[svachalek]

Being out of the age where friend circles include lots of singles, I spent a few years on the online dating circuit. It worked out for me in the end, but it's a pretty miserable process and none of the new sites (including this one, sorry) seem to fix the fundamental problem of de-personalization.

If I were on the market in this day and age, I'd definitely stick to Meetup and similar sites where you can join a singles group and go to events where you can do something fun/interesting/comfortable and meet a lot of eligible singles in the process. More importantly you are presenting your real-world self and meeting theirs, bypassing all the vaguely sociopathic behavior that's more or less normal on the dating sites.

[potatolicious]

> "'d definitely stick to Meetup and similar sites where you can join a singles group"

Been there. Wasn't fun.

The problem with ungated singles groups is that it turns very heavily into a gigantic sausagefest, even in cities with relatively decent dating scenes.

It reminds me of the Microsoft parties I've gone to back when I lived in Seattle. You can spot all seven women at the party by the clusters of men surrounding them.

For singles groups to work a gender ratio must be enforced, but that also gives group organizers a lot of leeway to be generally not-awesome people. It also brings out some of the uglier sides of humanity.

I was once part of an "Asian Americans" Meetup group, which like most Meetup groups is a pretty flimsy facade for a singles group. There was a major row where a white user wanted to join - IIRC the guy was raised in Asia and had a strong interest in Asian culture. The male membership of the group revolted, citing pretty much every lame reason except the real one. A vote was taken, where the female membership voted in a landslide to allow the guy in, and the male membership the opposite. The ban stood, some (thankfully some) people left the group in protest, including myself.

This was an exceptionally blatant experience, but I wouldn't put this past most Meetup groups, ethnicity or otherwise. Meetup groups with a singles slant (i.e., most of them), seems to bring out the most territorial, the least charitable, and the least human qualities in people.

[svachalek]

Hmm, I've noticed that most meetups, even without a singles theme, lean heavily towards singles, so maybe the ones that are less blatant are better targets. In my experience the turnout is majority-female (assuming it's not a heavily biased topic like programming or stock trading) here in Silicon Valley where millionaires outnumber single women by 10 to 1 (I exaggerate, a little) so I'm surprised to hear it isn't so everywhere.