Online Dating - The Wild Wild West?
- Monday, September 13 2010 @ 08:30 am
- Contributed by: Jet
- Views: 1,994
Today, we think differently about online dating than we used to. Ocassionally you'll run into people who still have antiquated ideas about some shady person who doesn't look at all like their picture, but on the whole, that's changing, and many people know it. But when we contemplate the social life of the Internet, it's not really that much of a surprise.
Think back, to the last time flannel was in: the early 1990's. The Internet was really beginning to take off, an unexplored frontier, and for many, the appeal socially was that you were totally anonymous. You were expected to provide your own age, physical description and gender to strangers who couldn't confirm or deny. If you struck up a friendship, it was totally based on the words and online actions of your persona.
Some of these friendships carried over into real-life relationships, with mixed results. For one thing, in person there does have to be some level of chemistry; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. For another, the level of anonymity actually inspired others to behave differently than they would when they met their friends in person. In essence, it's hard to fall in love in real life with someone based entirely on “their personality” when even their personality is different in person. For some, starting out anonymous might have worked, but it ultimately created many additional problems.
Now flash forward nearly 20 years, to the present. People often have tons of real-life, accurate information about themselves all over the Internet. There's Facebook, where people can tag you in less-than-flattering photos; Twitter, where you can check in from real-world locations; some forums are even contemplating switching from aliases to real first and last names. Since we're so accustomed to having so much information already out there, it's not as big of a deal to continue the honesty as we're constructing dating profiles. Some people even get lazy and copy their profile information over from other social networking sites (with mixed results; you do want to make a nice first impression in a dating profile, after all).
Every situation has pros and cons; it's great that you now have a better chance of getting what you see from an online dating profile, but what are the cons? Well, with all this information out there, we have to still think of our safety. Just as you wouldn't tell a random stranger on the subway where you work and which Starbucks you head to alone every evening, you might not want to add someone you've just met on a dating site to your Facebook, where they could get than information and more.
Still, I feel the online dating world is a brighter, happier place today and getting better all the time. So next time someone questions you about joining a dating site, you can tell them to get with the times – the frontier is becoming settled.
Think back, to the last time flannel was in: the early 1990's. The Internet was really beginning to take off, an unexplored frontier, and for many, the appeal socially was that you were totally anonymous. You were expected to provide your own age, physical description and gender to strangers who couldn't confirm or deny. If you struck up a friendship, it was totally based on the words and online actions of your persona.
Some of these friendships carried over into real-life relationships, with mixed results. For one thing, in person there does have to be some level of chemistry; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. For another, the level of anonymity actually inspired others to behave differently than they would when they met their friends in person. In essence, it's hard to fall in love in real life with someone based entirely on “their personality” when even their personality is different in person. For some, starting out anonymous might have worked, but it ultimately created many additional problems.
Now flash forward nearly 20 years, to the present. People often have tons of real-life, accurate information about themselves all over the Internet. There's Facebook, where people can tag you in less-than-flattering photos; Twitter, where you can check in from real-world locations; some forums are even contemplating switching from aliases to real first and last names. Since we're so accustomed to having so much information already out there, it's not as big of a deal to continue the honesty as we're constructing dating profiles. Some people even get lazy and copy their profile information over from other social networking sites (with mixed results; you do want to make a nice first impression in a dating profile, after all).
Every situation has pros and cons; it's great that you now have a better chance of getting what you see from an online dating profile, but what are the cons? Well, with all this information out there, we have to still think of our safety. Just as you wouldn't tell a random stranger on the subway where you work and which Starbucks you head to alone every evening, you might not want to add someone you've just met on a dating site to your Facebook, where they could get than information and more.
Still, I feel the online dating world is a brighter, happier place today and getting better all the time. So next time someone questions you about joining a dating site, you can tell them to get with the times – the frontier is becoming settled.
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