a few months ago, i decided to try match.com. i spent $34.99, wasted a great deal of time, waded through a ridiculous amount of crappy emails, and went on five dates before i decided that i was completely fine being alone and sex-less if the alternative was online dating.
7 reasons why match.com (and possibly other datings sites?) sucks the big one:
1. it’s expensive. for just one month, it’s $34.99. for three, it’s $19.99 which sounds better, except then you come out having paid $60 for the most awkward interactions of your life.
2. if you don’t pay for a subscription, your profile is displayed in searches, but you can’t answer or in any way communicate with people who message you. so here i am, a paid subscriber, messaging cute guys who never answer me. i have no way of knowing whether or not they find me completely unattractive or just aren’t a paid subscriber. this means my ego gets to go on a wild roller coaster ride.
3. at least if you’re a girl, you get dozens of emails and winks EVERY DAY. sounds great right? think again. if you’re lucky, one out of 30 emails and winks will be someone who looks like a possibility. here is one of my favorites, reproduced exactly as written, fucked up commas and all, except that i made the font blue:
an Admirer
WOW!!
“WHAT A PROFILE”
YOU DO SOUND SO VERY GENUINE .
I am the breed you can only pray for in a loyal companion -Wit ,Gentlemanly,passionate,loving and I dance salsa aswell…
First, I must say forgive my pic here (not the best that portrays my handsome self ;-} ) -I need to upload more …so You can see the Man…LoL
THE WEIRD THING IS YOUR PROFILE IS THE ONE THAT LEADS ME TO FEEL THAT IF WE TALK 15 MINUTES WE ARE GOING TO HIT IT OFF..
Only fair to first tell you the whole me
Here goes :
ME-
Medical Professional and a business owner.
Great family !!
Tried THIS for 30 day trial about 16 months ago then stopped cause thought it was fruitless.then 3 months after a friend at the hospital coached me on to try a longer period so I gave it 3 months -and talked to 2 people and met 1 {no interest or chemistry felt} then it expired and did not renew for another few month and just decided to travel and enjoy life for abit (I went to san diego ,nyc ,boston ,Rhode Island,marthas vineyard etc..just had a great time)
Recently I met a few members and had coffee and found no real common ground or attraction in person.
Thats it “… not easy to find when beauty ” lacks within ” on most ..
Chemistry,honesty,intelligence and humor are important and so difficult to find in a woman .
I enjoy intelligence and substance inside the woman I seek .
What else can I say but it’s hard nowadays to find the Quality factor in a human being.
What I would give to find a real beauty is everything ….
Real Treasures are in relationships that start with a valuable partner.
warm regards,
———
i have no idea why he uses quotation marks as he does, why he can’t space a comma correctly, or why he feels the need to tell me about previous match.com failures. obviously, i didn’t answer this email, but this is a very determined/desperate/socially-inept man—he emailed me another four times before i finally got annoyed and told him there was no way i was interested. besides this ludicrous email, he was 47 and divorced. my profile specifically stated that my age parameters cut off at 32 and that i would not date a divorcee.
4. which brings me to another stupid match.com trait: you can’t limit who messages you by age, location, or other characteristic. i would say that 50% of the emails i received every day were from gross old geezers who had no business contacting a 25-year-old. shame on them.
5. nor can you avoid the whole business by hiding your profile. if you hide your profile, sure you can email people, but they can’t see your information so it defeats the entire purpose of the dating site. as someone in the legal field, i didn’t want my photo and “about me” sections plastered all over this site for people i might know to see. but i also didn’t want to waste the $34.99 i already paid, so there i was, naked to the world. and yes, three people i know contacted me and said, “hey i saw you on match!”. fan-fucking-tastic.
6. i think this particular reason is going to make me sound like an elitist, but hey, i probably am. i found that the vast majority of guys on here were uneducated. i love intellectual guys. let me point out here that “intellectual” is different than “intelligent”. i like guys who enjoy a good book, can write and speak eloquently, and don’t think that nietzsche is a russian dessert. my life revolves around more academic pursuits and i don’t think it’s somehow mean and shortsighted to say that i don’t want to date a mechanic, even a very intelligent one. i am aware that there are plenty of very intelligent guys who for whatever reason did not go to college. there are also plenty of idiots who did go. but of the intelligent guys out there, the ones i’d want to date are the worldly, sophisticated types who overwhelmingly have gone to college and probably grad school. these are not the guys on match.com.
7. even when you finally find a few decent possibilities in the morass of HELL-no, it can go very wrong. you email back and forth a few times, text a bit, and decide to meet. i lasted five dates before i made the command decision to delete my match.com profile. and no, they weren’t all awful. two were ok, but the overall awkward and stilted nature of the dates and fact that no one appears to be the same person described in their profiles just makes me tired. dating should be fun, not energy-draining. stay tuned for a date-by-date breakdown of the five guys who appeared to be the cream of the match crop.