The Chris Effect

As someone who seems to have every strike against him when it comes to meeting women, I need to take advantage of every opportunity and venue that comes my way. So I entered the world of online dating a while ago, and have not been impressed.

Online dating is somewhat of a misnomer – you don’t actually date people, you just write or chat back and forth until you decide you want to meet and/or date. From what I understand, after that things get a bit complicated.

I haven’t exactly made it that far, and the main reason for that is because almost of these dating sites want me to pay to use them. This is something I’m not inclined to do. While I believe that love is about the most important thing there is in life, I disagree with having to pay to find it.

When I see that ‘please subscribe to continue’ page, it’s hard not to think of these websites as nothing more than online pimping businesses. Yes, there are websites where the very function they perform is to orchestrate hook-ups and one-night stands, and I actually respect these websites more, despite being against the product they’re selling. You still have to pay for them, but at least you might be getting something out of it.

But anyway, I’m talking about the actual dating, meet-your-soulmate sites. Some of these sites – I’m looking at you E-Harmony – don’t even allow you to see the pictures of the people you’re supposed to be contacting. Now they might argue that they connect people based on personality – not looks – but then why show the pics if people pay? That’s right, if you pay, you get the full service. If you don’t pay, all you can really do is ask someone a few questions from predetermined list. And then what? I actually don’t know; I haven’t made it passed that part.

E-Harmony is a load of croak anyway. I’ve been a (non-paying) member for nearly two years, and they’re still finding matches for me. I’ve got nearly one-thousand “perfect” matches in my local area. That’s right – 1,000. Well, some of them are located more than a hundred kilometers away from me – something I had to make clear on three separate occasions was too far away. And let’s not forget that these people are matched to me based on “29 Dimensions® of Compatibility.” I’ve looked into some of these profiles, and some of them sound NOTHING like the kind of person I’d be interested in. For these reasons I don’t trust the site. So why would I pay for their service?

Most of the other sites (such as Match.com or Zoosk) limit your interaction with other people to just about none – unless you pay. I disagree with this on principle, if nothing else. You don’t have to pay to meet people in real life (like at a bar, which is where many people do, unfortunately, meet). And I don’t count those bars where you have to pay to get in because I don’t use those bars. As far as I’m concerned, any place I have to pay to get in shouldn’t charge me for drinks. What am I paying for, anyway?

Zoosk has an interesting little feature; they’ll scientifically (read: randomly) match you up with someone. You can view their profile and vote on whether or not you want to meet. Now, if you both say yes, you’ll be notified. If one of you says no then there’s no notification. They keep it all secret so no one will ever know what the other said. So basically, if the other person doesn’t want to meet me, Zoosk won’t tell me that, you know, to spare my feelings. What confuses me is: how will I NOT know? Assuming I vote yes, I’ll get notified if they vote yes too – and if I get no notification, then obviously they said no. Anyone can figure this out. My feelings are not spared. Oh, and if I want to vote I have to pay.

These sites are there to make money. I understand that, but I disagree with it. They are trying to profit off lonely, single people. People that are awkward in social situations, or simply shy. The kind of people who are more comfortable using these online dating sites because they eliminate the face-to-face confrontation. Let’s face it, meeting people in person can be daunting, and the fear of doing this can be a real handicap for some. It’s these people who are being taken advantage of, because they don’t feel like they have much of a choice in paying. There are plenty of non-profit sites out there that are doing great; Wikipedia, Open Office, Facebook, Google, to name a few. Sure, some of these sites turn a profit, but not off the people who use them. Why can’t dating sites function this way?

Plentyoffish is one of the few sites that lets me try to meet women for free (although they now have an ‘ultra’ service that somehow requires money to work). I say ‘try’ because it hasn’t been going well; no one ever messages me back. What makes the other sites so confident that they’ll find someone to talk to me that they can charge me a monthly fee? So yeah, I have trouble meeting women. And I’m not going to pay to keep having that trouble. If I’m going to be ignored, I’m content with being ignored for free.

They say money can’t buy love. But it can buy sex, and sometimes that’s all I really want anyway. Maybe I should look into some of those other sites…

This entry was posted on August 13, 2011 at 01:35 and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.