In 2001, my elder brother and I founded LDS Singles Network with the goal of building a site that would make it easier to bite the silver bullet. |
[ HOME ] The blissful dream: "Finding love as easy as 1-2-3, from the comfort of your own home!" is the promise of online dating sites. "Post a photo, write a little greeting and introduction, and wait for the date requests to come rolling in!" But as the millions of singles who've tried this new method of mixing technology and love have learned, it's not quite that simple. The dreaded reality:In the real virtual world, the story usually reads more like this: "Write a little about yourself, maybe post a photo if you can find one and get it onto your computer, and wait. And wait. And forget about it. It doesn't work." Another version of the story goes like this: "Write a nice greeting and introduction, upload a photograph, send out a few emails, and wait. And wait..." You're getting the picture. It seems online dating isn't that much different from the older ways of meeting people. The reality is that you never get anywhere if you just sit back and wait. And even when you do take the initiative to send out a few messages, a lot of the time, you're not going to get a response. The reason why it doesn't work if you don't take any initiative should be clear enough--if everybody's just sitting around waiting and no one's sending messages, there are no messages for everyone to be receiving, right? But why is it so hard to get a response when you do take the initiative? There are a billion possible reasons: The person you emailed changed their email address, and never got your message. They never check their email, so they never got your message. They got married, but didn't delete their online profile. They're in a relationship, and so aren't currently responding to messages. They were going to respond, but your message got buried in their in-box. And sometimes you just have to accept that not everyone who appeals to you is going to find you as interesting. Finding the blissful reality:So how do you escape the dreaded reality and find the blissful one? The answers aren't too different online from offline.
Online dating may be the silver bullet for solving our social-life woes, but only if we bite the silver bullet and make the same sorts of efforts as are required in offline social situations. |