Cyber Dating

Two men, Glenn Hutchison and Mark Thompson, started the online dating phenomenon around 1995. The men were in graduate school at the time, and in an attempt to make some money and possibly even find a date or two for themselves, they set up the website weattract.com. The site received an overwhelming response, 10,000 hits in the first 18 hours. Hutchison and Thompson knew they hit onto something good, but they soon found that the matches made at weattract.com were not ideal. They con

Even though many people are willing to try online dating to find that special someone, not too many people are willing to admit it just yet. Although online dating has lost most of its reputation as a last resort for losers who cannot get dates anywhere else, it is still a little embarrassing for most people to come out and say they met someone online. I have met a few people off the internet, and when people ask me where we met, I usually say we met at school. I do believe online dating is a great way to meet new people but I also know that many people still view it as a sign of inability to meet people in normal social situations. However, dating online can be more desirable than “real world” dating for several reasons. Dating co-workers is difficult because of sexual harassment issues and many people are just plain tired of meeting people at clubs, bars, and other singles hangouts. Also, dating services can offer a “higher-quality” of possible mates. Match.com Vice President Trish McDermott says of match.com subscribers, “62% have college degrees, 53% hold managerial/professional jobs, and an additional 17% are in technical fields. These are certainly not what we’d call losers in life (Online Dating: Myth).”

If a person takes all the necessary precautions, internet dating can be a fun, sometimes rewarding experience. Many people have actually found love online, as Match.com statistics say their service has lead to more than 1,400 marriages and 75 children. That’s only one of the hundreds of dating services out there! Match.com also reported that their membership has increased 70% since the 9-11 attacks. Sociologist Pepper Schwartz claims the reason for the increased memberships is, “it reminds you that you don’t want to watch the news without that someone special (Dornin).” I think membership went up because people were reminded that life is short and everyone wants to experience love at some point in their lives.

The reason match.com users seems to be so successful is probably because most lower-class people cannot afford to pay $20-30 per month on a dating service. If you look at a free dating service, like blackplanet.com, you find that many of the members are much younger and have yet to reach the success that match.com users have. It has been suggested that online dating is a “meeting ground for casual sex (Harmon),” but I think that this may be more true in the non-paying websites than the subscriber sites. In my experiences on blackplanet.com, many of the younger members (late teens to early twenties) are not looking for serious relationships. Instead they treat the service as an opportunity to find new sex partners. However, a majority of paying subscribers to dating services claim they are really looking for serious relationships (Harmon).

One of the things I like most about online dating is that you can be picky about who you mee

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