Is it just me or...

...it is now very difficult to find people to chat to on the internet?

I was one of the first wave of internet users back in 1995 and I liked to chat to people (ok, women) from other parts of the word. I would log on, open an IM program or a web based program and make a new friend.

Now, I find it difficult. Very rarely I get answers from messages and the amount of free sites has been slashed. Some sites now have 20 men per woman online.

Is the internet as I once knew it over?

I think they're still out there. Just have to go to the right places I suppose. Most of my old 'messenger' buddies have moved on to other forums, etc. But mostly, for me anyway, I got bored of it all and blocked everyone. Now my msn messenger doesn't work at all, and yahoo tends to freeze up my system. Although I really haven't tried d/ling it in a couple years so maybe it will work now.

I wonder where you're going -- every site I belong to seems to have WAY more women than men! I've been actively online even longer than you have and it's always seemed that way to me.

I wonder where you're going -- every site I belong to seems to have WAY more women than men! I've been actively online even longer than you have and it's always seemed that way to me.

Now I wonder where you were going! :confused:

In my experience, there was always a slight uphill journey to make when looking for a lady chat partner owing to the gender ratio but I think it has got worse recently.

I used to use ICQ and there was a page of chat requests divided up into interest and age. In those days there seemed to be 3 men to 1 woman. Recently I uninstalled ICQ as it became a waste of time.

I checked out the sites advertised by this forum. Friendfinder has double the amount of men on it. I sent out a few IM messages which were ignored. I then went went to Age Match and looked at the members on the IM system. They were all men!

Oh bleck -- LOL! I never did find very interesting people at those sorts of places. Somehow, meeting people that were looking for a hookup was always a huge turn-off for me. And friendfinder gets the double-whammy award because that's where my exhusband used to go play the "poor nice guy married to a wife who neglects him" game and chat with women before I left him (don't even get me started on that rant).

Anyway, the places I tended to (and still) visit really had nothing to do with hooking up with anybody at all. The forums I've joined and/or moderated had more to do with my interests: games, writing, parenting... stuff like that! And yeah, the women tend to outnumber the men BIG time! :o