets a bad rap.
It’s time to bust some myths, and shake off the stigma of virtual matchmaking.
When thinking of the average free online dating site user, it’s easy to conjure up an image of an unattractive housebound geek, spending hours poring over profiles of unsuspecting women.
The biggest appeal of online dating is the ability to review potential matches at any time of day. No matter how busy you are, you can always find a spare ten minutes to look up your account, and since online dating sites are accessible 24/7 it doesn’t matter whether you have a slot in your schedule in the middle of the day or at 3am. It is perfect for busy, time-poor people, who want to use their time more effectively. And why are they busy, and time-poor? Because they are interesting people with rich and fulfilling lives. Now doesn’t that sound like a pool of singles you’d like to investigate?
This is actually true, but not in a bad way. When you want to buy a new pair of shoes, you can either spend all day walking from shop-to-shop trying on different pairs until you find the perfect fit, or you can look at hundreds of pairs online, order a few, and try them on in the comfort of your own home. Neither way is the best way to buy shoes, different people prefer different methods of shopping. So when you are dating, you can either bounce between parties and social occasions, chatting to other singles (effectively trying them out) before deciding on one you like; or you can get to know a few people on a free dating site online, before choosing one you’d like to meet up with. No one way is better than the other, and there is no reason why you can’t be doing both.
For a long time people have considered online dating to be distinct from real-life dating, something that you resort to once all real world options have been exhausted. This myth assumes that in some way the person you are in cyberspace is not the real you, so any relationships formed in that strange virtual world cannot be sustained in real life.
That time is over, your real life is online. That real dinner date with your friends was arranged on Facebook, in a restaurant you checked out on Trip Advisor and located on Google Maps. When your meal arrive you snapped it on your phone, hooked up to the venue’s free wi-fi and uploaded your dinner to Instagram, before sharing the image on Facebook and tagging in your friends who are sat right there across the table from you. Your real life is online and online dating is just as real as meeting someone in a bar.
It’s normal to seek peer approval, and value social validation for things. Swimming against the tide, and not conforming with your friends is a scary prospect, and you probably feel like they’re right to shun the online dating scene, and you’ll be a loser if you don’t follow suit.
At least one of the following is true:
1. Your single friends are using online dating, but like you are sceptical about sharing this information.
or
2. Your single friends are not using online dating, but since they are still single, you need to ask yourself how well that strategy is working out for them.