E-dating

A couple of months back I decided to embark upon another shrowded territory of the Web 2.0 world. Social networking is fun and everything, but e-dating was something that I have been fairly succesful in avoiding. But what's more fundamental then migrating the whole social game of dating and paír making to the internet? It's the penultimate thing in migrating a person entirely to the internet.

But it's not all dancing on roses, obviously. These thoughts are partly backed by what I experienced and partly by what I've read and heard on various forums and other contexts. Interestingly enough I got the impression that one of the major problems in fact is the anonymity that the net provides. Apparently lying and deceiving are a real issue; I personally didn't witness this, but then again, I only got around to meeting one person in the Real World, so who knows how many actually lied. But apparently, and quite understandably, people do seem to distort the facts, some more than others.

In the traditional practice of dating, it's been said that as with financial markets, liquidity is the key to collective success. If so, then the e-dating scene would certainly be nirvana. But it apparently isn't. Due to the aforementioned distortion of facts, trust is somewhat difficult to form when you people don't attach their names to the things they say. This isn't even restricted to only e-dating, but to everything that happens on the internet. I try to stand by everything I say with my real name, so if you're reading this blog entry right now, it should be fairly easy to figure out who I am and how to contact me. But because of the voluntary nature of attaching your real life identity to your internet persona, people are naturally tempted to push the boundaries because they feel they cannot get caught. Completely understandable.

Then there is the issue of wasting effort. Or the fear of wasting effort. Because of the trust issue, people tend to be somewhat reserved and skeptical of each other and not give out very much of themselves. A typical ad for someone usually includes non-information like "I'm outgoing, social, like to travel, exercise, and I'm 23 years of age." Or something to that extent. It doesn't matter, because you haven't given any sort of edge to grasp. It's like saying "I like to breathe". Well, not quite, but you get the point. So naturally an ad like that will only provoke responses that are as shallow. And as a result, the original poster of the ad will develop a negative mindset after only getting shallow, uninteresting responses from people who most likely are lying anyway. And this turns into a self-reinforcing negative loop that feeds itself.

Now, of course the above will give an impression that I'm very hostile against e-dating. I have to admit that on some level I'm disappointed in seeing how the system works (or how in reality, it doesn't) in a large scale. But I'm still cautiously optimistic that it might work for some people. As proof of that, I did actually meet one interesting person and even though it resulted in no romantic love story, I think that even that has been a positive experience and made me a better person, if only by so much.

And of course one can't circumnavigate the issue of the taboo nature of e-dating. I think to some extent there is still a slightly negative stigma attached to e-dating, at least in some circles. Some thoughts are that e-dating is still for people who cannot attract any form of relationship in traditional face-to-face situations. Fortunately this stigma is losing its former might as the emerging generations of young people are getting comfortable with the fact that the internet is just another forum or extension to their daily, real lifes.

Will I engage in any more e-dating? It's difficult to say. Right now I would venture a guess that I'm not in that interested in pursuing this venue any further due to the negative issues which, from my point of view, outweigh the positive effects. But I'm not ruling it out entirely, since I do still believe that just like your local coffee shop or some party, the internet is capable of providing a venue for finding and creating relationships.