Probably your best move. As best I can tell, (honest) people on those sites are trying to approximate the kind of background info you get “on referral.” And from a business perspective, the service itself is just capitalizing on loneliness and taking advantage of how geographically scattered people are. So it’s messy from the get-go.

Making friends and building a real, in person, social network is more effort but will yield stronger results. In the end, other people will be able to vouch for your social behavior which is something a dating site cannot do. And that goes both directions, too. As a bonus: you may get to see if your date’s friends are good people, before you even go out.