Online dating? Yay or nay?

I think it can be a fantastic tool, but you'll probably have to move past quite a few people who aren't worth your time to find someone special.

 

I know a total of one gay guy in this city (who's just a friend) and have no idea where to meet others, so I'm trying the online dating thing. It's been useless and frustrating and I'm about ready to give up. Don't know if it's my picture, what's in my profile, or something else, but whatever it is you need to attract people on there I have none of. :bang:

 

i would say its an iffy because if you are good with long distance relationships it would be good unless u can actualy see that girl. :smilewave

 

I know of a lovely couple who are living together and sheepishly admitted they met on a well-known hookup app.

And I'm going to hijack this and toss in a couple of extra questions rather than start a new thread, if you don't mind - one: people mention scams. Is that actually that much of a problem? And is it more prominent for same-sex dating? Maybe the people I know who have used online dating sites are fairly vigilant, but I haven't heard many horror stories beyond garden-variety terrible dates. Two: for anyone who has been new to the gay club and starting with online dating, have you been up front about being recently out in your profile, or just left it to come up organically? I'm considering taking the plunge myself soon-ish, and I know that I would feel less awkward bringing it up in advance but also wouldn't want to scare too many people off...

 

I wouldn't mind trying it to see if it would work for me.

 

I don't know if in this day and age anyone would still fall for the classic "Nigerian prince who inherited a fortune" kind of scam, but I can see people letting themselves get carried away over an online relationship and throwing money and expensive gifts to someone they have not even had a phone conversation with. In my opinion, I would say this happens more often in opposite-sex dating, but I'm just speculating.

Why do you feel you would scare people away by revealing your recent club membership? Unless you are not necessarily talking about the coming out status per se, but more about relationship experience in general, and even then, it's better to get that out of the way early on. In any case, someone who finds that to be such a terrible deal-breaker, is probably someone from whom you should stay away.

 

I say YAY! I met my first boyfriend through a dating site and he lives like 40 minutes from me. We dated for a few weeks and felt that we were right for each other. We both had strong feelings for each other physically and mentally. I believe that there must be chemistry and compatibility to make a relationship possible.

I would have NEVER met him any other way than on a dating site. I used okc and was successful in finding my boyfriend and a new friend. I highly recommend it!

 

You should be careful. Based from recent experience(last week), you shouldn't rush things up or you might end up in pain. I thought he's the one but then he stopped contacting me. I hate it, and I'm currently sad, missing that person. If you hate heartaches, you should avoid it.

 

The problem I have with dating sites is everyone there is so flaky. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who is hoping to find a relationship there. Seems like most people are there to chat and kill boredom.

My advice: don't have expectations.

 

I say go for it. I've made some friends, met some cool people, had some nice dates. No relationship yet, but I'm enjoying getting out there a little bit.

Don't set expectations too high, but I definitely say go for it. Talk to some people, see where it goes.

 

I keep a few spare chequing accounts around, just in case I finally find a real Nigerian prince. Because, hey, free money. And I guess I have heard of the occasional scam, now that I'm thinking of it.

But yeah, it's the relationship experience aspect of it. And I guess the potential comfort level of first dating guys, but I guess in retrospect it can't be any more horribly awkward than the handful of dates I went on with women...

This seems like pretty solid advice.

 

I agree with thekillingmoon. I've been on a popular dating site for about three years now and I've had to have gotten messages from over 20 people now. Normally common sense would make me feel lucky to get so many people talking to me, but yet it never goes anywhere. They all want to talk about casual everyday things and then the conversation always dies. Meeting up has NEVER been discussed.

Out of all of those people, I only met one who was willing to try a "relationship" with me. We met in late November, and we decided to start a little online "relationship" because we couldn't meet each other until March when the snow clears out. Before Christmas she decided to ditch me all together and made up a dumb excuse of why she didn't want to meet or have a real relationship, then went back to the website.

So yeah, you can try, but I agree to not have high expectations.

 

I've tried okc and I say - go for it. No idea how it's for gay men and straight people (it seems to be a bit worse, especially for the straight women) but there are lots of very nice gay girls. Just keep a few things in mind -
1) be very honest when writing your profile, otherwise people will be mislead and disappointed
2) don't be afraid to message everyone you like (at least to me people online can seem a bit intimidating sometimes -_- )
3) if you like someone - meet up soon, don't chat for a month
4) don't be too harsh, give people a chance. Online it's easy to dismiss everyone just because there is this one small thing about them that you're not so very fond of.

I've been on okc for brief periods of time (2-3 weeks) 3 times in last half a year and I've met 3 girls. They were very nice, I have no horror stories. And now I'm dating one of them. Actually, this last time I just registered and browsed profiles to see if I'm interested in anyone at all, saw her, then wrote my profile and put up a picture, and voila, now I'm dating her :icon_wink If you have a good idea of what you like and want, then it's fairly simple. Otherwise you'll have to navigate through a maze but still it's possible.

 

I'm registered on okc.. actually just signed up tonight. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.