My sense, from periodic experimentation in this area, is that there are a lot of "hidden costs," in terms of time and effort, when it comes to online dating. Success IS possible, but it sometimes masks the real, significant investments behind it:
1. Things take more time than they seem. Browsing, skimming profiles, customizing (however lightly) your stock messages each require a certain degree of effort--effort you subconsciously increase when the prospect seems hotter. Even if it seems short sometimes, unless you're running a chess clock, you can spend way more time than you think. It's part of the whole Internet time-suck phenomenon. Add bitches to that formula and you have a toxic time-eating problem. Plus, there's a lot of time spent on starting up your profile and tinkering with it regularly.
2. There's no established back-and-forth conventions. So that means, once you make contact, you could easily go back and forth many times before you can even set something up. These messages you CAN'T pre-script--they have to be original to the girl and take more time. Over e-mail, there are a lot more perils with saying the wrong thing and fucking things up (unlike in person, where you can backpeddle and adjust according to conditions) and girls can walk away from an interaction with even less social, public consequences--like feeling awkward or being called out for bitchiness. Knowing this, you end up editing and thinking more than you would otherwise which, necessarily, increases your effort. And, to make matters worse, at the end of the exchange, there's no guarantee that you'll get a Day One out of it. I've had this happen personally, where I got tired of the exchanges (even though they were promising) because it was way more work to get to the face-to-face than it is in other situations and I still had no 100-percent assurance that it was a real chick or NOT a masquerading fatty.
3. Guys with certain desirable, stock physical characteristics (e.g., tall white guy) DO benefit from the online environment more than others. It's like brand loyalty. If you went to a supermarket in a foreign country and couldn't read any of the labels, but then suddenly saw some Rice-a-Roni on the shelf, you're liable to buy it just because you recognize it. That's what happens online. Guys whose traits are plastered all over the media and benefit from mainstream appeal get better response rates. Guys that have more "niche appeal" have to work twice as hard. In either case, I think it takes more time than old-school methods for their group.
1. Things take more time than they seem. Browsing, skimming profiles, customizing (however lightly) your stock messages each require a certain degree of effort--effort you subconsciously increase when the prospect seems hotter. Even if it seems short sometimes, unless you're running a chess clock, you can spend way more time than you think. It's part of the whole Internet time-suck phenomenon. Add bitches to that formula and you have a toxic time-eating problem. Plus, there's a lot of time spent on starting up your profile and tinkering with it regularly.
2. There's no established back-and-forth conventions. So that means, once you make contact, you could easily go back and forth many times before you can even set something up. These messages you CAN'T pre-script--they have to be original to the girl and take more time. Over e-mail, there are a lot more perils with saying the wrong thing and fucking things up (unlike in person, where you can backpeddle and adjust according to conditions) and girls can walk away from an interaction with even less social, public consequences--like feeling awkward or being called out for bitchiness. Knowing this, you end up editing and thinking more than you would otherwise which, necessarily, increases your effort. And, to make matters worse, at the end of the exchange, there's no guarantee that you'll get a Day One out of it. I've had this happen personally, where I got tired of the exchanges (even though they were promising) because it was way more work to get to the face-to-face than it is in other situations and I still had no 100-percent assurance that it was a real chick or NOT a masquerading fatty.
3. Guys with certain desirable, stock physical characteristics (e.g., tall white guy) DO benefit from the online environment more than others. It's like brand loyalty. If you went to a supermarket in a foreign country and couldn't read any of the labels, but then suddenly saw some Rice-a-Roni on the shelf, you're liable to buy it just because you recognize it. That's what happens online. Guys whose traits are plastered all over the media and benefit from mainstream appeal get better response rates. Guys that have more "niche appeal" have to work twice as hard. In either case, I think it takes more time than old-school methods for their group.