Discussion Boards - Culture Vulture

Fascinating article in today's Guardian ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/06/is-online-dating-destroying-love

For the most part, it's clearly describing a very different kind of online dating experience from CC (one would hope) but interesting nonetheless ...

Thoughts?

Interesting article!

My experience of online dating is very limited and recent- but there are a whole host of on line dating sites purporting to be "Christian" where they want you to disclose so much information like salary, height, weight, inside leg measurement etc etc- but only ask one tiny question about your Christianity- To me that is one of the most important questions!

I will stick with this site as at least you can get an understanding about makes people tick from their profiles and understand whether you may or not be compatible for friendship or relationships.

I think on-line dating is fundamentally flawed in that it looks at the features of a person, not the personality.

When you meet someone, in the real world, apart from the things you can judge by sight, like height / shape etc, most of the other things listed in an on-line profile you may never find out, most because you don't care - what you care about is "do you get on".

When you make the decision to go over and talk to someone (in real life) pretty much all you know is what they look like. So may be all a profile should show is a few photos.

As for the article, the idea that lots of sex will make you happy wasn't invented with the Internet, its just created yet another way for people to find out its not true.

Read the article too. As an older woman I find this internet dating and looking at profiles really false but left with few options as meeting people is so much more complicated than when in my 20s. I agree that the profile only gives a flavour of the person and meeting personally is the only way to find out if the profile matches the person. Expectations are also different now and the consumerism attitude I think prevails in many matters of life. Interesting food for thought though.

@James 138, in real life are we only attracted by people's looks? The problem with photos is that they are static. I've also read that we tend to be attracted by pheremones and also by the timbre of someone's voice: a dating site cannot replicate any of those. However, surely a dating site can help us with the basics. I could never now be involved with someone who was not a Christian since my whole life revolves around Christ and his Kingdom. Similarly there are some people whose profiles sound warning bells ...... I think dating sites can be useful in that, when we're disadvantaged geographically, they can bring us into contact with more people and, when we're further disadvantaged by being a minority (we are as Christians aren't we?), we might actually have the opportunity of encountering someone whose core beliefs are similar to our own.

I think I can see how this may be quite true.

People I have fallen for initially in the beginning I didn't and I saw something in them I grew fond of and then as I got to know them (unpressured) and in their natural environment (around friends etc.) I found myself grow to like them more and then got with them (obviously it hasn't worked out but they have been longer relationships).

With dating online I find there is far more pressure to respond and there doesn't seem to be the natural developement, that spending time in natural terriorty...if that makes sense. I see this site and net dating as an opportunity and not the be-all and end-all to finding someone. I mix fairly well with people and have fairly articulate social skills and now new circles of people too. So to say I only joined this for a month but in the past I put all my hope in net dating to meeting Christians...

Who knows what the future holds, but it sure is exciting :)

Did you write that book Dave ?