"Everybody's doing it"

"Guess who messaged me on PoF (Plenty of Fish)," my friend Jordan IM'd me.

"Who," I said, not wanting to play the guessing game. I couldn't think of any single guys we both knew.

She sent me a link. I clicked on it and was brought to the dating profile of our Residence Advisor from first year. Awkward. He'd been notorious for his ...dalliances... with the ladies. We even knew his sex song: Dani California by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I never thought he'd need an online dating site. But it made me curious - who IS on these sites? I typed in some quick search parametres: lives in Victoria, 20-24, attends university.

One of the first search results was my old roommate. Then a friend of a friend I recognized from several parties. Another friend of mine who was SO shy that it was quite the shock to find her putting herself out there in a dating environment.

On OKCupid I've wandered across a friend of mine, his girlfriend, one of my coworkers, and even got creeped by my ex-roommate, which was slightly disconcerting.

All this has led me to one conclusion. Everybody's doing it. (Well not everybody obviously but pretty damn close. You know what I mean). And here I thought I was the only one...

In 2007, in fact, Online Dating Magazine estimated that 20 million people visit at least one dating site once a month.

Plenty of Fish is one of the few free sites to rank with the paid sites on a numbers basis in North America. Markus Frind, the owner/creator/designer/everything man of PoF only keeps track of his active users, which amounted to anywhere between 250,000 and 320,000 user log-ins per day in 2006. PoF's September active user base in 2006 grew 290 per cent from September 2005.

I can only imagine these numbers have increased over the past few years. Most of the people I've run into on dating sites weren't there two years ago.

Which leaves the question: Why have all these people made the recent leap into cyber romance? I see a few possibilities. Maybe, in this digital world, making a cyber connection is faster and easier than one in the "real world." Or perhaps once one person signs up, ten of their friends who previously thought cyber dating was "weird" or "only for pimply-faced basement WoW losers" realize that maybe it's okay after all. Or, finally, is it possible that maybe these sites are just that succesful?

Online Dating Magazine would have you thinking the latter. They touted that more than 120,000 marriages a year are a result of online dating. PoF estimates that its users will go on more than 18 million dates with other users this year. With nearly one million users, that's roughly 18 dates a year per user.

But wait, is 18 dates really a success? If that's 18 first dates I' m going to have to go with no. That would suggest matching is very unsuccesful. 120,000 marriages out of 20 milion users is less than one per cent.

The problem is, you see, you still have to do the weeding. Sure, his profile looks great, he's fun to talk to, but in the end it all comes down to whether or not you click in person. And that means a lot of first dates. Online dating definately gives you wider access to potential love partners in your area, but it doesn't increase your likelihood of clicking with an individual person.

I'm not saying don't give it a try. It's fun to do, there are lots of interesting people, and we've all heard those success stories. I'm just saying that, while you can probably expect to go on more dates once you join the cyber world, finding Mr. or Miss. Right can't be left up to a mathematical matching system or a 500 word profile.