How to date online effectively
Making decisions about our love lives is never easy. When you are online dating you are required to make decisions about who to pursue and who to let go, all the time. These decisions are potentially life changing and the pressure of making choices amongst lots of possibilities can get stressful. That’s why people who get really good at online dating develop strategies and decision algorithms. They know that a solid system is the only way to get what you want out of dating sites without the stress.
How not to date online: Quitters and Over-committers.
People who get burnt dating online tend to fall into two categories: The quitters and the over-committers. Quitters will react terribly to inappropriate messaging or bad dates and tend to delete their profile at the first sign of embarrassment or disappointment. They probably came to the game very reluctantly in the first place and are very sensitive to feelings of shame. This is clearly a big waste of opportunity. The second and potentially more dangerous category are the over-committers, who get emotionally involved too quickly and lack standards. These are the people who will always reply to your messages quickly, who will never challenge, who will be too quick to agree to swap numbers or meet for a date. These people are in danger of wasting their time and feelings and, at worst, they can fall prey to tricksters and fraudsters. Both types need to take the emotion out of the equation and distance themselves from the decision making process. They need a personal dating algorithm.
How dating online works: Dating algorithms
Most online dating companies run some sort of algorithm to help them chose who to introduce to who. Many market that system as their unique selling point: the superior personality profiling; the most scientific or efficient system. Very often the complexity of these machines is exaggerated. In truth, what matters is that any dating system has a reasonably sensible way of deciding who to match based on basic values and stated preferences. These values and preferences are exactly the same things that individuals should be aware of as they get to know one another via message exchange.
How to date online: Compare your matches with a persona of your idealised partner
The best way to start creating your own dating algorithm is to sketch out a rough profile of what our ideal partner looks like. Write down the characteristics that you most admire in others and that you would most like to see in your ideal partner. Make a big long list and then rank them in order of their importance to you. Take your top 10 characteristics and pin them to a wall next to a picture of your ideal (something suitable off the web). Give your new profile a name and then start comparing everyone you chat to online with him/her. How do they rank on each of your core criteria? Do their profile pictures make them look like your Ms/Mr perfect? Give them a score out of 5 and if they don’t get enough points end the conversation and block them from further communication with you. – that’ it!
This approach might sound harsh and of course it will not be perfect; some unsuitables will get through the net and you might miss some goodies, but it has the great advantage of being systematic and offering you the chance to make really quick and balanced judgments about issues that otherwise can get emotional and confused.
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Submitted by George Sanders on
