What was that noise? ::checks:: Oh yea, that's my mother's head exploding.

This strikes me, simultaneously and paradoxically, as
A) not at all surprising;
B) mindblowing.

List of all great people I have met online, ... um; I have -zero- bad experiences.

List of people I have met in bars/clubs rest of 'world'... Do not want go.

Still looking for more great meeting of mother nature type experiences. Write me! ha.

I still remember when I was literally still "just friends" with someone and described to one of my dad's colleagues that we were both on a message board together, after which he constantly called her "my little internet friend". About '96 or so.

List of all great people I have met online, ... um; I have -zero- bad experiences.

Ditto. And I've met 40ish invisible internet friends over the years.

The mister and I, as previously mentioned, met in a chat room. Bro#2 and his bride met through an online dating service.

The best part of it becoming more popular is it lessens the stigma associated with meeting people online. I've never been embarrassed, and have always been open, about where I met the mister. But, man, some of the comments I've received have been awful.

One need go no further than Metafilter and its offshoots to find many online introductions -- especially if you count meetups in this category, and I do -- leading to first dates that developed into relationships. Personally, I think introductions that occur through an online community and chatboards have a greater chance of succeeding than those from online dating sites like okcupid and plentyoffish, yet even in the latter, one can find numerous instances of long term commitments. Even the sexual hookup sites have experienced their share.

Before the internet, I never bought into that "finding your one true love" myth because of locality factors. However now, that possibility has increased manyfold.

*raises hand* hi, my name is nichole and i met my husband online... :)

Met my former spouse online via AOL, back before it became, uh; AOL as it is now/last several years or more... Although we are 'formerly married' (divorce/divorced is like, some bad word; entailing failure, a negativity, or a stigma), we are still intelligent and plain out good people. Yeah, it is nice to see the 'I met _____ online' becoming less of a weirdness.

At a minimum, time spent online guarantees some level of basic literacy and communication skills; that is something that is about as rare as ordering a water among the bar and club crowd.

When I first started dating online, people were all OMG we're going to find you in pieces in some psycho's refrigerator! But by the time I met my husband (online), no one batted an eye. No one even asks what site.

I'm not sure how I could have met my wife other than online. Neither of us are big party goers or didn't hang out in bars and we're both pretty shy. I work in software so there aren't too many women at work and I couldn't flirt if you put a gun to my head so talking up women I might have met at coffee shops or such would have been difficult.

I don't mind meeting people online at all. I've met a large portion of my friends in the last 6-7 years either directly or indirectly due to the community site I run.

But... online dating? Not for me. I realize that based on trends, at 34 with no prospects, I am probably just increasing the likelihood that I'll never be in a relationship again. But I can't do it.

I've tried it, a couple of times with a few different sites, and I hate it. I hate every aspect of it. I'm sure there are lovely people out there to be found on dating sites, but the process of finding them -- and the way it makes me feel to endeavour to find them -- feels icky and depressing. I'm not just being stubborn or a luddite.

The closest I'll ever come to it is Craigslist.

Agree completely with Ardiril, loiseau and others. Meetups are great; a bunch of like-minded people getting together and talking, which is the way people actually meet in real life. Online dates are completely unnatural and forced--you're sitting across from someone, a perfect stranger, trying to feel something, often realizing in the first few minutes that he's not your type, even if he does share your interest in Gilbert & Sullivan. That's not how people connect. Not me, anyway.

Yeah, I've met a lot of great friends online. Online dating? Has not worked with a kind of capital NOT. Apparently I'm much pickier than I thought I was in terms of physical chemistry, or something, but the last few experiences have been bad enough where I don't think I'll ever try that again. Oh well. At this point in my life I'm pretty close to reconciled that relationships are part of my past anyway.

I met my boyfriend on ok cupid. My profile was blunt to the point of rude (stuff like "if you don't have a favorite book listed I don't want to talk to you" "I will ask your what favorite movie of the original trilogy is, and why. If you don't know what I mean by the original trilogy don't mail me.") and after being on there for a couple years he was the first person to email me that I actually responded to. We started emailing back in November and things are still great.

But, in all fairness, he may have been the first person to actually read my profile. Most emails I got were from people who never mentioned a love of video games, sci fi, goth or punk, books, left wing politics, etc in their own profiles... it was like "I like to watch the game with my buddies and shoot darts at the bar. go football!" Uh... and you mailed me why?
when I saw his I ran out and told my roommate "the male version of me just sent me an email on ok cupid!"

I think online personal ads are the only way people in DC every meet; I certainly met some great women (several of whom I dated) that way. And, as I've discussed here before, it's how I met my wife. I really don't understand the hate--it sounds like the folks who don't like using online sites to find dates don't particularly like non-online dating, either.

"Online dating," to me, means having a primarily internet-based relationship, possibly never actually meeting in the real world. But it seems that this isn't what the term means to most folks any more.