"Believe it or not, I'd rather clean a bathroom than watch a football game."
-- whatever man said this would probably prefer to remain anonymous
I'll give you three guesses to determine where I found this quote. No, not the bakery. No, not the thesaurus. Yes, an online dating service!
You would be hard-pressed to have never encountered an online dating service, but it's pretty similar to real life anyway. Well, at least a bar where people try millions of different pickup lines, all of them revolving around either the good ole days, when they won five Olympic medals, or the future, when they plan to shuttle the first spacecraft to Mercury.
Most single people who have used a computer probably have signed up at one of these dating places, possibly at 564 of them. I did a simple search on google for online dating and came up with 349,000 matches. If only I had found that many matches within the services!
The scary thing isn't the amount of services but the amount of success stories within them. From iVillage.com -- "Three days later, Eric told Angela he loved her, and a few days later, she told him the same." From ABC News, about match.com, "I know it sounds silly but it was really magical." From astromate.com "Just wanted you to know that I have been contacted by two eligible men that seem to be very compatible with me. I am very pleasantly surprised! Thank you."
Of course, these sites won't print the unsuccessful stories: "Out of the five people who responded to my ad, only one had fewer than three noses," or "The only person who responded was my grandma, telling me to get a life."
Besides trying to find someone compatible, or at least someone not on fire presently, most sites have Q& A sections, message boards and chat areas. At ivillage.com, you can ask your question to Dating Doyenne , take a Compatibility Quiz or Ask the Sex Coach . Most dating sites are equipped with these types of info, so even if you don't find that potential mate, you can come away with something useful. And if you're lucky, you'll even see that other people are having just as much FUN as you are!
Now I know what you are thinking -- "If I take equal parts of every single fruit, and put them in a blender, will it really be red and taste just like fruit punch?" Or maybe you are just wondering how feasible it is to actually meet someone decent on the Internet. You can take it from someone with experience -- it's tough. But it's worth a try, I suppose. What do you have to lose?
If you are scared of meeting people through the Internet, here are a few simple tips to follow. Let's not forget the obvious one -- "Don't fall for the silly I'm-an-astronaut-come-to-Mercury-with-me line."
There are slightly weird people out there who are just like you. Keep trying, and eventually the good ones will float to the top. No, this has nothing to do with cleaning the bathroom.
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