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The problem here is that you have to actually have some kind of venue for meeting people in person. Frequently, people turn to online dating precisely because they've exhausted all their usual social circles for prospective partners. I'll use myself as an example: I'm a software engineer (big surprise on this site!), so I don't have any female coworkers who are eligible, I'm not a college student any more, I'm not religious so I don't go to church, I'm not a drinker so hanging out in bars isn't really fun for me, and I don't have any friends left who have single female friends to introduce me to. So that leaves me with things like 1) hobby/social groups on Meetup.com, 2) hanging out in coffee shops, 3) going to bars even though I don't drink and don't like the atmosphere, and 4) online dating. FWIW, I've been doing #1 (I've tried #2 but it has such a terrible success rate in actually meeting anyone I gave up; you'd have to spend a LOT of time to meet just a few people, unless you're in your 20s and in a real hot-spot for this kind of thing, like on a college campus), and not experienced any success there at all: I go to hiking meetup, but it seems most of the women who attend these in this area (and there's a lot, sometimes a 3-1 ratio F:M!) are retirement-age. Sorry, I'm not into dating women old enough to be my mother. Online dating exposes you to people you would never meet in real life; that's why people do it. There's just no way around it. You can talk all you want about how it's better to meet people in person, but our society simply does not have many venues for this any more. In the old days, people met through friends, family, and church. These days, people like us are non-religious, we've moved away from our hometowns and move periodically for work so we don't have many friends to put us in contact with possible partners and family lives too far away. Online dating also lets you filter people out easier: I can look through someone's profile in less than 60 seconds and determine she's not someone I'd be interested in dating for various reasons (religious, extreme or conservative political opinions, etc.), things which aren't immediately obvious if you just walk up to someone in a bar and start chatting, and which may take a long time to find out through normal conversation. |
You also mentioned the pros of online dating, everyone is aware although it sounds like you've had to explain this to other people in your age range and older, you neglected the cons. Females get a gender surplus of men on online dating, if you want females you should pursue situations with a gender surplus of females, and this distinctly excludes online dating.