The Creation of Online Dating

I was reading an article on Online Dating that explained the creation of it. It all began in 1965 at a World's Fair in Queens by a guy by the name of Lewis Altfest. He an open-air display called the Parker Pen Pavilion, where a giant computer clicked and whirred at the job of selecting foreign pen pals for curious pavilion visitors. How it worked was that you fill out a questionnaire that was sent into the giant computer and then almost instantly you received a notification back of your ideal match. Well Altfest wanted to take it further and see if you can do this closer to home. Well he did with a friend from Harvard and created a prototype that allowed you to answer a 100-question questionnaire and then you would receive five envelopes that matched your interest. They named it Project TACT. His friend name was Ross by the way. Well the two received media blast for about two years. To make a long story short, a reporter came to do an interview with them but Altfest was out of town and the reporter, a female; ended up interviewing Ross instead. Well Ross ended up marrying the reporter two years later. Ross wanted to meet someone through TACT but instead it took reality for him to meet someone.

Online dating does have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it opens up a wide pool for people that are single after their college years, because after college the pool grows shallow. The disadvantage is that when you are doing online dating, you never see the person you are trying to make a connection with but only see pictures. The disadvantages clearly outweigh the advantages. More advantages is that you clearly see only those people of your interest so the person's personality is not random. More disadvantages is that now you have shows like "To Catch a Predator" because you do not know exactly who is on the other end of the chatroom. Sometimes it can lead to fatal meetings and then sometimes it can lead to happiness.

A Study was done to show how often people are hooking up over the internet. It showed that internet dating is the third most way for people to meet and start dating. Match.com was established in 1995 and now is the leading internet-dating service. The fee-based cites ranked in over a billion dollars in revenue. This shows how much people are dependent on dating cites to meet their soul-mate. One in six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating sites. For many people in their twenties, accustomed to conducting much of their social life online, it is no less natural a way to hook up than the church social or the night-club-bathroom line. It still remains though, that by free will and chance people meet. The most common way is meeting in person.

Question: Do you feel it is better to meet online or to meet in person to form a relationship.