Online Dating: Unique and Universal
- Friday, March 08 2013 @ 09:31 am
- Contributed by: Jet
- Views: 932
More and more, you’ll probably encounter people with opinions on online dating. And more and more, they’ll probably be contradictory.
“I didn’t meet anyone remotely interesting!” “All my friends have met their significant others that way in the last five years.” “You have to really put yourself out there, and try dates with people you wouldn’t expect.” “You have to be picky, right from the beginning.” How is it possible that the experiences could be so varied? Are half the people wrong?
No, they’re probably giving an accurate summary of what they feel their experience was. But there’s the first important component: it’s not your dating experience, it’s theirs.
And the second component: at this point, online dating is not some tiny, specific niche. It’s not “computer dating” - it’s just dating. It’s a different way of finding each other, yes, but it’s now just another option, like a blind date or a chance meeting are. So you have tons of people utilizing online dating sites, and you have dating sites that fit just about any niche-within-a-niche you can think of. The possibilities are too large, too varied, to be summed up in one experience.
Still, thanks in part to the stigma that dogged online dating for years, people tend to focus on that beginning, and the rest of the relationship, with its many twists and turns, becomes wrapped up in the “online dating” heading. When you think about it, it’s kind of like calling all relationships with first dates in coffee shops “coffee dating.” Or all relationships that stem from a chance meeting “serendipitous dating.”
It might be a little silly, but on the other hand, it truly demonstrates that your dating experience is highly personal. Thus, we can take some stories with a grain of salt, and take notes on tales we want to emulate. We can switch sites if they don’t feel like the right fit, and we can compare notes with friends because chances are, they can relate in some way.
We don’t have to feel like we’re in some isolated niche, because the frustrations and triumphs we experience aren’t really that specific. It’s online dating - but it’s also just dating. And now it’s more popular than ever.
“I didn’t meet anyone remotely interesting!” “All my friends have met their significant others that way in the last five years.” “You have to really put yourself out there, and try dates with people you wouldn’t expect.” “You have to be picky, right from the beginning.” How is it possible that the experiences could be so varied? Are half the people wrong?
No, they’re probably giving an accurate summary of what they feel their experience was. But there’s the first important component: it’s not your dating experience, it’s theirs.
And the second component: at this point, online dating is not some tiny, specific niche. It’s not “computer dating” - it’s just dating. It’s a different way of finding each other, yes, but it’s now just another option, like a blind date or a chance meeting are. So you have tons of people utilizing online dating sites, and you have dating sites that fit just about any niche-within-a-niche you can think of. The possibilities are too large, too varied, to be summed up in one experience.
Still, thanks in part to the stigma that dogged online dating for years, people tend to focus on that beginning, and the rest of the relationship, with its many twists and turns, becomes wrapped up in the “online dating” heading. When you think about it, it’s kind of like calling all relationships with first dates in coffee shops “coffee dating.” Or all relationships that stem from a chance meeting “serendipitous dating.”
It might be a little silly, but on the other hand, it truly demonstrates that your dating experience is highly personal. Thus, we can take some stories with a grain of salt, and take notes on tales we want to emulate. We can switch sites if they don’t feel like the right fit, and we can compare notes with friends because chances are, they can relate in some way.
We don’t have to feel like we’re in some isolated niche, because the frustrations and triumphs we experience aren’t really that specific. It’s online dating - but it’s also just dating. And now it’s more popular than ever.
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