Not all relationships start with "hello." I met my wife online 10 years ago as a friend of a mutual online friend on a pre-Facebook social media site. Our first conversation didn't involve "hello," and it didn't involve the weather or other pointless social niceties that you might think of as polite. We immediately started being honest about who we were and what we were interested in. I didn't even consider it a possible relationship since we lived on the other side of the country from each other. But we talked online and on the phone for six months until I got some vacation time and she suggested I come out and see her. And I realized that we'd gotten past all the bullshit early months of awkward dating in our first conversation because we never started pretending to be people we weren't. And that wouldn't have happened in person. I wouldn't have been inclined to strike up a conversation with a random person (where? at a bar?) the way we struck up a conversation online. The technology facilitated us being more honest and sincere from the very beginning. And we've been together for 10 years.