I don&#x27;t think on-line dating is a sham. It seems to be a natural answer to the growing problem - meeting people in general, and potential romantic partners in particular, gets an order of magnitude harder when you finish education. For most people, it&#x27;s suddenly 9-10h&#x2F;day spent at work (8h + commute), and it&#x27;s hard to maintain a social life when you&#x27;re both a) tired every evening, and b) required to be in good shape the next morning. Of course, many deal with it perfectly fine. Many deal only sort-of, which is why workplace romance is so common even though employers try to fight it as much as possible. But then there&#x27;s a large group that simply can&#x27;t find the right opportunities. On-line dating is great for those. And it works at least sometimes - I personally know of people who met and got married through one site.<p>That said, I&#x27;m totally not surprised by your observation about Facebook events. It&#x27;s more <i>natural</i> to meet people like that, without prior obligations. People tend to be more open, and conversations more genuine. Especially if this is a topical event, you automatically have people pre-selected for interest compatibility. Just like money can be detrimental to the projects of passion, on-line dating seems like &quot;trying too hard&quot;, compared to casual meetup. I tried using a dating service once, and such dates actually felt to me more like a business transaction than a meeting of strangers. But then again, I&#x27;m shy, I prefer going the roundabout way :).<p>And to add N=1 story, my success in finding a potential future friend or romantic partner tends to be inversely proportional to how much I try, and a direct function of number of events and public appearances I make. I&#x27;m thankful for services like Facebook and Meetup, which let you know about interesting events in the area without having you spend a ton of time on finding them.