I have no idea for accurate this is but it certainly feels like it’s not far off and is fascinating.
On the changes in how couples meet, graphed through time.
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Stuart and I met online - over 20 years ago - through an online dating agency. He lived in Lincolnshire, I lived just outside London so physically meeting wasn’t easy. Anyway, I left my job, sold my house and moved in with him on his horse stud farm and, as they say, the rest is history. We traveled to Gretna Green to marry then moved to France in 2006. And we’re still as happy as the day we met!
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Fascinating, both my marriages have come about through friends but I watched as we soared through the 60s to the present century and the rise of the internet.
Dating seems to have become weird recently. A colleague described to me a couple of years ago the term ‘situationship’ which was more than friends but not yet ready for a relationship, and had developed out of online dating where you arranged to date strangers before meeting them. Sex was likely but not love, respect or care.
Sad.
I know a couple of people who met via a dating agency, but it was a Christian agency so they started out sharing the most important thing in their lives.
“Meeting” over the internet doesn’t sound a great start.
I don’t think it matters how one meets if it works.
I met my wife while working as a research project organiser in the UK and searching for a second S African artist to research an AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) funded project on indigenous species and rewilding of historic landscapes in the UK and SA.
The irony was we’d previously lived in the same country and worked in the same field for five years and had mutual friends, but had never met.
We finally met at a conference in Delft and got married a year later. Sixteen years now!
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1972 in a bar like it seems 13% of couples did. Met in the most iconic pub in Sheffield at the time, The Buccaneer.
When reminiscing years later we realised we had actually met 6 months earlier at a school dance when I offered to repair the heel of her boot that had broke while dancing.
4 years later we tied the knot.
48 years married with 4 children and currently 7 grandchildren later we love life and love each other more.
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We met through a church, where I was helping run a coffee bar/series of events with Steve Chalke. We had met previously at a friends party, but I was a bit busy with someone else at the time & didn’t notice. 2 1/2 years later aged 20 & 18 we got married.
Where you meet doesn’t really matter provided both parties are honest and looking for the best for each other.
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I suspect it doesn’t really matter and bear in mind that “meeting online” doesn’t just mean dating sites, people meet in all sorts of online communities.
This reminds me of a single colleague, many years ago, and we all chipped in to sign him up for a dating agency for a joke(long before online dating and, in retrospect, could probably be seen as bullying).
It ended up that the joke was on us and he met his wife through the service, who he was with until his death.
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I find it a little odd that there is no Section for shared-interests/local clubs, activities…
In my youth… one joined clubs/associations etc (eg Jazz, Young Farmers, Rugby, Cricket, Young Conservatives (sorry), Swimming etc etc… lots of choice… and great fun.
I first met OH when I was about 9… viewed from afar… then, 10 years later we met at a Club night out… and ping…
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I was working in Paris, my future wife was working in Brussels, and we met in nearby (!) Arizona at a conference. We were engaged in less than two weeks. Still happily married, 28 years later…
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Dont apologise, if it had been young labour at the time you’d have shared a pie and a pint of brown ale. 
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Met through a blind date arranged via friends who thought it would be funny to put us together as we were worlds apart and quite outspoken, haha 35 years later still very much together and it turned out we had met at a party some time earlier than the date, frequented the same clubs and venues for several years before that.
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Of course you’re right. Indeed, my examples were intended to support my contention that meeting in person is a much better way to investigate the possibility of a relationship.
People tend to create personas (personae?) online. That persona is (by definition) different, and can be very different, from their real character. If two people develop online a relationship based on idealised images of themselves then when eventually they meet and have a “real” relationship, it’s likely to lead to disappointment. They then either try to keep the relationship with someone who has “changed” afloat or abandon it.
My ex boss, probably 40 years ago literally swapped/exchanged his wife at a wife swapping party, straight swap between 2 couples. AFAIK, they are all still happily married.
In the spirit of an interesting topic to explore, rather than disagreeing, I’m curious how much of our true selves we showed to our partners when we first met, rather than putting forward our best selves and, conversely, after a sustained period of interacting online does our true self start to show through. I don’t know the answer and I suspect, as ever, that “it depends”.
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I have always been true to myself, wysiwyg. Held me back sometimes but thats life.
I think many on here already know how I met Fran, my 2nd wife, through 3 friends, 2 of them married to each other. Then that marriage came to an end and that ex wife became the 1st one of the 3rd friend.
Those 2 remained friends of mine and another married lady with 3 children, who then became eventually my first wife.
I know that reads as if I got the timeline wrong, but I assure you that it isn’t. I met my 2nd wife before I met, and married, my 1st. 
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If you’d done that in last decade, you’d have been wheeled into HR at the double and been lucky not to get handed a P45.