I have very little experience with dating websites. My feeling

In the measured counsel of Nev Schulman—“I have very little experience with dating websites… If it works, great. If you’re serious and legitimate about it and know what you’re looking for, then… it’s definitely effective.”—we hear the old law of tools spoken in a new marketplace. The ancients taught that a plow does not make a harvest; the hands and the season do. So with modern courts of the heart: the instrument can be sharp, but the field must be chosen, the furrow straight, the seed honest. Technology is the vessel; intention is the wind. Without the wind, even the finest ship drifts.

To say one has little experience is not to speak from poverty, but from prudence. It is to weigh a thing by first principles rather than by rumor or frenzy. The wisdom is simple: if a practice works, bless it; if it does not, do not bow before it. In a world that confuses novelty with virtue, this is quiet bravery. Dating websites are no shrine; they are a marketplace. Enter not with superstition but with clarity—know what you’re looking for—and with character—be legitimate and serious—and the market may become a meeting place rather than a maze.

The elders would name these four pillars: Purpose, Truth, Patience, and Boundaries. Purpose asks, “For what do you seek?”—companionship, covenant, or passing weather. Truth demands that the face behind the lantern be the face in daylight, that profiles not be masks. Patience keeps the hand from scattering messages like chaff, so that the wheat of attention may grow. Boundaries draw the line where dignity holds vigil: how often to speak, how soon to meet, what to share, what to guard. On these pillars the modern portico stands, and in their absence, even a gilded portal collapses.

Consider a living parable. A teacher named Hana entered dating websites after a long winter of solitude. She wrote a small creed at her desk: “I seek kindness, steadiness, humor; I will speak plain; I will not apologize for wanting depth.” She was serious, not severe; legitimate, not loud. She refused to become a collector of almosts. When flattery came without questions, she let it pass. When a message carried the weight of curiosity—“How did you become the aunt your nieces trust?”—she answered. Weeks later she met the sender in a café that smelled of oranges and books. They spoke of money and mercy, of chores and jokes, of faith and fatigue. Months after, the creed on her desk had fingerprints from re-reading. She says the tool was effective; I say her intention taught the tool how to serve.

History, too, has its mirror. In older times, matches were brokered by letters carried on foot, by family friends and village elders—the slow algorithm of human witness. Those unions were not holy because of parchment; they were strong because the parties knew what they were looking for, and because the communities vouchsafed what was legitimate. Our messengers now are swifter, but the covenant is unchanged: clarity calls forth clarity; seriousness invites seriousness; mischief begets fog. The river changes its course; the water keeps its nature.

Let us also honor the warning hiding inside the praise. Tools amplify both virtue and confusion. If you arrive in the digital bazaar without a compass, the stalls of charm will sell you mirrors. If you carry need disguised as standards, you will label hunger “chemistry.” Therefore measure first: Are you serious? Are you legitimate—true in photo, age, aim? Do you truly know what you’re looking for—three essentials and three negotiables? If so, walk in peace; if not, tend your house before inviting guests.

What, then, shall the seeker do? First, write a one-page “Rule of Meeting” that names values, boundaries, tempo; keep it near your screen. Second, craft a profile that tells one story you can defend at noon, not just at midnight: one memory, one failure, one hope. Third, use questions as doors, not nets: ask what a person has repaired, what they have released, who they are when no one is watching. Fourth, hold the rite of verification: voice, then video, then public place; let each stage be a candle against shadow. Fifth, practice Sabbath from the scroll: once a week, close the gates, remember your worth without replies. Do these, and the tool will become a bridge.

Thus Schulman’s counsel stands like a milestone on the road: If it works, great—but make it work by bringing your whole, examinable self. Be serious enough to be kind, legitimate enough to be seen, clear enough to know what you’re looking for, and humble enough to be surprised. Then the marketplace becomes a meeting of pilgrims, not a carnival of masks, and the old wisdom travels with us into the new square: the instrument is many, the heart is one—and only a tended heart makes any tool truly effective.