Just spend an hour watching a wedding show and you’re bound to see at least ten online dating commercials.
Look at them… cheesy smiles, all hugged up, painting a wall or doing some other ridiculously fun activity. In the back of your mind, thinking — “this doesn’t really happen” or dating online is too ‘out there’ for you. And while there’s solace in not being “out there,” there are thousands of people finding love via Internet… and, they’re black!
Ron Worthy, executive director of BlackPeopleMeet.com, knows all about this phenomenon having founded the leading online dating site for black singles.
“I really believe in it,” Worthy told EURweb.com. “Ultimately, the black community is built on family and family is built on relationships. So, this is my way of helping out the community; allowing people to have better and more effective ways of building a relationship.”
With nearly one million unique visitors per month, Worthy says that 75 percent of people joining the site are looking for a serious relationship. Great news, if that’s what you’re looking for.
And if you think about it, online dating is analogous to biblical forms of courtship. Filters on profiles allow you to know family background, career goals and family values the same way a father would meet/grill potential suitors for their daughters.
Still ambivalent? There are a lot of ways to date online, discretely. Every site allows you the option to put up a profile picture or not. You can also set your profile up to view other people’s pages, but remain unsearchable.
Worthy has a theory on why women are still unsure about dating online. “Sisters, a lot of times, wait for the man to be delivered by God on some level. They expect the guy across the room to say, ‘Wow. That’s my soulmate and I want to be with her for the rest of my life.’ It just doesn’t happen like that. That’s like the love lottery.”
