Online Dating is a huge industry. Somebody out there wants to find true love and somebody else is willing to pay to play that role. Normally it costs money to go out on a date. But if you are looking for your Mr. Right or Ms. Right, the corporations behind online dating sites like mega personals etc. are willing to throw enough money at you to have lots of dates in the hopes you will eventually find happiness.
How to approach a person online?
If you want to get a date, the best way is to write a good profile. And the best way to write a good profile is to read other people’s profiles.
That’s what they did for this exercise. They looked at profiles and tried to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The core idea is that if you don’t have anything interesting or unusual to say, it doesn’t matter how hard you try to sell yourself. You can’t compete with someone who has something interesting to say in every sentence he writes. So first use the profile period to find out what’s working which answers are popular in your circle of friends and on the Internet and then decide what you can do better than anyone else.
There are two basic approaches to writing up a profile:
- The personal approach, says “I’m a nice person and I want someone nice too.”
- The impersonal approach, which says “I’m looking for someone who likes science fiction.”
They found that both work well, but they each have problems. The personal approach can be a little creepy when used badly. But it usually works well when used well; you can find many nice people who share your profile with their known group.
The common mistake in online Dating
If you are a woman, and you want to find a man to date, you will find that certain things seem to work better than others. There is, for example, a common mistake that seems to work best. If you are a woman and want to find a man who is not famous, you will find it easiest to start on the Internet.
But that is the wrong way around. The point is not to go online mega personals hoping for someone who isn’t famous, but for someone who is famous and who wants to be found. This does not sound like it should work at all.
If the conventional wisdom were correct, then it would be best if everyone went online hoping for someone famous. Or at least if everyone went online assuming that if they didn’t find fame they would never meet anyone at all. But as it turns out, finding fame is not as unlikely as it sounds: there are thousands of people every day on Craigslist or Match.com or some other dating service trying to throw themselves in front of other people’s eyes. Which means something else must be going on here. Maybe the people trying to get attention are not just crazy but also foolish; maybe they are making mistakes that women can avoid.
