In today’s society, I love to shop for clothes online, order food online and watch television shows on the computer, but shopping for men online is a little awkward for me.
What ever happened to meeting our future significant other in a nice coffee shop, the park or on the beach?
When I grow old, I want to sit and tell my grandchildren a nice romantic story about how my husband and I met, not that I met him while I was surfing the web.
Websites like match.com, christainmingle.com and blacksingles.com have demoralized the fairytale stories of meeting significant others and put it on the same level as ordering a pizza or buying a pair of shoes.
I think that sitting in front of a computer while changing my profile picture and updating my profile, then proceeding to look through pages and pages, seeing whose profile fits with my profile, takes out the fun and is not the equivalent to meeting people face-to-face.
Profiles lack in substance and are static; reading one’s profile tells me the surface of a person, not their true personality. I love awkward flirting and the nervousness I get when meeting someone “cute” for the first time. Then exchanging numbers with the person and thinking who is going to call whom first. Then finally having that first conversation getting to know someone.
That’s how people should meet. Not because we both put that we love dogs on our profile.
Online-dating services can also be extremely unsafe. Although websites say they offer extreme protection by providing background checks, many stories have been told in the news about women meeting serial killers on online-dating services.
People can fake identities online; there is a high chance of misrepresentation online. The man you think loves dogs and has a compatible profile may be the next “Craigslist Killer.” There is no way for you to tell who someone really is: anyone can write things about themselves.
A man that seems to be a great person to talk with online can be a complete hermit in person, mainly because they may not be as sociable. The man you thought was a joy and amazing to talk to can only converse via email and chat messages – misrepresentation.
Conversing through a few emails and instant messaging cannot tell you who a person really is. This is why I would rather meet people in person, because by a face-to-face meeting, people cannot pretend to be someone they are not.
When you meet someone traditionally, you are allowed to communicate more clearly by facial expressions and body language. When you meet someone in the traditional manner, you are able to spend time with that person and enjoy their company, not just enjoying their chats and emails.
According to a study, online-dating services have had a $900 million increase since 2003. It has been proven that online dating has become the most popular way to meet people now, but unless I am old, gray and sitting in my house with 15 cats I will not believe in online dating.
