The online dating world is a wild and unpredictable domain. Every person seeks a dating partner and uses many of the sites that are available. Ranging from expensive to free, people are looking for that next partner. It appears that the sites that are free seem to appeal to one group, the ethnic sites to ethnicity, the expensive ones appeal to people who have more disposable income.

In meeting a prospective new partner, there is one word that comes to mind SCREENING. Some of the people on dating sites are pretty crazy or dysfunctional. Others may or may not be keepers. In doing your screening, you have to evaluate, you need an internal system, you need flags and flaglettes.

Your mechanism of screening should allow you see some potential problems or flags. (one woman I worked with met a guy with so many flags he looked like the UN)

But not everyone can be so colorful. Sometimes you get an inkling of a problem, but it’s not so clear cut, so what do you do? You use a flaglette. A flaglette looks like this:

It’s a small, but significant, marking device. It tells you “hmm, I need to keep my eye on this”. In this way you have noted that there is an issue to address, without ignoring it, and without an exaggerated “this person is not good for me” reaction.


Flags and Flaglettes are good screening devices that allow us to pay attention to things we might ignore.