Some people think that only "desperate weirdos" use online dating. Others have seen their perfectly normal cousins find great success with it. The goal of this post is not to tell you the creepy horror stories and adorable love stories that I have heard, because you've already heard enough of those that cloud your ability to view online dating objectively. I'm going to take a different approach to illustrate the debatable effectiveness of online dating sites.
One store has a digital camera for $49 with a close-up portrait feature that will be perfect for taking close-up pictures with heads touching. Another store has a digital camera that is not as great for $299. If you are rational and you know about both cameras, you would obviously buy the $49 dollar one because it better meets your photography needs and is cheaper.
However, if you only go to the store that sells the $299 digital camera without knowing about the better camera at the other store, you miss out. You might get ripped off, or worse, not buy a digital camera at all when you really wanted one. You don't have all of the information you need to make the rational decision. Fancy economists would say that perfect information is not present.
Some people that may or may not be rational would go to every store searching for the best deal. While these people save money on the digital camera, they pay for it dearly in time and gas spent searching for it. The time, money, resources, etcetera wasted on driving around town when there might not even be a better deal out there are appropriately called search costs.
The most rational consumer would find the best camera in a few minutes by searching for digital cameras online. It's no secret that the internet is revolutionizing the way we shop. The internet tells you the features and prices of the available digital cameras so that you can make the right decision without even leaving your home. It virtually (virtually as in "almost wholly" and virtually as in "through the internet") eliminates these barriers to rational decision making: lack of perfect information and search costs.
The concepts of search costs and perfect information can be applied to other stuff too, like dating. You don't even get the opportunity to meet every possible dating partner, let alone get to know each person enough to know whether or not his/her personality is what you want and need. Lack of perfect information prevails, and search costs are virtually (virtually as in "almost wholly" not "through the internet") infinite.
Just like the rational consumer can cut search costs by using the internet to find a digital camera, the rational dater can cut search costs by using the internet to find a partner. Sites like Match.com and eHarmony quickly sift through thousands of users and show you which ones have the features you're looking for. In this case, instead of a close-up portrait feature that will be perfect for taking pictures with heads touching, the "features" are sense of humor, religious beliefs, activity level, life outlook, and whether or not they are a Harry Potter fan.
If using online dating sites is a rational approach to dating, why doesn't everyone do it? Well, we aren't rational. When it comes to online dating there is another barrier to rationality: the network effect. Our online dating success depends on whether or not other people do it, so you won't do it unless other people do. If only a few "desperate weirdos" sign up for online dating, then you are less likely to find a match, whereas you can buy a quality digital camera regardless of whether or not other people do.
Since enrolling in online dating is only a rational choice if enough people do it, then other people have to do it. In order to make it a rational choice, enough people have to do it, but they won't do it since it's not a rational choice unless enough people do it. This is a bit of a debacle. How will people be convinced to break the catch 22? Maybe this blog post will help, or maybe viral parodies depicting "desperate weirdos" like this one:
