It’s great how you navigated online dating to acclimate to dating itself and also realized its other usefulness: life experience. I’d argue that a lot of the lessons here about meeting people and taking an interest in a new experience could be applied to other adventures, like new and temporary jobs.
My online dating experience was with OkCupid, which is sort of like a free Match-dot-com website. Like you, I went on lots of dates and made a number of friends along the way. In fact, even though I wasn’t looking for anything long term, during the last months of using OkCupid I met the woman who would become my wife. An openness to having new experiences with others is what made this possible. Also, even though we met online, it was all still pretty romantic and adventurous. Cheers!