Online Dating - Anyone tried/willing to share experiences and/or tips?

[ZarakiKujata]

Chicks that just wanted sex

Were they at least attractive?

[Not Kuno]

Were they at least attractive?

Sometimes but if I wanted to just get laid I'd rather go to a bar or something in rl where it's easier to see how a person is.

[RPGTyrant]

I have some experience with online dating sites, and a strong recommendation after I get through venting about Eharmony. I had signed up for 6 months of Eharmony and if I recall it was roughly 200 u.s. dollars. The site seemed promising and I heard commercials for it all the time. The part they do not tell you is that they will match you with people on a free trial, whom cannot respond to you unless they pay. For me in my 6 months of using it, it never happened once. I would consider myself average looking, a little young looking if anything, promising and interesting career etc. This is in the southern NJ, Philadelphia, Delaware area so there was no shortage of good matches, but they were i'd say 95% free trials that nothing ever materialized from.

Now that I'm done talking about Eharmony, I would personally recommend OKcupid. You make a free profile and there's a completion bar for fleshing it out which made it kind of like a challenge to get it to 100% interaction. The primary means of matching is your interests and answering questions submitted by users and the website creators. You can answer questions when you have free time to make matches better, and overall I did notice I got more people that I was interested in after answering a good chunk of questions. It's a very low pressure type of deal, I would typically read through a profile that interested me and shoot over a message saying something I liked about them, and it started conversations. I did tend to get messages from some people that weren't quite the most attractive, but there seemed to be a good number of dateables in my matches. Also, a neat feature is you can see who has checked out your profile, thought it was a nice touch.

I ended up going on dates with two women of those that I had chatted with. Both had messaged me first. Very unusual from my experience with the internet and dating. The first was very nerdy like me, a bit of a bigger girl but we had a lot of fun, and ended up becoming friends. The second date I went with seemed like she was someone like me, coming off of a breakup a few months back, my physical type, kind of shy. We're now in a happy relationship, and I can't imagine I would have met her if not for okcupid.

In the end, if you're considering dating online, you must be for a reason, and typically it's the same reason they are on there, so you at a base level have that commonality between you. If you use a free site, my advice like I give to my friends that do this is to just be patient and persistent. Make it part of your routine to send a message to a match you like something about, doesn't have to take up a lot of your time. If you choose to meet up, you can do what's comfortable for you, but I typically met them for dessert on a weeknight somewhere evenly between where we lived.

tl;dr pay websites with free trials suck, I like okcupid because it's very transparent and low pressure, had good experience, relationship and good friend gained from only a few months, be persistent and patient with online dating if not lucky at first.

[Conrad]

I tried a couple, I've gotten I think three messages total from okcupid. The one time I did set up a date, she stood me up and stopped talking to me altogether. At least other people are having success with it, I'm just seeing it as a distraction and nothing really substantial.

[The Stig]

RPGTyrant: hey good to know this. As for reason, I think ....... people I know either personally or through other friends are complete sluts (been through over 10-20 guys in a very short period of time)/unprofessional (personal AND career wise)/cannot commit. Basically I don't want a girlfriend that lets other guys feel them up at a party/outing or have half of their tits hanging out most of the time and showing it off, etc. It's not a bad thing of course, but if they're primarily like that I see no o

I'm not typing it into google from work but is okcupid an America based site? or is it worldwide divided into regions? A bit later on (this post is preliminary research) I'm relocating somewhat elsewhere but still in London, but am waiting until that happens, otherwise I'll start hunting some purely London based stuff for convienience/ease of accessibility.

[Dolmen]

Okcupid has people from around the world on it. I would highly recommend Okcupid simply because it offers a fun atmosphere to browse, and I feel exposes you to a lot of people. I would recommend staying away from the forums as it's nonstop trolls and pure mental failure.

As Woozie pointed out with the blog post on okcupid, that is a great summation of pay dating sites. All of their blog posts are insanely interesting and completely geeked out. The biggest problem with sites such as eHarmony, match.com, etc... is that you can't send/read messages unless you pay. So, there's the chance that the person you're messaging won't be able to read what you send them. They'll get a notification that they've received a message, but they'll have zero clue who it's from. There's no incentive to pay on those sites. Okcupid you can pay for, but it gives you some extra options like extra search filters, results filtering, extra exposure, more pics, etc.., just simple stuff where the main reason to pay is just to throw some cash at the creators.

Also, if you ever used to read thespark.com, they're the creators of okcupid. They came up with outlandish challenges such as The Fat Project (to gain 30 lbs in 30 days).

[Linliel]

I actually joined OKCupid way way way back before it was a real dating site and when it was more a nerdy quiz and pre-facebook/myspace social site (cos most my friends joined it to do the quizzes), it's always hilarious logging back in once a year or so and seeing what people have sent me. I think it's pretty cool, but I haven't ever actually used it for its dating side at all.

[tyven]

i have two good looking female friends that have both had success with online dating. one used match and the other used plenty of fish. i think archi is an advocate for okcupid. give it a shot

[aduidarnenye]

I work with a woman who met her husband on eHarmony. She's an older woman and she married an older guy. Neither of them are what you'd term "computer savvy". Another woman there has a long-term boyfriend also from eHarmony. Both women recommend the site to the singles in the office all the time.

Does online dating still have that odd stigma attached to it?

I met my husband on FFXI (third in this thread!) but it's not really something we share with people in real life. Then again, I still refuse to admit to people I play MMOs.

[Dolmen]

Does online dating still have that odd stigma attached to it?

The weird thing is that now people will meet after a couple days of messaging. I remember years ago you'd wait 2-3 months to make sure the guy wasn't a serial killer. When I've done the whole online thing, I've lost potential dates because I wouldn't meet them a few days after first messaging.

Also, I've done the whole met girls in FFXI and never again! Most FFXI women are completely insane! (No offense to the women in this thread)

[Mizango]

Fuck the stigma, you can meet stalkers, fatties and other unflattering social trilobites at any local bar or grocery store.

Get online and do work.

[Lucavi]

I'm pretty sure it stems from eHarmony's religious ties more than anything else.

This. eHarmony has taken a lot of flak concerning their ultra-religious policies that initially all-but banned anyone but white, God-fearing Christians from using their service.

Its not surprising that listing that you were interested in premarital hanky-panky would get you rejected from a Christian-run dating site.

[Talus]

I tried it for half a year and below was all who messaged me:

Fat chicks
Non-whites (not racist, just picky)
Chicks that just wanted sex

I don't think it's racist to only date a certain race - that's just a personal preference. You see it all the time. Some black women only date black men. Then "Something New" came out and Simon Baker has really good hair and they wanted to date white dudes. Just kidding (well, this did happen to some extent, but it was usually among well-educated black women). The most common things I see, granted I haven't done online dating but I have looked at craigslist ads, is that a lot of women are reachers, i.e. they're short BBWs (that's big beautiful women, i.e. THEY FAT) or something and they want a tall, fit dude.

Get fucking serious. The tall fit dudes typically want an active woman who, while she may not have the same low body fat percentage as the tall fit dude, she's at least height/weight proportionate or moderately fit.

There used to be a kind of stigma associated with online dating, but it's become so commonplace now that it's no big deal to answer, "So how did you meet?" with "online" or "eHarmony" or "Match.com" or "singleballroomdancelovers.com"

Good luck.

[Yabby]

Never used one of those sites but i found my girl (Been 5 years now) on FFXI lol (4th now?)

[Lucavi]

Another guy that found his girl on FFXI. Just wait for FFXIV and start hitting on the Humes and F. Elvaan chicks.

Stay far away from the mithra.

[Mizango]

I don't think it's racist to only date a certain race - that's just a personal preference. You see it all the time.

Your a shallow pos.

[Purrrfect]

Just something I want to mention, do these sites (i've not looked yet) have some sort of "preference" profile as to what type of race you are looking for; so I can filter? I don't specifically find Black girls attractive (absolutely no offense, it's the skin tone. Have to be rather light brown or "tanned" if the girl is Black), and I do not want Chinese either. I won't mind anything else though, for now.

I checked the non-smokers box and the "this is very important" box on match.com, and they still matched up smokers... Additionally, I've tried a couple sites with no success in the past, though I blame part of that on my not being able to make conversation for shit.

[Talus]

Your a shallow pos.

Riiiight. I didn't say that I only date a certain race, I just don't think it's racist for the people that DO only date a certain race. That's no different than people that like red heads, or blondes, or tall people or short people - it's something physical about yourself that you really don't have control over, you were born that way.

Are you going to be mad because some beautiful woman is attracted to you because they only date black dudes and you happen to be black? Are you going to say, "I hope you like me for who I am and not just because I'm black?" Doubtful.

Get over it.

[Angelicus]

Not tried dating sites, but ten met a few girls through ICQ "back in the day".

Acually met my wife (married 5 years) over IRC. Came home drunk after 12 hours in a pub logged on and called her a Small finnish boy - not the best start to a relationship, but it seemed to have turned out alright.

We do still get odd looks from people when we say how we met.

p.s Oi London Boy, go to Tiger Tiger in Leicester Square for all the tarts you could ever want *lol*.

[Criosist]

I personally have been using online dating for about 2 weeks now and the 2 best sites are easily:

Http://www.plentyoffish.com (my fav)
http://www.okcupid.com

Both free and both with a lot of users, i personally prefere the plenty of fish site and in about the 2 weeks of being on it have messaged about 15 girls and got replies from all, 4 mob numbers and some lengthy chats, but yet to meet any although i know i could its just because of busy life that i havent .

Ok Cupid takes a longgg time to perfect your profile and although i have messaged on it have yet to receive and mail lol.

There is also Faceparty which ou have to pay for the initial sign up but after that its free but personally i havent used this 1 very much at all.


As for what to put in messages i just do it as if i was approaching a girl IRL.