Is there a stigma attached to meeting people online? My friends and family seem to think that meeting someone online is somehow bad. If I said I met someone at the store or the library that would be okay. But in reality, they are just as much of a stranger as someone you meet online. They also can't comprehend how I can have good female friends from online. Does anyone else have this problem with family not approving of online meeting?

Yeah, but I don't care what other people think. You can meet a psycho just as easily in real life, and at least online, we have the block and delete buttons.

I think some think so because it is still some what new. I don't see it any different in real life except you get to meet the person face to face the first time

I'd be screwed if not for my online friends; I live in one of the stupidest states in America (possibly the stupidest) and all the men are fat and ugly and look 20 years older than they really are. Thank god for online dating!!!!!

Yes, though, I think it's gotten better than it used to be. Meeting people online is slowly becoming more accepted.

Only CRAZY people meet people from online.

I tell people if you are not careful all the time and even when you are careful all the time, you take a chance of meeting a problem in any situation or any locale.

I believe the internet is more dangerous for the very naive who are limited by age or some other circumstance to the outside world and the dangers in it.

Young people are at risk because they are easily swayed to disregard their warning signals.

But for grown people who have been around the block there is no difference.

Yep...I think the reason it's supposedly better to run into someone and get along is that you already know for sure there's attraction and chemistry, but as far as the person being a total stranger..I agree. There are people on here I enjoy talking to just as much as my close friends. As far as meeting someone to date though...I do think that is considered an expectation, some people are hard to read online as far as sarcasm and everything goes...it's easy to build a person up in your mind to be one way and then meet them and it's different and you don't have as much to say for whatever reason in person.

My family thinks I am nuts for wanting to meet someone from online...

Tell them to be glad it's not a married guy, with 4 kids and a serious drinking problem that you met behind a bar. That should give them some comfort.

When I first started dabbling with these sites some 10 years ago, it was considered the dating-equivalent of a back-alley abortion.

I think there's much less of a stigma now; there are so many more sites, some really big sites, and they've mainstreamed into TV commercials and such.

But there are still people who scoff at the very idea of meeting people on line -- as if to say "You had to resort to that?"

A lot of people have an inherent tendency to pooh-pooh anything that strikes them as new or different or innovative. But then, they're probably all in really boring and unsatisfying marriages....

The most ****ed up guy I ever met, I met in college. Go figure....

interesting question...

my "older" friends think it's wierd, my "younger" friends think nothing of it and "that's just a part of dating now"...

bleh, it works... I don't mind at all and I am not ashamed at all... the way I look at it -- meeting someone online is very interesting becuase I have met sooooo many people that I would otherwise have never been exposed too...

$.02

Well I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with this problem.

I agree with Agoodguy, it's usually a generational thing, the younger crowd thinks it's cool, the older ones think it's up there with prostitution.

My boys think it's weird that I'm on here and refer to other minglers
as my friends. When I'm on the phone with someone, they want to see who, see the picture and profile.
I think their being protective of me...

It must have a stigma I had a GF who would always say before she introduced me to her friends " Don't tell them we met online" I never understood it but like most stigmas it only affects those who are dumb or ignorant enough to believe it.

I told my parents and got a lecture about safety. My mother made me promise I'd only meet them in very public places... like I was a child about to be taken against my will by a man offering candy or something.

Wouldn't you feel weird if ya met the Kool Aid man at TGIFridays?