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Yet another take on the "stigma" of online dating

No article on online dating seems complete unless it talks about the "stigma" associated with it, and the New York Times Magazine piece is no exception:

Still, a fair number of people continue to feel a stigma about dating online, ranging from the waning belief that it's a dangerous refuge for the desperate and unsavory to the milder but still unappealing notion that it's a public bazaar for the sort of people who thrive on selling themselves. The shopping metaphor is apt; online dating involves browsing and choosing among a seemingly infinite array of possible mates. But those who see a transactional approach to coupling as something new and unseemly would do well to pick up a novel by Jane Austen, where characters are introduced alongside their incomes. There is nothing new about the idea of marriage as a business transaction.

Does online dating have a stigma? Because a stigma exists only as social perception, as long as people are talking about it then it exists, at least to a certain extent. The article seems to be saying that such a stigma shouldn't exist, because shopping metaphor is an apt comparison to traditions from earlier times and from other cultures, where marriage is more of an economic market and less of a random "dating game" where people walk into a bar and hope that they get lucky.

posted November 23, 2003