There's a lot to learn from reading about online dating (trust me, I know!), but there are also plenty of lessons that can't be learned off a page or computer screen.

It's like the first time you ever got sick from drinking too much. You knew that's what would happen, but somehow it didn't quite seem real until your head was in the toilet. And the hangover…oh, the hangover…

The good news is, online dating is a lot less scary than you think it is. But the bad news is that there are some things you'll have to learn the hard way:

1. Trust your gut. If you think something is off, it probably is. Your adventures in online dating will include meeting some strange people and getting even stranger messages, and though most everyone is kind and respectful, the bad apples are out there. Put your safety first and don't do anything if you don't feel 100% comfortable.
2. Rules can be restrictive. Knowing what you want is a good thing. Having deal breakers is a good thing. Setting ground rules is a good thing. But nothing is right all the time, and if you're not willing to occasionally bend your rules or change your expectations, you run the risk of missing out on someone awesome.
3. It's a rude world out there. Offline, it's pretty rare that someone leaves you hanging. Online, it happens all the time. You'll be exchanging e-mails back and forth with someone you’re into and then, all of a sudden, they’ll completely disappear. It feels a little disappointing at first, but the sting wears off.
4. Get straight to the point. As the formerly-shy type, I understand what a challenge it can be to be direct. Fortunately, online dating is the perfect opportunity to practice being assertive. Being direct is the only way to guarantee that uncomfortable situations come to an end. Date isn't going well? End it early and don't feel bad about it. Don't waste your time or anyone else's.
5. That goes for going on dates, too. It's tempting to exchange endless messages with someone new in the name of safety, but don't do it. Yes, you should be safe, but don't fall into the trap of becoming penpals. Meeting in person is the most efficient way of gathering information about someone. There's only so much you can learn about a prospective date by reading, and virtual chemistry doesn't guarantee real-life chemistry.

Bonus lesson learned the hard way: Don’t take your dates to your favorite spots. If the date goes south, you don’t want to run into them later at one of your regular haunts (especially if one of you is on another date!).

Dating is meant to be fun, right? You’re meeting new people with the prospect of romance looming large. So why is it that more people feel frustrated and confused, considering how easy it is to meet new people?

A recent article in The New York Post interviewed young daters in Manhattan who are treating the dating process like another job – that is, they are scheduling their time to include meeting potential romantic partners as a key priority.

One young man made a list of everything he wanted to do to prepare for a date, and promised himself he’d go on at least two OkCupid dates per week. Another young woman declared that she would message five to seven men at any given time and reserve Monday through Wednesday nights for dates only. “I figured that if I went out with enough people, one of them was bound to go well,” she said.

Dating is never easy, but apparently it's especially hard if you're a woman living in New York City or man living in San Francisco.

According to data from 2012, there are 473,600 unmarried men aged 20-44 living in the Bay Area, and 396,373 unmarried women in the same age range. Men outnumber women by 77,227. In New York City, on the other hand, women outnumber men by 7,215. An online dating service called The Dating Ring is getting a lot of press lately for promising to fly a jet full of single ladies from NYC to SF (while sending a plane-load of men in the opposite direction) if they can raise the money for the stunt.

It started out as a joke, but now Lauren Kay, CEO of the dating service, is seeking $10,000 to $50,000 in Crowdtilt funding to buy plane tickets for some lucky single people on Memorial Day weekend. If the financial goal isn't reached, everyone who made a donation will get their money back, but if all goes as planned, the East and West coasts will become the sites of “matchmaker-curated dates” arranged by The Dating Ring.

"It's a crazy idea that started out in jest," Kay told the San Jose Mercury News. "But it is not that crazy to go to another city with better odds to look for someone special." She suggests that subjects think of it as “a fun vacation.”

Frankly, it sounds like the perfect opportunity for another terrible reality show. Just imagine all those touchy-feely Californians going up against the hardened New Yorkers! So much potential for drama!

Richard Lane, a Bay Area dating expert with Events & Adventures, thinks that local men “will want ladies at the same level of intelligence as them.” Men in San Francisco “want someone who wants to get up and go. A woman who will hang with him at the sports arena in sweats, with her hair pulled back, by day -- but that night, can dress up, go dancing and knows how to pick the right wine to go with a great meal."

Of course, the potential culture clash isn't the only thing that stands to go wrong with this silly scheme. Jeremy Bollinger, president of DateSwitch, a San Francisco speed-dating firm, notes that the setup is dooming New York women and San Francisco men to being in long-distance relationships from the get-go. "Why do this,” he asks, “when there are actually San Francisco women looking for San Francisco men?"

I’ll tell you why, Jeremy: publicity. And it’s working darn well…the Internet hasn’t shut up about the idea since it was first announced.

BroApp

Let’s say you want to keep your girlfriend’s interest but don’t want to invest the time to text her sweet or flirtatious messages. Turns out, there’s an app for that -  BroApp, a new dating app that calls itself “your clever relationship wingman,” can help you out.

With inspiration presumably drawn from guys who didn’t want to deal with the lofty expectations of girlfriends to text every now and then, the BroApp automatically messages your girlfriend sweet things at the times you request. Of course, you can be creative and write your own texts which are stored in the app and doled out at the appropriate times. But the goal isn’t to win her heart over – it’s so you can free yourself up to spend more time with your bros.

The app has a few complications figured out, too. It will not send messages if it detects that you are at your girlfriend's house (by being connected to her WiFi), or if you have recently messaged her on your own. Well, at least there’s that.

Wondering why you’re not getting many responses to your carefully crafted online dating profile? The first thing to check – because this is the first thing other daters will notice – are your pictures.

As we all know, attraction starts with visual appeal. This doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of Greek god or supermodel to get a few dates, but it does mean that you have to put your best foot forward and show the people who you are. And according to OkCupid who has done a lot of research on this – your best selling point may be the physical feature you find most flawed.

People have different tastes, so embrace that.

Tinder just announced that it's reached a seriously impressive milestone: it’s made 1 billion matches between its users. That number was just 1 million in January 2013, making Tinder one of the most memorable success stories in online and mobile dating history.

In fact, Tinder has been so successful that even celebrities are getting in on the game. Although you might think it wouldn't be hard for good-looking, A-list of famous folks to find a date, it looks like they have a little more trouble on Tinder than we under-the-radar people would expect.

“We’ve had celebrities reach out to us frequently throughout the last year, sort of calling out various frustrations convincing users that they were actually who they are,” Tinder co-founder Sean Rad told TIME. “One impediment is that sometimes their Facebook accounts, which we pull information from, includes different names than their actual likeness… So [celebrities] were asking for the ability to modify their Tinder name and maybe have a verified badge.”

That's right – apparently all kinds of famous people want nothing more than to be able to swipe right, but their potential matches assume that the well-known faces in their profile pictures mean their accounts are fakes. Making it worse is the fact that Tinder requires Facebook account authorization in order to verify identity, and a lot of celebrities use fake names on social networking sites for privacy purposes. It's a combination that's almost guaranteed to make the average mobile dater send a profile straight to the rejection pile.

Rad and his co-founder Justin Mateen know first-hand what that feels like. For a while, they both listed themselves as the app's co-founders in their Tinder profile taglines. Again and again, they found themselves rejected by users who didn't believe they were telling the truth about their identities.

“It was awesome [to know celebrities are on Tinder] because it sort of validated our theories that everyone, even people of influence, need help forming relationships,” Rad said. “It’s important to us that our users know we are committed to authenticity on every level.” So with that in mind, Tinder is adopting verification badges like Twitter in order to confirm celebrity identities and allow the famous and non-famous alike to intermingle without fear of being scammed.

Of course, Rad won't disclose which celebrities are using the app, but he assures TIME that “These are A-listers.” Sochi Olympians admitted to using Tinder during the Games, and Lindsay Lohan told her Instagram followers know that she found her brother on the app, so you at least know that you stand a chance of meeting one of the world’s most talented athletes and one of the world's most famous redheads.