Yes, I put quotes around something. I hate quotation marks. People use them liberally when they should actually be used sparingly. But this time I mean it. The back and forth interactions of which I speak are not really conversations. They're "conversations."
Once the profile pre-screen is over, online dating takes you into the dialogue phase. There are different ways to do this. The first steps are "guided conversations" where you answer prescribed questions and send them to the other person, and vice versa. The questions give you four answer choices or you can write your own in the space provided. If someone were to analyze the question selection, I bet the results would be pretty interesting. I mostly get the same questions.
Then come the Must Haves and Can't Stands. As in, I must have someone who is believes in fidelity and I can't stand someone who lies. Again, you chose from a pre-written list and choose five in each category. There are really strange ones on there. I'm probably revealing my personal biases here, but the ones I find most offensive are ones like "I can't stand someone who is overweight" and "I must have someone who is considered attractive by current standards." Isn't it a given that you're going to date someone who you find attractive and you won't date someone you find repulsive? Perhaps not.
After this, if you continue through the guided portion of your tour, you get to the open ended questions. You can pick from another prescribed list (I wish I could judge the poor souls who need that much help, but let's be honest - we're on the same website) or make up your own. This can be another dumb step in the process or you can make it fun - like having someone else answer the questions for you. My married-for-seven-years bff gave me some ideas for answers. Luckily the send button was not hit before her answers were erased, but her responses to the question "besides love, what's one thing you think is necessary for a successful relationship" were hysterical. I finally settled on something banal like communication, but it was understood to be code for "you have to be able to fight well."
Finally, there is the email section. It's like normal email but you don't have email addresses - you just email through the website. This seems to only take a couple times and then they ask for your number and say "if you'd like to chat..." Then you are free to be regular people with real conversations. And then the OD site gets to add you into a statistic - on one side of success or the other.
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