The replies on this article, and on others I&#x27;ve seen about the topic of online dating before, give me the impression that somehow everybody here only uses the &#x27;free&#x27; online dating services. In my experience there&#x27;s a huge difference in the efficiency of dating sites where everybody can sign up for free (even if they need to pay up later to actually get in touch with someone), and dating sites that only allow paying members.<p>When I was still dating online I&#x27;ve used multiple different sites, and the experience was always perfectly aligned with the the article (which by the way was very enjoyable to read, mostly because it was so recognizable, but also because it&#x27;s well-written and witty).<p>That was, until I decided to sign up for a paid-members-only online dating site. All of a sudden all the profiles seemed so much more truthful and realistic. Women would actually respond to my messages, if only to politely let me know they were not interested. I would regularly receive unsolicited messages from women, often because they liked things about my profile text, which almost never happened on the free sites even though I used the exact same text. Within less than a year I met my current girlfriend who I&#x27;ve been with for 2 years now, and surprise: like many of the other women on that site she&#x27;s a perfectly normal person who didn&#x27;t feel the need to stuff and fluff her online profile like everyone seems to do on &#x27;free&#x27; online dating services.<p>Moral of the story: there&#x27;s plenty of opportunity to find someone online, if you look in the right places. Don&#x27;t expect to have a lot of success on the free websites though, there&#x27;s so much noise in the profiles on these sites that the whole concept of writing something about yourself and sending messages falls apart. Half of the profiles on these sites are fake or abandoned anyway.