"I'm new to this..."
"I'm not sure why I'm here..."
"I don't normally do this..."
I know that the world we live in still places some kind of stigma on dating websites and the people who choose to use them. I don't know why that is since it's basically just using technology to find new friends and maybe more. Why should that be considered a bad thing? I've only ever been on two dating sites in my life, neither of which are advertised on television. They're both kind of under the radar sites that I found through friends even though I had no intention of being on them. The first site I was on was one that somehow had become popular amongst my college classmates, primarily because it offered all kinds of fun tests and quizzes to take. Of course they made you sign up to get your results and they gave you a profile with questions about what you were looking for so before you knew it, you were a member of a dating website. Being that we were all college kids and really didn't care what anyone thought of us, no one cared they were on such a site, I was only on it for the tests (or as my best friend put it, 'to see what was wrong' with me since I was single at the time). Eventually we all forgot about it because it changed its format to compete with other pure dating sites and got rid of the quizzes and then folded altogether out of the blue one day.
Flash forward to the year that was 2010 and you'll find me back on a dating website, though not for the reasons you'd think. A friend of mine had signed up and told me about it and I wanted to see what her profile looked like but I couldn't unless I signed up. So I did, thinking I could just delete it when I was done checking out the friend's profile. Instead I got caught up in some of the things the site offered, filled out my profile and went on my way. I just kinda let it do whatever it was gonna do and soon I started getting messages from other members. I would say that a good 60% of the people I've interacted with on this site have some kind of disclaimer either in their profile or in their first message that uses one of the aforementioned lines of not knowing why they were on the site at all. The first step is admitting you have a problem or, in this case, admitting that you're there because you chose to be there. I didn't even find the site myself and I don't put any blame on the friend who led me there cuz I don't see any shame in it.
So I guess my question is why is there still such a stigma associated with online dating? I've seen a few profiles where people put down that they're willing to lie about how they met a person so that no one knows they actually met on a dating site. Is there really that much shame in it that you have to make up another story? And if there is then why are you on there at all? Okay, that's more than one question but you see my point. I don't understand how you can be both a believer in the online dating stigma and a member of a site, (I'm not talking about being skeptical about whether or not it'll work, that's a completely separate issue). Cuz if you don't believe in it or think it's stupid then why did you sign up? I know some people still consider it to be some kind of "last resort" for people who are getting up there in age and obviously don't know how to find someone on their own but that hasn't been my experience at all. I'm not saying you should shout from the rooftops that you're on a dating site, I just don't think that it should be a shameful secret or anything. But people are gonna think what they're gonna thing I guess and you can't change their minds. So if you want to be a closet online dater, more power to you. But major props to those who are out and proud about it.
