[Blarg]

That last quote was an excellent one and runs pretty deep.

I think you can get a great flash of someone's soul in a deep way online, and even find it enormously gratifying and even have it shake you up, but that unfortunately has nothing to do with whether they are your type. The vast majority of us still have physical types, emotional types, political types, class types, whatever, just "types" that we like vastly more than others and likely credit more than they deserve. And we are likely unfairly unreceptive to those who vary from our preferences or preconceptions on what is right for us. Meet them face to face, and all the shared soul in the world may avail one nothing, or nothing for long. It's a shame, because we may never wind up sharing a particularly deep relationship with the people we actually find attract us in real life, if we are even so lucky as to meet or even marry them. It's perverse and unfortunate that some of the deepest sympathies and ideas we find most in accord with the true core of our being may be far from enough to make us happy, and our attempts at happiness may do so little to address what we need to get there.

Some people don't care that much and can try to make a go of anything, and even be successful at it, but the problem with people who are indifferent to their choices is their indifference in general. They are often fabulously successful on a very shallow level, and that doesn't make for things that last or eventually seem worth preserving.

I wouldn't do the online dating thing, but apparently some make it work. It seems a better avenue for making friends, to me, even ones you share some deep things with, than anything else. At that, it can be wonderful, and let you share and hear ideas you can't do otherwise in the narrowness of any particular life.