The concept of online dating is often met with mixed views. Commonly, there is a disconnect between people that are simply looking for sex chat and people that are looking for their soul mate. Most often, the stereotypes associated with having to use your computer to get a date reflects the status of your personality and your social life – either you are really too busy to date or you are just that socially awkward, neither of which are necessarily true.
Women usually have questions such as: “How do you know who you are talking to? That person could be a serial killer, a rapist… even a serial rapist.” You get the point.
With men, crude jokes like, “You know she’s probably a dude, right?” are constantly thrown around as well.
The concern of an online user’s intentions should always be at the forefront of your mind. It’s only common sense. It’s kind of hard to tell what another person’s thinking on the other side of the conversation. While Person A is earnestly looking for their soul mate, Person B might just be looking for a hookup, the risk is always there.
Everyone knows their own strengths and weaknesses. For some, going out and meeting new people may pose as an obstacle.
That’s OK. Meeting someone online may provide a better approach by allowing that person to become more comfortable before meeting in person. Meeting people via chatlines may be another successful approach to helping people become more comfortable before they meet.
Others may be divorcees with families or have really demanding jobs that don’t allocate a lot of extra time to go out. Online dating allows these individuals to meet people on their own time – relatively risk free – and to determine if the person they are in contact with is really worth the time and effort.
In my opinion, people have this preconceived notion about online dating because we as a society are coming out of a time period where this kind of interaction didn’t exist, and we tend to ridicule things we don’t understand.
People join dating websites for their own reasons and as adults it is there right to pursue this avenue of social interaction with all the discernment, or lack thereof, they deem necessary.
All we as can do (as honorary members of our respective peanut galleries) is politely caution our friends/family members of our concerns, for both their physical and emotional well being, and trust their judgment from there. The rest isn’t up to us.