You are absolutely right. I subscribed in 2002 to HotorNot and later on Plenty of Fish and I remained signed up on these dating sites until 2012.
I would say that 2002-8 were they "hey days" of dating web sites. I am Italian and I always been pretty much more interested to know and meet foreign girls rather than local girls. In particular I am very attracted by North Americans,Australians and Scandinavians- thus
online dating facilitated me to know girls around the world. it was more than ideal.
Back in the day (especially during 2006) I used to receive from 2-10 messages daily. About 80% of these messages were from very good looking ladies who usually had more to say than just " Hi how are you". I wouldn't say that everything was perfect, but these ladies often put passion in their messages. The conversation were often pleasant and not dull. I also used to receive virtual flowers and online presents which today seems something unthinkable. All this made me feel cute, special and desired and made me romanticized about a relationship with a foreign girl.
As a man with his erotic desires I used to ask to these ladies to do cyber sex or to do webcam sex with me- many wouldn't object all this after a bit of convincing. Today if you ask something similar to ladies online, they are likely to discard you as soon as you talk about those things.
Eventually, everything was not just an online thing. Some of these girls came to Italy exclusively to see me, or came here to vacation and then we met in the mean time. We used to have great adventures especially in the summer. We would visit places together and often kissed on the first or second night and eventually I used to have sex with them. I also exchanged phone calls, post cards and letters and small presents. There was some of romanticism. At times I visited some of them. Not every girl was like in the photos or webcam, neither all of them had a good behaviour but I would say that 70% of them were exactly as I expected to be.
it was a great time. My time on internet worth it.
Now as in 2014 all this seems a mirage.
In the winter of 2010 I moved to another country and I started to see that traffic went down drastically without any apparent reason. , I used to get one message or two a month when lucky. I wondered if my location had nothing to do with it...but that was not the problem..as in fact, I changed location, photos, content of profiles, even age, and other things but the result was always the same..I had not the attention I used to have..
Messages became increasingly rare and they were often from unattractive ladies or ladies who were previously married ( which I am not interested)...and some messages were shallow and they started to get shorter and shorter.
I wondered why all this happened. Therefore Just like you I developed some theories and I also looked for answers online..
Here is what I think what are the causes of this decline for me and many other guys...
1) Back in the day Dating Online was not taken so seriously in contrast with today where dating online is more a serious issue. This made women to be more picky about who they chose.
2) As a foreign men, I was cute and exotic and some of these girls never talked to an Italian before so they became very interested in me. I represented something new and maybe a possible better option of their local guys. Today only few have this interest in me as internet is full of foreign so I am not much of a novelty. In fact I now very rarely I get asked about my accent and culture. Before it was the norm. As dating sites became more serious, women also became increasingly more realistic about a long distance relationship. so here is another reason for this decline.
3) Gender ratio.I believe that men have always been more than women at least in most of dating sites but that gap was usually of a slight percentage. Sometimes more girls were online than men and thus it was a fair game. Today in any dating sites at least 80% are a men and 20 % are women. Therefore these women get tons of messages and even the less attractive of them ( even in terms of personality) gets 100s of messages a day or week. Women become increasingly picky and stuck up because of this and often they don't even read every all the messages.
Guys are slowing giving up on dating sites for this reason. But no dating sites cares or seem to address this issue. After all they all want to earn money, they don't care of you fining love or have healthy fun.
4) Cell phones. Before women would sit and do the messaging. They did this on purpose, they would sit, look for guys and invest time to write them. With the cell phone you become reachable everywhere but a woman doesn't invest much time to start a first contact, and usually they type shortly as cellphone are not practical for long digital conversation. Also now women only expect to receive messages and they want guys to work hard for them. ( I am not too much sure of this theory but I heard in many forums despite some girls deny it).
5) In early 2000s You had the " curiosity culture" about others people life( because it was the time we first connected with stranger at fast rate) which is completely absent today on dating site.
6) For those who use Facebook as dating site, this is not longer taken as a naïve place. it is a private space and getting to add strangers become difficult. Facebook itself made restrictions on adding strangers.
7) I think the 80s generation was a bit more fan, we are better in socializing than 90's generation but this may seem a bit biased
I really miss these distant days of dating sites ( late 90s until 2010). they were fan and they would cherish the mood of many men who were single. I wish it was the same and I thought this fun was never going to end.
Today there are many dating sites where there are exclusively South Americans, Asians, Eastern Europeans and African women. On this sites women often establish the first interaction and engage in longer conversation when they know English ( but many don't). However, some of these women are often unreliable because they are gold diggers out of their county, plus it is also hard to meet them for Visa related problems.
Two conclusive notes :
I am not sure the dating site will return as they were before. In the future we may see virtual reality, genetic matching, or more accurate matching system but this may be in 2 decades from now.
I also hope that they will do these websites more pro-male and encourage women to write more first. Both men and women will benefit from this.
Until then, go out and meet girls, it is much more easier than website nowadays. Meeting girls/women in public has also it's big benefits.That's what I do now and that's what I suggest to other guys. Although because my lack of time to go out often, I wish I could still benefit these "old" style dating sites. )))
I hope my theories help. Sorry if I was too long
