Illustration: David Foldvari

The flaw in dating websites' business model came into focus last week. They seek to make money out of loneliness and sexual frustration but their services threaten the existence of those very feelings. It's not the same as selling food or porn, which satisfied customers return to buy more of. If a dating website has any properly satisfied customers, it'll never hear from them again.

You may think that's unlikely to be a pressing problem. Perhaps you're of the view that internet dating is the last resort of the socially dysfunctional or irredeemably unattractive – that signing up for a dating website is just the final hopeless gesture you make before resigning yourself to dying alone. On a singleton's "to do" list, it's one place above "Bequeath all my money to a cats' home".

If so, you're railing against the tide of general chat. Everyone's saying how internet dating is the future – the technological solution to busy, modern disconnected urban life. "There's no shame in it," people declare – which obviously implies there's some shame in it or they wouldn't have brought up the concept of shame. Nobody ever bothered to point out that there's no shame in eating soup or going for a walk. But nevertheless, it could genuinely mean that there's now less shame in it (unless it's an S&M dating site, in which case, there's exactly the amount of shame that you're into). And, anecdotally, I've heard online dating can be a great way for professional men on the rebound to have one-off sex with women seeking long-term relationships.

Whatever your view of the efficacy of the phenomenon, many of the dating websites themselves seem to think that simply introducing the single to the single doesn't constitute a viable commercial plan. There have to be lies to entice people in. Monday's edition of Panorama exposed a number of ploys that sites have been using to prey on the horny and alone. For example there's "pseudo profiling", which a former employee of Global Personals explained thus: "We'd steal someone's identity through, say, MySpace or something. We'd take someone from a totally different country – Spain or wherever. We'd take the person's photos online and we'd start knocking out messages. It was all fake."

So, behind many online dating profiles, there's just a stranger dishonestly typing bullshit to attract the desperate. On top of that, the websites are generating pseudo profiles. How unfair of these companies to ensnare with their corporate lies lonely people who are quietly trying to lie each other into bed. Customers should be able to assume that the falsehoods they're reading contain at least a kernel of truth: their correspondents are sincerely looking for sex or company, and are willing to endure sex to get company, or endure company to get sex.

If I sound cynical about dating, it's because I've never really understood it. But then I was never introduced to it properly. At a formative age, nobody ever told me that it was something you were supposed to do if you fancied a girl: that you should invite her on some sort of pre-arranged social encounter and, in so doing, irretrievably and unilaterally betray your feelings. Obviously I'd seen dating depicted in films and stories – but the same could be said for dragons and talking badgers.

"How can two people who don't really know each other very well possibly spend all that time having dinner with a candle in between them, or walking round a museum, or even going to the theatre, which admittedly is mainly sitting in silence but with all sorts of intervals and snack- and programme-buying gaps, not to mention the drink afterwards, while in denial of a huge, mortifying subtext of mutual judgment?" I thought, not in exactly those words. I didn't really believe that, post the era of widespread ballroom dancing, such a formal and artificial way of piloting a relationship was what anyone actually did.

It's quite an odd concept to a shy teenager and so I think it warranted a full explanation. I wish someone had said to me: "Honestly, this genuinely happens. Ask her to the cinema or something. It won't necessarily work out, but posterity will judge your actions to have been perfectly reasonable." I might have had a go then. I was an obedient adolescent and underwent all sorts of odd and awkward situations – piano lessons, university interviews, French exchanges – because I was reliably informed it was part of the unavoidable ordeal of growing up.

But the only relationship advice I can remember being given was that I should "be myself" – a disastrous suggestion that, for many years, meant "silently infatuated". "Being myself" was never going to encompass saying: "There's a rather nice little Italian restaurant I've been meaning to try – perhaps I could pick you up at 7.30?" Just typing that has made me feel slightly sick, but there's no doubting the logic that, if you want someone to go out with you, asking them out is not an insane first step. But, like with algebra, the logic needs to be pointed out for all but the most gifted.

For my generation, a proper grounding in dating chutzpah, like the teaching of English grammar, had been removed from the curriculum. I'm not sure Michael Gove is the man to put that right. A lot of men my age went into the world thinking that the only way you got a girlfriend was to find a way of copping off with someone at a party. And the level of drunkenness often required by both individuals in order to make that happen can impair judgment of mutual compatibility. I'm not saying I approve of arranged marriage, but it sometimes works better than getting hammered, having a cry, drinking through it, throwing up and then returning to the party's chaotic closing minutes saying to yourself: "Right, who's left?" Which is why I usually stopped at the throwing-up stage.

Had online dating existed when I was growing up, it might have been harder for me to treat such interactions like the mythical unicorn. I might have learnt sooner about how to converse on random subjects with a subtext of wanting to be found attractive – or "flirtation", as I believe it's known by non-robots. I think that would have done me good, even if the person I was exchanging lies with was just an employee of the website. With dates, as with piano lessons, there's not much point turning up unless you've practised.

David Mitchell's autobiography of terrible dates and other memories, Back Story, is out now in paperback