Before I get into why I have made this declaration let me congratulate eharmony for taking a step in the right direction. While I think eharmony has improved the process there is still work to be done.



Now, these are the three basic reasons why Internet Dating does not work:

Pictures
Women
Accountability


Pictures -

First off, there is too much reliance on pictures in the internet dating process. Yes people say looks aren't that important, the actual evidence say otherwise as far as internet dating is concerned. On most dating sites, you have a page with a set of pictures and a profile you write that 95% of people don't read unless you pass their threshold of attractiveness based off your pictures, and that threshold is a lot higher in real life since there is so much to choose from. Both men AND women have this artifically high threshold for attractiveness. This means on most sites that your success with internet dating is for the most part directly proportional to how attractive you based on a standard much higher than real life. It doesn't end their either. Since most dating sites male to female ratio is about 5:1 (or even has high as 10:1), what happens from a pure supply/demand standpoint is that male attractiveness goes down while female attractiveness goes up. This is one thing that makes eharmony way more successful in that regard since the artificial deflation/inflation doesnt happen here due to a more balanced male/femaleratio. I have empirically experienced the effect this has since I get ignored a lot less on EH with the exact same set of pictures/profile that I have had on other sites.

Women -

I am not a woman so I don't completely understand the phenomenon here, but I suspect that women are a lot more picky about looks (despite what they claim) or more picky in general and suffer more than men the "grass is always greener" complex from the abundance of profiles on dating sites. Or it could be that a lot more women than men sign up for dating sites without a real intention of using the site to actually meet people. There is deffinently a discrepency there that is worth discussing.

You can try a few experiments to confirm there is something to be explored here:

1. Go to a free dating site such as plentyoffish and create both a male and female profie with the basic information in there with no picture. Check both account a week later, you will find that the male profile has zero emails in his box with the female having about 10-20.

2. Do the same thing, except add a picture of a average looking guy and a average looking girl. Check back in a week and the male profile will have 0 emails and the female profile will have her inbox maxed out (100+).

3. With the same profiles, this time, send out about 20 first-time emails. Check back in a week. You will find male has about 3 replies and the female has 15-20 replies.

Or heres a experiment you can do without much effort. Just create a male and female profile with no picture and leave it up for a month or two. It is nearly guaranteed that the male will have 0 emails while the females box will be maxed out.

From a pure statistical standpoint this shouldn't happen unless the male/female ratio is 50:1 or something absurd. There is an issue to be looked at here. Maybe it's like I said, more women sign up for online dating just to look at profiles out of curiosity rather than to actually use the site to meet people. Who knows.

Accountability -

I think this a huge factor on why there is very little success or willingless by both men and women to get to know someone. Tons of relationships develop all the time in the real world due to someone not being into someone at first both after they get to know them they discover they are a great guy (or girl). In my experiences with dating I have been both on the giving and recieving end of this. Why does this happen? Because when to talk to/get to know someone in real life rather than email/online there is a lot more accountability in your actions and people are way less likely to drop off the face of the earth because they found a profile where someones picture looks better (which happens all too often online). The sad truth is that for most being online create a complete lack of respect and accountability that is there in the real world, and this allows a lot of great opprotunities to be pasted up for the "grass is greener" complex that takes hold from the abunance of profiles. How many of you have talked to someone on a dating site (not nessecarilty EH, any site) to all of a sudden have them drop off the face of the earth? I'm sure all of you had. How often has this happened when meeting someone in real life? At least for me, hardly ever. Online? 95% of the time.


Like I said earlier, I think EH does address a lot of these problems with ther system although no where near perfect.
Well that is my analysis of how online dating is as of today. I'm ready to have my analysis ripped apart.
Discuss.

That's pretty close.





It is best used as a place to hook up. Most of the girls just want some attention and others are starving for relationships so they will beleive whatever they want to to think they have a chance,



No matter what people say; looks count more than anything else. Don't beleive it when all of these wanna be feminists act like it is inside that counts. It is usually only fat girls and ugly ones that will say something like that.



But I must say, as you exit the bar years of your life, the internet is a great place to fill that void as usually when you go to a bar, you can pretty much only hook up with 1 girl a nite yet on the internet you can talk to dozens if you like.



I keep a running sticky note so i don't forget some and then just schedule them in from there. Makes you look better too because you don't seem as needy as for always seeing them and all of that.

Gotta admit this forum cracks me a up a little. Horrible format for it though. and I can never find other threadsin which I left a response. of course, some ugly girl on here gor "offended" which is a sign of weakness anyway and "reported me". hahaha. Man, I could go on and on in a place like this.