The Ruminant, lately I have thought about creating a profile too. I actually did, earlier this year, in an emotional reaction to my breakup, but quickly took it down (for the reasons you allude to with your “on the prowl” comments). My experience over the years with online dating has been that people are generally very aggressive/motivated to date. For example, when I’d receive a message, if I took a few days to resond, I would often get a follow up message from the sender “If you’re not interested, let me know” or worse “What is it you don’t like about me?” when I simply hadn’t made time to respond yet. It made me feel pressured and that my pacing wasn’t compatible with the online dating world. There may be sites where a more relaxed approach works, but I haven’t had any success finding them.

For what it’s worth, I did end up meeting a woman on OKCupid years ago who became a dear friend for several years. On that particular site, one of the features is that when you’re looking at a person’s profile, they will show you “similar users” to the one you’re viewing (ie “If you like this guy, you’ll like these other guys”). Out of curiosity, I pulled up my own profile to see who the “similar users” were. I read the top profile and let me tell you, that woman sounded fantastic, lol. I sent her a note to say hi, she wrote back, and before too long, we made our first “date” (plutonic) together to see a concert. We really hit it off and stayed friends for a number of years. So, it’s definitely possible to find friends/network on dating sites, though you might have better luck with Meetup groups or something where there is no implied romantic aspects.