OkCupid changed my life.

I've written on here about my quest to get more friends, including posts about Girlfriend Social and living a more fulfilled life, but I haven't yet written about the site that has made a really big difference to me - OkCupid. I don't really feel the need to explain how OkCupid works, but I was attracted to it mostly because it's free, but also because it has a reputation for having a huge, and fairly young, number of users.
I joined on a whim, but got quite into writing my profile, and fairly quickly went from lurking on the profiles of cute people without messaging them to actually writing and replying to messages. Lots of the people who I messaged didn't get back to me, but I've found myself being much more ok with that than I'd have ever expected. I've not historically been great with rejection, this is linked to the social anxiety thing of thinking people are just pretending to like me, but it's a lot easier on the internet. So a few of my messages get ignored, or conversations fizzle out, because it's online it feels very low-stakes, there are always more cute people to message.
The next step of OkCupid improving my socialisation and confidence was actually meeting people for dates, or kind of dates, I spent a lot of time trying to work out if I was on a date or not. I met up with four people over the course of a few weeks, including a couple who I've seen since as friends, and every time it was much better than I was expecting it to be. The first time was nerve-wracking, even meeting someone for lunch was a huge deal to me, but I've enjoyed myself so much. I've been a bit starved for female companionship, and OkCupid has changed that so much. I've had conversations about make up and feminism! I've sat by the Thames talking about having a changing sexual identity and being poly! A few months ago I didn't know anyone who I could do these things with, and perhaps it's ironic that a dating site has helped me find some really good friends, but I'm ok with that.
 There have been some not so great moments too. I've spent some time not having my profile available for men to see, because I was so bored of getting either one word messages, or at the other extreme, constant requests for threesomes and long, sexually explicit fantasies. They used to upset me, but I'm getting a much thicker skin now. I've also worked out that the appropriate response is snarky reply, followed by blocking the guy, and it is always a guy.
Not all of the men who have messaged me have been like that though, many have been perfectly nice and it is not their fault that I've been generally uninterested. I have met up with one guy from the site, and it's was the most date-like date that I went on, so I have been using it in it's intended way. I've had a couple of conversations where people have expressed surprise about me using a dating site mostly for friendship, but I've found it pretty easy to carve out my own little niche. Not only have I met plenty of people who are interesting in pursuing friendship if nothing more comes out of the date, but I've also met people interested in more, despite the fact I'm in a relationship.
Though I didn't know when I joined there is quite an impressive polyamorous community on OkCupid, possibly helped by the fact you can set your relationship as 'seeing someone' while still using the site to meet people, and I've seen quite a few couples who both us the site, and link to each others profiles. Not only that, but it's fairly LGBT friendly (though could do with more sexuality and gender options) and with users able to add questions there is the oportunity to show a preference for ethic non-monogamy which affects your matches, increasing the chance of meeting like-minded people. It's because of OkCupid that I've met other poly people, been more confident in talking about my own polyamoury and been to a poly-friendly club night. Again, more unexpected, but amazing, benefits.
I know a lot of people who read this post won't be surprised by anything I've said, I'm preaching to the converted to some extent, and there will probably be people reading this I've met through OkCupid. That just provides more evidence of how great the site has been for me, it has changed my life, and for the better, in expected and unexpected ways. So, OkCupid, I love you!