Online Dating Versus Print Matchmaking (Profile Comparison)

I'm about to show my age by telling you that I remember the days when classified ads in print was the rage of matchmaking. I can remember picking up papers at my neighboring drug store that had a section for people to announce that they were looking for a mate. Those days of print matchmaking are pretty much gone.

Now a days, people can turn to the internet and go to online dating sites or even online classified sites to help them find a proper partner. The internet is now the king of matchmaking.

During the days of print, individuals seem to be more descriptive about who they are and what they were looking for, than they are today at online dating sites. What happen? Was the days of print matchmaking an era where people made more of an effort or are people today lazy and can't take the time to fill out a proper online dating profile?

There is no doubt there has been a cultural shift from the days of print. During that time, it took effort to do most things while today, you can stay in your car, drive up to a window, order lunch and have it handed to you without getting out of your car. The fast food culture has permeated throughout modern lifestyle to the point that even when looking for something as important as searching for a mate is more like a drive through window search - wanting it fast and quick without much effort.
As a webmaster, I frequently get emails from members wanting to know why they can't find love. One look at their profile and the effort they made, pretty much tells the tale. If I tell them they need to work more on improving their profile, most respond that they added more pictures to their gallery and it didn't help out. Ah! Images! It could be part of the problem. During days of print matchmaking, pictures typically were not an issue because they weren't used.

During the days of print, I seldom saw an image in a matchmaking ad. With no image, they had to be more descriptive, in particular when describing themselves. Today, those looking for love online, believe that their image tells the complete story. Their outlook is, I don't need to describe myself or what I'm looking for, my image is who I am and tells what I want. There may be some truth that it can describe who they are (I don't believe it though), but how an image tells other people what they are looking for is beyond me.

I hate to say it, but usually the better looking they are, the less time they put into words. Instead, they rely on their image to tell people who they are and what they are searching for (I still don't get this one). In my eyes, this mentality is dead wrong. A member of an online dating site still needs to make an effort to use words that describes who they are and what they are looking for. It shouldn't be a shocker that those members who do make an effort with words to describe themselves and what they are looking for, in addition have a good image, are the ones who generally find love.