Internet Dating.....Who Has Done it?!

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first person i met was annoying, material girl.

ive been in deep contact with another for a week, she's tidy and g/f material, taking her out for a date in a few days...

There are a lot of sea lions with the "fat girl pose" then you see the other pics and vomit, tend to get messages from them too, and some alright looking burds but sound like mentalists.
 
Yo,

Because I love you all so much, I've taken the time to transcribe the section I posted about earlier from Levitt & Dubner's book "Freakononmics". Seriously, read this book - it's freakin' awesome :D Salient points high-lighted in yellow for the lazy!

Gunter J. Hitsch, Ali Hartacsu and Dan Ariely analysed the data from one of the mainstream dating sites, focusing on more than 20,000 active users, half in Boston and half in San Diego. 56% of the users were men, and the media age range for all users was 21 to 35. Although they represented an adequate racial mix to reach some conclusions about race, they were predominantly white.

They were also a lot richer, taller, skinnier and better-looking than average. That, at least, is what they wrote about themselves. More than 4% of the online daters claimed to earn more than $200,000 a year, whereas fewer than 1% of typical Internet users actually earn that much, suggesting that three of the four big earners were exaggerating. Male and female users typically reported that they are about an inch taller than the national average, but the women typically said they weighed about 20 pounds less than the national average.

Most impressively, fully 72% of the women claimed “above average” looks, including 24% claiming “very good looks”. The online men were too gorgeous: 68% called themselves “above average”, including 19% with “very good looks”. This leaves only about 30% of the user with “average” looks, including a paltry 1% with “less than average” looks – which suggests that the typical online dater is either a fabulist, a narcissist, or simply resistant to the meaning of “average”. (Or perhaps they are all just pragmatists: as any real-estate agent knows, the typical house isn’t “charming” or “fantastic”, but unless you say it is, no one will even bother to take a look.) 28% of the women on the site said they were blond, a number far beyond the national average, which indicates a lot of dyeing, or lying, or both.

Some users, meanwhile, were bracingly honest. 7% of the men conceded that they were married, with a significant minority of these men reporting that they were “happily married”. But the fact that they were honest doesn’t mean they were rash. Of the 243 “happily married” men in the sample, only 12 chose to post a picture of themselves. The reward of gaining a mistress was evidently out-weighed by the risk of having your wife discover your personal ad. (“And what were you doing on that website? The husband might bluster, undoubtedly to little avail.)

Of the many ways to fail on a dating website, not posting a photo of yourself is perhaps the most certain. (Not that the photo necessarily is a photo of yourself; it may well be some better-looking stranger, but such deception would obviously backfire in time.) A man who does not include his photo gets only 60% of the volume of email response of a man who does; a woman who doesn’t include her photo gets only 24% as much. A low-income, poorly-educated, unhappily employed, not very attractive, slightly overweight, and balding man who posts his photo stands a better chance of gleaning some emails than a man who says he makes $200,000 and is deadly handsome but doesn’t post a photo. There are plenty of reasons someone might not post a photo – he’s technically challenged or is ashamed of being spotted by friends or is just plain unattractive – but as in the case of a brand-new car with a For Sale sign, prospective customers will assume he’s got something seriously wrong under the hood.

Getting a date is hard enough as it is. 56% of the men who post ads don’t receive even one e-mail; 21% of the women don’t get a single response. The traits that do draw a big response, meanwhile, will not be a big surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the sexes. In fact, the preferences expressed by online daters fit snugly with the most common stereotypes about men and women.

For instance, men who-say they want a long-term relationship do much better than men looking for an occasional lover. But women looking for an occasional lover do great. For men, a woman’s looks are of paramount importance. For women, a man’s income is terribly important. The richer a man is, the more emails he receives. But a woman’s income appeal is a bell-shaped curve: men do not want to date low-women, but once a woman starts earning too much, they seem to be scared off. Women are eager to date military men, policemen and firemen (possibly the result of a 9/11 effect, like the higher payments to Paul Feldman’s bagel business), along with lawyers and doctors: they generally avoid men with manufacturing jobs. For men, being short is a big disadvantage (which is probably why so many lie about it), but weight doesn’t much matter. For women, being overweight is deadly (which is probably why they lie). For a man, having red hair or curly hair is a downer, as is “bald with a fringe” – but a shaved head is ok. For a woman, salt-and-pepper hair is bad, while blond hair is, not surprisingly, very good.

In addition to all the information about income, education and looks, men and women on the dating site listed their race. They were also asked to indicate a preference regarding the race of their potential dates. The two preferences were “the same as mine” or “it doesn’t matter”. Like the Weakest Link contestants, the website users were now publicly declaring how they felt about people that didn’t look like them. They would reveal their actual preferences later, in confidential e-mails to the people they wanted to date.

Roughly half of the white women on the site and 80% of the white man declared that race didn’t matter to them. But the response data tell a different story. The white men that said race didn’t matter sent 90% of their e-mail queries to white women. The white women who said race didn’t matter sent about 97% of their e-mail enquiries to white men. This means that an Asian man who is good-looking, rich, and well educated will receive fewer than 25% as many e-mails from white women as a white man with the same qualifications would receive; similarly, black and Latino men receive about half as many e-mails from white women as they would if they were white.

Is it possible that race really didn’t matter for these white women and men and that they simply never happened to browse a non-white date that interested them? Or, more likely, did they say that race didn’t matter because they wanted to come across – especially to potential mates of their own race – as open-minded?
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Sorry if that was an epic read, but I think it brings some pretty epic points to light... ;)

Cheers,

Suman
 
Hmm, annoying when people with no image message you.

I straight up ask for one before we talk now, so many people I find unattractive and I'm
here for me! :p

But, I have had two people locally who have messaged me with no pics so, here's hoping....one's a bit of a gamer too so that's always a +.
 
I am addicted to POF but I think I actually hate it. I always seem to get chatting with someone and then think actually she's not that nice. I find getting rid of people really awkward, I am too nice.

I FINALLY got a decent reply from a girl on Match.com - only problem is she lives a couple of hours away so it's unlikely to come to anything. My Match subscription expires on Thursday and I definitely will not be renewing it. Not only is it a nightmare for getting replies it is also extremely slow as you never seem to be online at the same time as people. It says people are online when they aren't. Emails have suddenly stopped coming through to my email address (but are in my match account for any wise guys :p) but means you need to log in to check.

Worst of all you CAN'T log out. If you click sign out and then go back to match.com you are still logged in. It's a disgrace!
 
Jambo said:
Worst of all you CAN'T log out. If you click sign out and then go back to match.com you are still logged in. It's a disgrace!
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I tend to be able to logout, but, if I don't logout and leave it there, when I return some hours later i'll get some infinite redirection issue from firefox and have to delete cookies to get it back. Along with the browser resizing issue when closing profiles, it really makes you wonder what they get up to in their tech department. Although, they probably outsource to india.
 
Hey all, I've been on here for the last couple of weeks and thoughts I'd share my experience of internet dating. Been dabbling with for the last few years as I worked from home so seemed like a good way of meeting people.

I can happily say I met someone on Match last summer and we've been together ever since and she's moving into my house next month :D

Probably not the disaster story you wanted to here but goes to show there are some happy endings :cool:

We met through Match and having tried a few, was on POF for quite a while, I did feel that if you really wanted to meet someone for a relationship, Match was the best bet. POF is good fun but I found that because it was free, a lot of people didn't take it too seriously. Think it comes down to only valuing something if you have paid for it, although on the plus side, least you know they can read your mails!

Biggest difference I saw when I joined Match again last year was losing the need to meet someone, I went on there with the approach of, let’s see what happens and within a week I met someone nice
 
been using pof about a week now, my god! if I see the saying "work hard play harder" one more time on a profile i will beat someone to death!! :)
 
Soul_Survivor said:
Hey all, I've been on here for the last couple of weeks and thoughts I'd share my experience of internet dating. Been dabbling with for the last few years as I worked from home so seemed like a good way of meeting people.

I can happily say I met someone on Match last summer and we've been together ever since and she's moving into my house next month :D

Probably not the disaster story you wanted to here but goes to show there are some happy endings :cool:

We met through Match and having tried a few, was on POF for quite a while, I did feel that if you really wanted to meet someone for a relationship, Match was the best bet. POF is good fun but I found that because it was free, a lot of people didn't take it too seriously. Think it comes down to only valuing something if you have paid for it, although on the plus side, least you know they can read your mails!

Biggest difference I saw when I joined Match again last year was losing the need to meet someone, I went on there with the approach of, let’s see what happens and within a week I met someone nice
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This seems about right with regard to PoF its becoming a complete waste of time, you send messages back and forth then they either delete and dont respond or never seem to log in and read the damn message....as above because its free its not taken seriously. Not to mention the amount of people who seem unable to type in proper english and adopt an unreadable 'Text' type speak! Unforgivable!.
Ill give Match a go and see what comes of it although i wont hold out much hope.
Maybe its me and not them.........lol
 
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