What a great question and something that I have often wondered about …. I definitely think that online dating has given singles another means to meet one another, but as with any advancement it doesn’t come without some drawbacks. Speaking from personal experience, I remember having a great date, maybe even making plans to meet again and then being completely crushed when I saw that the guy had logged onto JDate a few hours after dropping me at home. I know, I know …. I was online too so why should I have been so devastated, but at least I was smart enough or sneaky enough to block the fact that I was online - so as not to hurt his feelings. Oh how mature I was! That being said, I got married seven months ago to a wonderful guy that I met on JDate.

It’s too bad that we seem to be in an either or situation with dating. I do believe that online dating has basically replaced the old fashioned way of meeting people. I love to hear stories about how our parents went to dances sponsored by the synagogue or local community center. I conjures up images of girls in pretty dresses and boys borrowing their father’s cars. I guess that I am a romantic at heart. Pushed to choose, I would go with the old school way … less game playing, more sincere and focused on serious dating with marriage in mind.

Sorry for the super long comment. By the way, I was also glued to Millionare Matchmaker and watched three episodes in a row. Why isn’t Patti married? Is she too busy fixing everyone else’s problems?

So those of us that are too OLD to have done things the new way “(with Internet, cell phones, voicemail, and social networking sites)” can’t comment? In my case the Internet stuff was sort of getting going, and there were certainly voice mail and caller ID, but less use of cell phones.

The question is, has human nature changed? Are people better because of this technology. It may depend on your situation. For example, if you are in an area with not a lot of Jews, a site like JDate may open up your dating or marriage prospects in ways that were not really available before. Then again, for some, the Internet is like a big room (certainly bigger than the “singles dance” ballroom) where you one can be a jerk to a whole lot more people.

All I can go by are the war stories my wife and I hear. In the end, a lot of people are too much into themselves, technology or no technology. Even pre-Internet, I always wondered why someone would use a dating service of some sort or go to a singles event when they were so busy in life that they couldn’t (allegedly) arrange a date for weeks or months. Old fashioned (crotchety? reactionary?) guy that I am, I say that use of “low tech” (sports activities, volunteer work, synagogue services) should be an important part of the “matching” effort.

If it helps, my wife tells me from the playgroup in which our younger son is enrolled that a lot of the parents of other children there did meet through JDate or one of its competitors.

I’m sorry work has been kicking your ass lately, but at least there’s more money going along with it. Kind of makes the pain a bit less painful, right?

As for the old school / new school thing… Well, I met my husband on JDate (one vote for new school) but JDate also caused me much grief (one vote for old school). So… I guess… I don’t know which is better.

Well, as someone who met her FH online, I can’t really say anything bad about online dating. There were high points and low points, of course (ooh, those “online now” icons were annoying, weren’t they?), but I always just looked at online dating as an additional way of potentially meeting people rather than an exclusive way of meeting people. *shrug*

I’m someone who has always found dating somewhat annoying, whether old school or new school. Each way just comes with its own set of annoyances.

I liked it better back then. It had somewhat an innocent and noninvasive quality to it.

I have to vote old school. I don’t see it on your blog, but on some of the blogs, the girls have laundry lists of the guys in rotation, on deck, etc. I just don’t think people are giving their dates a shot.. there may be something more exciting under door number 2. The other thing that drives me nuts is texting as opposed to calling to follow up. All I can say is Thank G-D I am married. I would have never survived in this dating world.

It’s so weird to have another Jessica on here, parenthetically.

I have to say, I love texting. I hate the phone.

I agree with Ron that it’s not so much technology but human nature. And I think the fact that we live in LA has just as much to do with the “what’s behind door number 2″ mentality than anything else. And for the commenter who found her date browsing on Jdate minutes after her date - that has happened to me too, and it sucks, but I view it as a gift. I would much rather know up front than be deluded for weeks and waste my time.

That said, my Facebook issue with the Knot the other day was annoying. But that’s not so much a dating issue as a privacy one.

Pre voice mail too? Geez answering machines were around way back. I still had a tape one too until it gave up the ghost a few years back. Don’t forget Dictaphones either! But here’s one geezer who thinks that it’s Way easier now, and that may be part of the problem. We don’t recognize the revolution has come and done it’s work & moved on. Let us count the ways that modern communications have helped the dating game?

1.) Cell phones. Think about it. You’re running behind, in traffic from work trying to make drinks with a cutie across town. You’ll be about 1/2 hr late. In the Pre cell era, you’d have missed him or her. They likely would have bailed on you, thinking that you’d forgot, or merely bailed on them. Ditto for texting a short ‘I’m going to be a bit late because…’ Simply impossible to do way back when.

Occasionally, perhaps you could call the bar and then Moe would answer, ‘Yeah, right who’s got Amanda Lovenkis?’ ‘I need Amanda Lovenkis?’… Damn Kids! [Hangs up on Bart's prank]. You get the picture. Ditto for trying to reach people at work in the filed or in their car. Once impossible people!

2.) Everything was once done by phone. No caller ID either, everyone had to simply answer the phone and use their own wits to avoid folks they did not want to talk to. As in: ‘No this is Karen’s Mom. She says she does not want to talk to you right now!’. ‘No this is Billy’s dad, You are Never to call here again, Do You Understand?!’

So even if you wanted to break a date, you Had to Call. In fact Any communication you had with the other person Had to be done via the US Mail (slow, but not much, a day or so), or by Phone. This could be & was tres embarrassing for many, and very confrontational at times. ‘Why Jimmy Claude Barnes! I Know you wanted to take Jinny Diver out to the Prom, Goldie to me so! So you don’t need to pretend to me that your granny in Stockton is sick and you can’t make it! It’s not like I won’t be going, just not with the likes of you!’

It was just like that. All the time. A hang over from this era can certainly be seen in the ways that guys (& some gals) will go to great lengths to avoid any & All confrontations. Despite Better technology, they’re probably slightly more likely now to simply disappear, and hope that you just forget them. With such a welter of opportunities now, this might be more likely too, but it’s still not polite.

So things were a bit more formal. If you had to communicate with your prospective date for Any reason, you had to either do it face to face (most likely in school or work), or by mail. Now the mails Were strangely enough Faster than people normally give them credit for. A letter within your own city could often arrive the next day, and for older folks, they can recall ’same day service’ if you got it out by ‘first post’ in the morning. So you could do this by mail. ‘Susie, my Aunt Millie died last night, I can’t make the prom’. But hell, if that was Not true, you certainly looked the fool, and she/he had proof positive of your perfidy! Much more serious consequences than an ambiguous text.

There’s much more emotional content to actually Hearing someone’s voice too. This is often not all that useful when first dating and trying to discover if the other person shares in your attraction or infatuation. If they do not, this can be supremely and painfully embarrassing in the nascent stages of a budding relationship. Kill it before it begins actually.

3.) Contact was perhaps more intimate faster, but the movement could be slower at the same time. Letters strangely enough are more intimate than texts. They’re commonly well thought out, well written, and most are kept for awhile if they’re important. Most texts are not, and most emails probably are not, and genuinely unworthy of this too. So in the space of a few long letters you got the sense that you really knew the writer, if you took the time to actually Read & Understand it. As most do not do this today, and seem barely capable of it currently (too short attention spans perhaps), it’s a lost art we need not mourn too deeply. Most people do not appreciate good or great art. Or well written letters. Or even well written books, essays, movies etc.! So texts & emails are just fine for most purposes. There can be many more of these, and they do not need to be so well thought out and planned. But people Do have to Use them to their advantage.

4.) The Jdate (& other dating sites) revolution is real. Despite it being supremely frustrating experience on a daily basis for 10’s of thousands, it can & has worked for many. People just have to be steady with their approaches & patient & knowledgeable in their application and try not to bankrupt themselves while doing so.

I can’t tell you how difficult it was to even meet folks in the pre-net days. If you did not meet in school (HS for grandparents typically or college & Uni’s for parents generation), it was like a 19th century landscape. Your parents did the match making work for you, or you took on neighbors & friends of friends as romantic partners. You’d go to church, or synagogue, different clubs or civic organizations or political parties and that was about it for meeting ‘new folks’. Lots of strange ‘mash ups’ can result, but as I alluded to above, the speed & ‘churn rate’ was quite a bit slower. If you were trying on Mr./Ms. X today, it might be another month or 2-3 before you could line up Y, even if you were a ‘fast worker’ in this regard. It was just a whole lot more difficult to even meet folks in your own age bracket (within a Decade say).

‘Fast workers’ of either sex could and often did exhaust all decent ‘matchable’ romantic possibilities in their small towns and had to move on for fear of their reputations or themselves. Otherwise they’d wind up with that Johnnie from across the tracks that daddy hated because he drank too much and was ‘going nowhere’, but that was your first love and was still ‘fascinated’ by you. Or you’d have to eventually marry Susie, because dating someone in their teens for that long almost assured that she’d get pregnant if you were at all ‘active’. Sure she was not going to college like you, but what did it matter? She was smart & better yet, Hawt (and pliable)!

So Jdate & other dating sites, scurrilous reapers of dashed dreams & deep hopes though they may be, they’ve opened up a whole world of possibilities. Even 1-2 more decent ‘possibles’ at the right time would be worth it to many. Way back in the day, comparatively speaking, it was a desert of possibilities after your college years. Either you met someone though work or where you worshiped or took up someone’s daughter/son that momma was always pushing on you.

Yeah. You’re paying though the nose now for the privilege of using your own guidance in rejecting all those unmarried 30 something nebbishes your mom would foist upon you. Now you can reject them out of hand when they come up on your screen, month after month on Jdate. And then one day another nebbish will look and exclaim; ‘Wow! Some one else who lives nearby who likes Greig & playing the harpsichord & collecting & selling Soviet era modern art! My dreams have come true!’ And no momma could ever really do that for you. Al Gore had to invent the WWW for that magic intro to happen.

So yeah. Feel the magic. More opportunities. Less manners. More contacts & communications, less reading. Isn’t America great or what?

Have I blown out the size limits here? Are you sorry you asked? Cheers & Good Luck! ‘VJ’

Woah…I hope work slows down a bit!

For dating, I think new school is better. Seemingly endless supply, no need to talk before email, etc.

For relationships, I think old school is better for the same reason new school is better for dating. With a bottomless selection, I think it is too tempting for people to keep going back.

It seems there is less on the line with new school than with old.

I absolutely miss dating in the old days. Before cell phones, texting, email etc, we actually made more of an effort - or at least the effort was made upon us.
I miss when someone actually had to a) ask a friend about me and then the friend would come to me
b) have enough guts to chat me up and then ASK for my number rather than giving me his (i’ve noticed this trend more and more where the guy gives me his… I like the reverse personally)
c) approach me!

I don’t know, maybe I’m asking too much - you know, not worrying about the guy dating 8 girls at once, actually wanting to get to know me rather than know my bra size…
I MAY be a bit jaded