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*Vegetarians, pet fanciers, truckers, Buddhists and goths — to name a few — are looking for love in all the specialized places, as niche dating websites multiply. We found thought this recent L.A. Times article
By Susan Carpenter, Times Staff Writer was worthy of addressing. The article is fairly long and well written; it is the subject we find so interesting. Below are excerpts from the article–
As novel as Datemypet may seem, the year-and-a-half-old site is part of a larger trend. As online dating has become more widespread, so have niche sites specializing by lifestyle and interest. Cruise the Web, and you’ll easily find dating sites for truckers (truckerpassions.com) and the tall (tallfriends.com), people with disabilities (friendslikeme.org) and goths (gothicloveonline.com), conservatives (conservativematch.com) and hip-hop fans (hiphopmatchmaker.com), Ivy Leaguers (rightstuffdating.com) and wine lovers (grapedates.com). You name it, chances are there’s at least one site for it. Usually, there are several…
Just like generalist dating sites, some are free and some are paid, though paying sites tend to charge lower prices than mainstream sites. Like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals, most use simple matching software, pairing couples based on what they’re about and what they’re looking for in a potential mate. The advantage of niche sites is that users get to identify their deal breaker…
“There’s still a leap of faith involved for a lot of people when they go into online dating,” said Nate Elliott, online dating analyst for JupiterResearch, a consumer technologies analysis firm in New York. “Although the stigma has mostly gone away, they’re still doing something that might feel a little bit uncomfortable, and to be able to take that step within a predefined community can improve the comfort level for certain users….
Ultimately, the success of any site depends on the number of people using it. The greater the number, the greater the odds of finding a good match….
“You have to be able to go on the site on a regular basis and see enough profiles that you’re not seeing the same people over and over again, which sounds easy and obvious, but it really depends on the depth of the search you’re doing,” said JupiterResearch’s Elliott. Veggiedate, for vegetarians, has about 16,000 profiles — about 1,000 of which are from the L.A. area. In comparison with gargantuan sites such as Match.com, those numbers may not add up to particularly good odds, but they worked for…
“Basically the people I met were good people, but we didn’t have enough in common, even the ones who might have stated on the sites that they were vegetarian,” he said. “The people on the site put it as something that they liked rather than more of a definition of their lifestyle….
Pet lovers, pet haters, vegetarians, golddiggers, trophy bride seekers, brainiacs and idiots all seem to have a special website where they can go and find like minded people. No matter what your taste, your interest or proclivity, there is a website that is just waiting to provide you with someone…well…just like you. Forget about doing anything like stretching, reaching, adjusting, or accomodating, because love and romance has superseded all the other stuff you are so find of calling your lifestyle. Don’t ever take a risk and date someone stranger than you, different than you, someone who can perhaps lift you out of your ordinary routine and show you new things. Someone who may even help you grow. I mean, after all, isn’t it much nicer, safe and less challenging to sit across the table and behold your mirrored interest in every interest and taste?
In a sense it’s a lot like masturbation. Only with masturbation you aren’t going out so you don’t have to look your best. So I guess there at least some decent merits to going out with your psychic clone, unless your psychic clone likes to do the same thing you used to do when you didn’t have a date–sit at home with DVD’s and a Pepperoni Pizza. But now, I guess, when you are sitting home and feeling lonely and miserable, you are on a date with someone of mutual interest. So your life is no longer a portrait of isolation, it is instead a measure of compatibility. Congratulations, you met the same hump as yourself, someone who is so mired in your own tastes and interests they can’t possibly show you anything new. Feel better?
What did happen to those dangerous concepts like expansion and learning from our mates? What happened to learning from our experiences? Learning from the world? How would James Carville ever have paired up with Mary Matlin? God bless them for showing opposites can still attract. For a long time one of the major reasons relationships fell apart was because “they grew in different ways.” That term, roughly translated, means “I got bored with the same-same and moved on and he or she stayed in the same place. I wanted changes and they didn’t. I wanted them to try new things with me, and they wouldn’t. ” Then that was a bad thing. Two people hiding out in quiet desperation, until one jumps off the reservation and tries something new. Usually with someone else who is also new. It meant risk. It meant you had to grow to save your relationship and even your sanity.
But now you are safe. There is no need to look for change. You both do the same stuff with the same mindset and probably–I’d give odds on this–with friends that think and feel exactly like you do. There is lesser danger that your mate will cast an eye in new directions and run off with the meat eating, high fashion, socially concerned pacifist with warlike tendencies. There is little chance that one soul clone or the other will dive into new ideas and activities with all the dangers, mysteries and contradictions. We’ll just sit, resolute, doing the same things over and over again. What a dull world this is becoming.
