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Hi everyone 

I usually don’t watch much tv , 

but I have lately watched a few episodes of first dates Australia and Uk  and I actually think that it’s quite an interesting show to watch with it’s different content and with all sorts of matched up types of couples and their recorded interaction and behaviour at a  set up intimate romantic dinner at a special restaurant on a blind , first date . 

Earlier  on , with  the introduction of the internet into mainstream Australia and the following rapid explosion of multimedia web sites, that occurred here when I was a much younger man.

This quickly changed so much about our way of life in general and this of course also included romance. 

This  led to  a huge shift in the dating game at the time for singles , and it completely changed the way that we  all mostly introduce ourselves and hopefully meet romantically and the internet went together hand in hand with the then development of the first internet dating sites , that just exploded onto our computer screens. 

It began developing at a fast pace around 2007 and really the industry got going with the later development and arrival of Tinder onto the market in 2012 . 

Most of the sites in the early days were free of charge for member access and use of their particular site as they  were  mostly sponsored and paid for by advertisers that appeared on your screen as  annoying pop ups . 

I think it’s interesting that right now the Australian government  now wants to introduce access restrictions to our youth to certain social media platforms.

I guess when you read the following story you may understand why social media can be  a real concern , just a bit more. 

I haven’t personally been on a dating site for many years now as back then I found it was a waste of time for me as I hadn’t had any success with it in actually finding a date or new partner. 

But I had a few dates that I met from on there in that time . 

By the time I stopped using the services the dating sites had basically started shifting away from the free member services they initially provided and had moved toward on to a paying  for use via a membership fee , in an evolving industry and soon with the next major change  came about when smart phones hit the scene , changing the game again  forever. 

Firstly I thought that when sites started charging fees  that it was a bit discriminatory and unfair for men  because at that time , women were not charged to join up and post their profile , as this was a way for the company to attract them to add their profile on to the service as the numbers of men members back then far outweighed women.

I think if we fast forward now in 2024 for men it may be even still free for them to browse single women on some sites , but as soon as you want to message or contact a potential date it goes strait back to you paying for the privilege and joining up first , so they tease you into joining. 

It’s a multi multi million dollar industry  just for running a fairly large computer program , 

so those service providers love that the single population across the World population is so large . 

Realistically internet dating has its place in modern society, when it comes to relationship introduction and with their development and public acceptance and that now their services are provided for every sort of different social group in the community , and now that electronic system mostly takes over the the place of our old traditional meeting and dating methods 

But it  certainly also has its pitfalls and dangers attached to it . 

Quite commonly after initial contact , you can message each other back and forth at your leisure for as long as you want and until you are comfortable enough with them to organise a date or you decide that they are not for you and you simply delete them , or that they don’t like you and they delete you , you can ask them  general and  personal questions in the chat to help you form an opinion on their personality . 

Most profiles have a photo of the person attached , but some are hidden and of course naturally the attractive ones get the most interest and  more friend requests  sent to them which is completely understandable. 

But there are no guarantees. 

At the time that I  joined up I had gone through an emotional divorce ,it was several years later and I was feeling quite lonely, and then I along with a mate that was in the same situation , that together , one night over a few beers we came up with a plan decided that together we would both join  the Oasis dating site  , mostly because it was free and had been the first one to pop up on a search . 

So we both joined and I guess it was a bit of fun to write a profile but I struggled a bit with what to write on it as it’s sort of like a advertisement to sell yourself possibly to a new partner and I’m not that  much of a salesman . 

But once we were both registered we were ready to start on a romantic adventure , or so I thought. 

So basically how it worked was that they had a big list of single women profiles all over the country, in the  data base so you would put in a specific search and a specified distance  radius from your home that you would be prepared to travel from home to meet someone and then you push the  enter button and in a second, hey presto there appears.

A drop down list of potential partners as their profile and photos and their distance from you would  quickly appear on your computer screen. 

Then comes the part where you scroll through them and read through their posted profile if you basically like their photo , and if you are interested  then , you can ask them via a message for a contact request , and then just wait . 

Sometimes a reply can take days and sometimes  it’s instantly. 

You can request as many contacts as you like at once . I don’t think there was a limit or I never reached it. 

If they decide to accept your request , you would get a notification and a drop down contact box would appear at the bottom corner of your screen with them listed on top in it ,  and every contact you make from then on was then added to the list in your contact box and remains there. 

Until  they are deleted by either party . 

Then it was sort of like indirect texting , where you could leave each other messages to see next time you logged on to the service. 

If you were both on line at the same time a light next would indicate this next to their name and you could just freely  chat in real time  just like messenger. 

So to many people it actually became a lifestyle , just chatting away to random people and taking up a lot of their free time . 

So by the second night and  with not to many contacts added on to my profile , somehow me and my mate  both decided that it would be funny and a good idea and we added each other as a contact on there just as a bit of fun . 

We did have a few laughs messaging back and forth for a while , but we had to stop as it felt a bit weird and I sort of felt that he was developing romantic feelings for me and and we then both just went back to messaging our existing contacts and  continue date chasing lol

So  I found that you tend to go through the lists of profiles quite fast and then out of desperation for a date or new contract you then automatically just start to increase your dating search radius  a bit at a time to see more  new women’s profiles in a bigger area . 

Soon  if that’s the way it goes you may find that soon in stead of the 10 km radius that you started with that you have actually now reached out to the other side of Melbourne, 

So instead of being prepared to travel 10 km for a date now it was 140 km or nearly a long distance relationship. 

So then you consider do I start over searching  local women again and maybe lower my standards ? 

Or do I  just give up ? 

You can also  simply make friends with people you contact on there but that’s not what most people are looking for . 

So , I do have a few tales to tell  you from my personal experiences from  me looking for a  romantic date on Oasis , and I think that the first one  that I will share with you all , is now when I come to think about it is actually quite hilarious , 

I’m not sure that on that night in question that I quite felt that way about it. 

But it’s what happened and I guess that I’m not the Lone Ranger but it certainly was an interesting introduction to internet dating that I will never forget . 

So  soon I will sit down and write out the story and share my experiences with you and I hope that you will enjoy reading it as we take a bit of a look at my romantic  past , tat was for that time totally influenced by a computer. 

Cheers 

Curlyg