The ol' "date bait and switch"

Online daters sue matchmaking Web sites for fraud NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) - It's not easy finding love in cyberspace, and now some frustrated online daters say they were victims of fraud by two top Internet matchmaking services and have taken their complaints to court.

Like it's not hard enough to meet someone in this crazy world. I know that some feminists might jump down my throat but...sometimes I long for the days when dating was seemingly a little simpler. When a guy would go to a girl's house with flowers, meet her parents and ask her to go steady. Ok, so maybe that only really occured on "Happy Days" but still. Back then you most likely met the person you were going to marry in high school or college. Many of my currently married friends met during their college years. However, for those of us who didn't have that experience, life after school left us with few appealing options. Out in the "real world", we were still going to bars but they were then filled with strangers. You couldn't hope to talk to a cutie and then see him or her the next day on campus. And there was also the ill-advised work hook-up or meeting friends of friends.

Then came online dating. Suddenly, men and women were at each other's fingertips...literally. You could shop for a date like you shop on Amazon.com. At first many were sceptical and people who belonged to dating websites were just geeks who couldn't get a date. Reality eventually set in. Many people simply didn't like meeting in a drunken haze and certainly, with careers to pursue, didn't have the time or energy to go out every night of the week. The internet became a way to search for someone you weren't only attracted to but who had similar personalities, interests, goals, and values. Of course, this form of interaction brings about it's own set of problems but that's for another post.
So now millions of people who have enough trouble trusting someone they meet online can be extra paranoid. Isn't that special...