Online dating: Hot or not?

Have some time on your hands? Read this in-depth history of online dating, courtesy of The New Yorker.

The article offers lots of great nuggets for analysis, including this excerpt:

Good writing on Internet dating sites may be rare because males know that the best way to get laid is to send messages to as many females as possible. To be efficient, they put very little work into each message and therefore pay scant attention to each woman’s profile.

The come-on becomes spam and gums up the works, or scares women away, which in turn can lead to a different kind of gender disparity: a room full of dudes.

In blog posts and columns, I've pretty much exhausted the topic of online dating. I can't offer many new insights to the discussion.

That said, I'm not sure if online dating has lots all its stigma. I think it's a viable option, but you must go into the experience with the same safety concerns that occupy the traditional meet market.

What do you think?