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Online Daters Sue Matchmaking Web Sites for Fraud
BBCWatcher writes "According to Reuters, Match.com and Yahoo! are the subjects of separate class-action lawsuits from 'frustrated online daters.' Yahoo! Personals is accused of advertising fictitious profiles in order to make the service look more popular. In the Match.com case, 30-something professional Matthew Evans contends that Match.com sent a female employee as 'date bait,' hoping he'd tell others about the attractive women they could meet. 'The relationship went nowhere, according to his suit,' which claims Match.com violated the RICO Act."
So now you can sue when a girl doesn't like you?
If the allegations are correct, at least somebody will get screwed.
If they can afford to send employees out on dates they must be charging way too much.
Revenge of the Nerds
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
I signed up for a Mate1 account, and suddenly I'm getting emails every day from 18 year olds in all the states of the union who want to chat with me (I'm 34). But you have to pay to even look at mail sent to you. Obviously fraudulent.
Match.com has millions of people on the service. In order for this to be a policy, what size work force would they need to create positive word of mouth? Further, would people say positive things if they dated someone for a time or two and then never heard from them again - or were strung along? Please. I'm not buying it. Sounds like someone pissed off that his fairy tale fantasy didn't come true.
Now, that's a stretch. The Feds have a hard enough time nailing mobsters on that. Even if that woman was employed by Match, it would just doubtless be a case of "our service is so wonderful even our employees use it." I can't imagine any female wasting an evening with some dweeb just to keep him from quitting their service. This whole lawsuit doesn't pass the giggle test.
Maybe they should just offer the plaintiff an inflatable woman and tell him to go away.
I've tried a one month subscription to match.com and Yahoo personals.
Results weren't too bad, really. Met some friends.
Anyway, on both accounts, when the time was about to expire, I got a message from someone that was way above average in terms of looks, with a great, detailed profile. Its a good thing I'm already used to dealing with cons like this (AIM/yahoo messenger spam to be precise) and I put in the 'why did you cancel?' field that I don't like to be scammed.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
99% of the things you can pay for on the Internet are a scam if you don't get something tangible out of it that you can hold in your hands. And even then, there's things you can hold which are still a scam like drugs.
Don't spend what you can't afford to lose.
That being said though, I'm pissed off at Yahoo now, since I signed up for a month to try it out and was possibly scammed since someone had "messaged" me before I signed up, but never messaged after I contacted them back. Not even a note to blow me off, which I found strange, but figured she'd found someone else or my reply wasn't interesting. While I accepted that my shortlived subscription was just a Blind Date that was a bit expensive and failed, now I feel victimized too. There's no way to know if she was a Yahoo shill, or just some woman that didn't find me interesting. Either way it's not a happy outcome. There can't be too many happy online daters out there in cyberland today upon hearing this news.
Fortunately I've since been tipped off to the existence of 100% free sites like http://www.craigslist.com/ and http://www.plentyoffish.com/ which don't require you to pay. Plenty of Fish makes their money from Google advertising instead of scamming people with fake people.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I have complaints from female friends that online dating sites will often retain the profiles despite them having removed their accounts (to inflate the number of purported users, I'd assume). On the other hand, many of the sites I've used (lavalife being the biggest, also one of the above accused) have enabled me to meet many 'real' people.
For all those seeking, I would offer advice. Don't look for love on the internet. Look for people of similar interest to hang around with, if things work out it might go further. If you go expecting something more however, you'll probably seem way too needy and throw off a negetive vibe.
Whilst if the company is found to be guilty they should be punished I really hope this guy doesn't get a big payout personally, there is something sickening about society when you can sue your way to multi-million $ retirement through class-action suits because something stupid happened to you in life. I mean in any other era of society it would be laughed off but now yesterdays jokes can make todays millionairs while other people have to work for a living. I Really think this idiot should've just reported the sites to whatever advertising regulatory agencies there are and got on with his life... but that couldn't give him a chance to retire now could it!
I belong to Match.com here in Los Angeles and I liken it to shooting fish in a barrel. If you have a decent tech job and do not have the inclination to hide heads in the freezer or stroke a rabbit's paw and call it "my precious" you will score.
The amount of decent looking people out there that just want someone that is 'normal' is dumbfounding. The majority of men in LA either have an ego that you need to help through a door or demands that even Stalin would shy away from. You also get your small bit of crazies, but I really enjoy those because it actually gives me a reason to blog.
I'm suprised Yahoo and Match are doing this. Its no secret that a lot of other big "adult" dating sites do this -- which I would have expected to land in legal trouble well before this. Not to mention the thousands of dating sites out there filled with fake profiles, or hundreds of foreign bride sites populated by flat out con artists (if you think losing $10 a month is a big deal, try getting conned out of thousands.) I know all of this, and I've never even used an online dating service or site once.
There is no doubt Yahoo and Match have the money, and thats were the lawsuits go. Great, another case of "here is your $15 settlement payment and one free month of service, while we collect our $5 million lawyer fee from the defendent."
I'm talking not about the contents of the article, but the point at which society stopped dealing with personal issues and problems and instead desperately started seeking someone to blame, and ultimately, to sue. Is there a definitive point in history where we went from dealing with something, to trying to extort 'comfort money' from those that we deem responsible?
People who sue in cases like this are trying to quantify something that can't be quantified, usually 'emotional damage'. Last time I checked, I couldn't produce a dollar amount for what I'm currently feeling, but as soon as someone with a lot of money seems to be responsible for my emotional state, I can pull a figure from the ether and claim that's the precise economical value of my pain.
I realise this isn't much to do with the article, but it's starting to get beyond a joke. As far as I know lawsuits were originally intended as a way to recoup actual, tangible losses. Not as the new get rich quick scam.
Disclaimer: I am British, but our country is getting just as bad as that of our neighbours to the west.
C17H21NO4
There's also sites like OkCupid.com, which is IMO the best in terms of fun features, and actual real profiles, unlike all other sites (no exceptions) where you have to pay, none of which I will name them here, since they don't deserve any advertising.
Then there's meeting sites like MeetUp where you can find groups of people with similar interests.
General rule: don't waste your time and money on any paid sites, no matter how good the reviews (most likely written by the site staff) make them look.
Ok, Ok, that was an easy one. Here's another that I heard of recently.
Luddate: Someone you are going out with who does not understand your obsession with technology.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
If they really are paying women to go on "dates", then they might be looking at charges a bit more sensational than fraud!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
A lot of women frown on the negative connotations that go with that sort of thing, so unless they have hookers on the payrole I would find it very doubtful that a woman would agree to doing something like that, especially if they are getting paid as it puts them right down there if their general social group finds out.
"Actually, I just work for ."
Some of those singles in the class action suit should exchange phone numbers.
I met a great girl on Match, and it's the best relationship I've ever had. I had to go through a lot of "coffee dates" and meet a lot of non-compatible women to get there. I don't think Match puts up fake profiles, but a lot of users do falsify information on that site, but then again, those people would lie about themselves in the real world as well.
I think where people go wrong is that they expect way too much. They just look at the photos and only email the women who put up the hot bikini shots... then supidly expect a reply. Every other guy on the system emails the girl with hot bikini shot, so your chances are pretty slim. Stick to women who are more your speed and you'll do just fine.
If you go into it with lower expectations and take the time to actually read the profiles rather than look at the pictures, you can meet some very nice people. I know I have.
If the girl was a Match employee, then that would be more like an escort service almost, wouldn't it? How much does an escort cost? How much did he pay at the dating site? This guy shouldn't complain, he got A GREAT BARGAIN !!!
please excuse my apathy
idea for the /. crowd.
Why don't you single folks set up you OWN site:
dating.slashdot.org comes to mind. Imagine the fierce competition for any woman who dared post herself on it.
I'm not kidding about this either.
Well that and well broiled.
/SFL!
I'm socially inept. I'll admit that. But why do chicks hate it when I get a good gander at the chest when they're the ones wearing the skimpy cloth that barely covers them in the first place. I don't actually stare or follow but when sitting in a public place I make it my duty to check out the scene.
Frankly, if you don't want to be treated as a meatbag wear something half-way dignified.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I met my girlfriend on Match. She's very attractive, but more importantly, she's very smart and drop dead hilarious.
I've met a lot of other attractive women on Match as well. I'm sure those women could just go to bars and find guys, but they chose Match instead. Perhaps because a lot of guys who hit on women in bars tend to be jerks (at least that's what I've been told.) The ones I've met use Match as a screening service to weed out the jerks.
Dude! You can't call dupe for an article that was posted on a different site. If that were the case then everything on slashdot would be a dupe. Oh, wait...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I actually met my current girlfriend on Yahoo. I have to say I am very pleased with the results. I am a divorced man with 2 kids. I don't want any more kids. I wanted a woman who can take care of herself because sometimes I am going to be distracted with my kids. I like rock music but prefer classic rock. I despise rap. I don't like to dance but I do like to go to concerts. I like to have my own space. I definately do not want to break another woman into marriage. Cause lets face it there is alot of learning going on in a marriage just not about each other but about the way marriage really works. It would be nice not go through that whole thing again.
So as you can see I have some pretty stringent requirements for a mate. Well along comes my girlfriend. Divorced with no kids and cannot have kids but likes kids. Likes Iron Maiden and Def Leppard.
Here previous husband liked anime and played video games so it no big surprise to her that I do and in fact likes to give me surprise games like Doom3 and Half-life 2 annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd a 40GB iPod.
SO thank you yahoo. I never would have met her without your service. Totally worth the money I spent and I would have spent more knowing the results.
"To Err is Human To Forgive is Divine neither of which is Marine Corp Policy"-My SNCOIC
The litigant was responding to the profile of a girl who shared a remarkable resemblance to his idol, Kate Moss. He sent her over two dozen messages in a 3 week span, expressing his undying love and admiration, to which she finally replied and agreed to meet him. To the litigant's dismay, upon meeting the subject-in-question, he found that not only was she _not_ Kate Moss, nor even her twin. The subject couldn't even fit into the front seat of his Yugo, and needed two safety belts to secure herself in the rear. Scarred emotionally, and physically (she tried to sit in his lap), the litigant is suing match.com for mental anguish and his $25 monthly fee...
My friends who are dating have tried Yahoo and some of the pay services, and they say Myspace works much better. It's free, and it's cool that it's kinda centered around music. For me at least, finding someone with similar taste in music is at least a good starting point.
;o)
I use Myspace to promote my band, and there are a ton of hot chicks that are on my band's friend list. But my girlfriend is the other member of my band, so it's kind of a catch 22.
Hmm let's see.
:-)
Started off with IRC on Undernet and a few flirts. Met my first love on Playsite whom we have never exchange pictures with over the course of two years, which made meeting her at the airport a little difficult (meet the flight, estimate whom she might be based on age group/ethnicity etc). Met a few girls on Yahoo!, SocialNet, and Match.
Interestingly, those whom I've dated tended to match me on more than one site. For instance, one girl was at the top of my list across two e-mail newsletters. She later showed me her inbox where I was at #4 spot in both. That was a surreal experience, but we did have very fun times. Some of the girls I've met would be considered out of my league if I'd approached them offline. One flat out told me that I'd see her distinctly different from a block away and was right about that.
I guess my profile was sufficiently different not to match your typical fake ads.
With all this online dating experience, I find it ironic that eventually I found my wife offline.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
There was one two years ago.
Tried Online Dating?
Comments:1310 | Votes:84872
JP
Ok... But, SlashDate.org has a much better ring to it. ;)
This would be outstanding. I would love to see the clusterfuck that would ensue.
------
[insert funny
Women date YOU!!
Not only the online dating sites and ads sound like scams.
Just think of the personals pages in the newspapers. This seems to be a worldwide phenomenon; at least some of the constantly very bad personal ads can be seen in Italy, UK, Finland....
"44 years old, fabulous looking, model body, great job with big income, high moral values, sportive, likes travelling, arts, extremely highly educated and well behaving female, is looking for a male of 40-60 years with equal details."
"great looking, age xx, female or male, with PhD, speaks fluently 4 languages, has lived abroad, likes to engage in intellectual discussions, wants to meet a male or female for serious relationship and family."
And so on. Seeing any of these ads on printed paper (and in the Internet too) makes me want to scream. If you are attractive, educated, smart, have so many interests that you tell you have, why do you have to place an ad to some newspaper? Men and women should be raining on you.
All those "great" ads sound like scam to me. If you are such a perfect person, there is no way you are still a single, given the fact there are so many lusers who are not single either. Or scamming offices --- people actually pay for offices for finding their soulmates.... offices in the real life. With their selected few hundred applicants they browse and select the criteria for selection... I can't decide if I see them as business, or as a scam. You can look for the people of the sex you are interested in, but you can't force love in that criteria. Maybe only the mail catalogs for exotic women (to marry) are actually more real; people know they will find someone else there, and who is most likely not how they had imagined their ideal 'other half' to be. I can't believe the descriptions in those catalogs would be as lame as in any of these normal newspaper dating ads are. These people are a scam.
I have no idea where you are pulling the fact that emotional damages are usually "a few million dollars." At least, those aren't the numbers they teach us in law school. You might ask for a few million, but it's rarely going to be that much.
As for punitive damages... they are SO infrequent in this country that you really shouldn't be too worried about them. Our tort system is not designed to punish people, it is designed to compensate. You need to show amazing wrong-doing with malice and the whole bit in order to be eligible for punitive damages. As for who it goes to... some states take the money for themselves. Sometimes the court puts the money into a trust that is used to compensate other victims. It's really far more equitable than the media makes it out to be.
But then, you know that... or do you think that the media only slants the technology industry?
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
I won't self rate, if you wanted you could find my pics online and find for yourself, but most people wouldn't consider me unattractive. There are, however, many no-so-attractive specimens of either gender to be found in the world of online dating. The problem is that for many people internet dating is a last resort. Currently, it seems to be mostly populated by second-comers (30-40something, out of a relationship/marriage, don't know how to get back into the scene), as it's not quite hip with those younger.
For people like me, I'm not a bar person, there aren't many social places around here, and I'm just too bloody busy. I've had quite good success at meeting people online (and later offline) since I can trade emails etc at my own pace. Online also tends to give you a 'social distance' wherein you can learn if others are worth meeting in person (there are some crazy crazy people out there), and people tend to divulge more personal information, etc when they don't have to look you in the eye and be embarrassed.
My advice to those male geeks who find themselves girlfriendless... go find more female friends and try to not date them. If you find yourself able to talk with various women without becoming a drooling idiot, they'll probably improve your social skills and/or point you in the right direction. Heck, some of them might even have cute+interesting friends.
I didn't end up doing it, but yes, its definitely something that goes on. They didn't tell me which site(s) it was for during the interview, but i suppose I could find out. Our job was to make up fake profiles of very horny people and post then. We were supposed to chat with people as well since the site also had that function. Being interviewed for a job like that was one of the weirdest things I have ever done. One of the questions was "If your profile says that your a red head with big tits, and some guy sends you a message saying that he wants to eat you out, what do you say in reply? There were many people working there doing the same job, it was like a call centrer.
Well...we don't want to give the impression that all of the male geeks are serial killers.
Actually, I find this lawsuit interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I'm surprised it's taken so long to hear about such a thing. And second, it's interesting to note which companies are involved.
Like some other people here, I've "dabbled" in meeting women online ever since the "glory days" of the BBS in the 80's. Back in the BBS era, you just didn't find many women online, period. I ran my own fairly popular BBS though - and when the odd woman did call up and check it out, I found there was an extremely good chance she was going to be fairly compatible with me. I've never been into the dance club or bar scene, really. I always wanted a bit of a "geek girl" who would take it upon herself to learn a little about computers and technology - as opposed to the gals who claim an interest, but it's all based only on what previous boyfriends taught/told them. And she'd have to be above-average intelligence, with an interest in both reading and writing, and not shy away from the occasional good/heated debate. That would usually describe the type of female would would venture into the world of the BBS in the mid to late 80's. So I actually had a little bit of success way back then.
When the net became popular, I got into IRC chat and had quite a few dates (and even more new friends) from that. Sites like Match.com appeared somewhere in the middle of all that, but I never paid any attention to them. I couldn't see the need, when it was possible to meet people for free just by having online chat conversations. But instant messengers really took their toll on IRC, making the "city-based channels" on big networks like EFNet or Undernet sort of a "thing of the past". No longer did you have 40 or 50 locals congregating in a channel named after where you lived, all trying to organize a "get-together" for the weekened. Instead, people just put their closest friends in a "buddy list" and chatted with them one-on-one, giving up on IRC.
Considering my current situation (divorced and raising a 3 year old kid pretty much by myself) - traditional dating isn't much of an option for me these days. So I took another look at the idea of "online dating". It seems to me there are people raking in serious money on "dating sites" that are almost complete scams - such as anything "adult friend-finder" related. I would think THEY need to be sued long before Match.com. It seems they fill their sites with fake profiles and photos of women, just to reel in suckers who think the site is filled with women they'd really like to meet. Once they pay for their 6 month membersihp or whatever, they're stuck writing to people with non-existant email addresses, or who mysteriously keep ignoring them.
I tried Yahoo personals real briedly, because I supposedly got a "free month" with them as part of my SBC Yahoo Internet package. But I cancelled after the first week, due to an utter lack of interesting women in my city on there. They proceeded to bill me for the month anyway. (Gee, thanks Yahoo!)
I had a little bit of luck on Craigslist actually, where they let you post free personals. Only problem is, Craigslist seems to be unusually full of singles who act interested, correspond with people daily for a while, and then just vanish. (Both men and women complain about that on there quite a bit.) I think a lot of people just don't take it very seriously since it's free. They're just "fishing" for Mr. or Mrs. Perfect and if you're 80% of what they'd ideally like but not 100%, they "throw you back in the water" and try again.
I think okcupid.com is pretty cool too. But I haven't yet met a woman from it. (There's one gal who emailed me a couple times just to talk politics, since we had that in common... but no interest in actually meeting.) I'm just impressed with how it does the "compatibility scores" and testing, and offers so much for free. It seems like it's *got* to work for somebody.
The only service I actually paid anything for was Lavalife, and I'd say it was another waste of money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But why do chicks hate it when I get a good gander at the chest when they're the ones wearing the skimpy cloth that barely covers them in the first place.
They want to show off their sexuality while testing your self control. They're more interested in guys that wont put out for them on the first date; that which takes more work to obtain is more desired.
This would be outstanding. I would love to see the clusterfuck that would ensue.
Don't you mean "Beowulf Cluster Fuck?"
A few years back I met someone who worked at one of the largest dating sites, and they mentioned that a lot of employees create false profiles in order to fulfill the requirements of people they want to bone.
Apparently some of them have a great deal of success.
It could definitely be considered a perk of the job.
I've been on match.com for a couple years now. I met some very nice women there, including my current gf (who is both very cute, and very smart). It took a lot of emails, and a long time, before I had much success. However... they don't tell you this, but when you contact someone, they censor your emails to remove contact information, in an attempt to force everyone to subscribe. Now, I understand their motivations, but the unfortunate side-effect is that a lot of women don't subscribe to the service; they can send a "wink" but they can't send email. So many times, I'd receive a wink and send an introductory email but never get a reply. I'm sure some of them simply weren't interested, but I have no doubt that many simply couldn't respond and weren't willing to subscribe. It was perplexing, until I learned about the censor and worked around it.
I think I managed to avoid the mental cases by posting a profile which is perhaps more serious than the norm... plus, I have pretty good intuition about people.
When I first learned of the censorship, I was pretty angry about it... I wonder if there is a possible class-action lawsuit there? Though probably not, as I'm sure their legal team has checked it out.
Match.com may have lots of "members" - but many of them can't or won't respond unless you know about (and work around) the censor. Also, a lot of their "members" are not active; and when you take your profile down, they keep it for a year.
Match.com is useful for meeting people if you live in a big city. But if you're not in the middle of a major metropolitan area, then the pickin's might be slim (but then again, maybe you like them slim!).
Don't worry. http://www.okcupid.com/ have that covered. Free too.
Deleted
The online dating industry is notorious for planting fake profiles, but I would be genuinely surprised if Match.com is one of the offenders -- I have used match.com before, and the only fake profiles I have seen came from the users themselves.
The worst and most incredibly blantant offender that I'm aware of is FriendFinder and its affiliate sites (run by Andew Conru). I can't believe they haven't been shutdown long ago. Some of the things that company does is breathtaking in its audacity - such as taking profiles of women that post looking for a normal date, and repurpose them into women "looking for bondage and sex with strangers". Someone is going to end up getting hurt because of this; I don't know about you, but I'm of the view they should be shutdown before this happens.
The shady business practices of these guys is well documented - here's the first example that came up on Google.
I was on match.com for 4 months. I met 5 girls and not a one night stand or blow off among them. Each lasted a few weeks and the last is my mate. Best $50 I ever spent.
Speaking as a geek, at $30 a month, even fake dates may provide enough entertainment and possibilities to be worth it :-)
This is the fiancee talking, and thank you for the 'drop dead gorgeous' bit *gushes*.
I think there is a big misconception when it comes to internet dating, and why people, and more so, why women do it. I wrote a piece on it for my blog (you know, the type that any old 13-year-old is throwing together these days), which I feel best describes why I did it, and how I found it useful. Check it out here
Oh yes.. because its so hard to find booth babes for the thousands of floor shows being held every week? Hooters seems to be having a hell of a time finding girls to work for them too.
Fact is there are plenty of pretty women willing to make a living convincing men that they have a shot with them to sell a product.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I've done the online dating thing on Spring Street networks (those are the personals advertised through the Onion and the SF Chronicle; they also have a sort of "central" site, nerve.com.)
People commenting here are right about a number of things. A large fraction of folks are "second time around" (I'm not.) There is a fraction of crazy people (none of whom I've met in person), and a fraction of insanely dull people (I mean, really, who would have thought you needed the internet to find the most boring person in the world.)
If you are outside a major urban area, the majority of people are either older divorcées (40-50) or have some major problem that prevents them getting dates in the real world. In the cities -- especially places like New York or San Francisco, major magnets -- huge numbers of very cool twenty and thirty somethings are on them. You're post-college, you've moved to the big cheese to make it big in your urban professional job, and suddenly you know nobody and nobody knows you. You can either date colleagues (ugh), or you can go online. A lot of grad students do it as well.
I'm not surprised the larger sites have had problems. It's hard to make money running a personals site. You have to attract women (and very few women pay anything to use them), and at the same time get the boys to cough up. Server costs, promotion, and maintenance add up very quickly. Springstreet was just sold to some other company which is actually incredibly sketchy, and they've had some issues (that seem to be clearing up, but it was bad for a month or so.)
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Match.com: If they won't screw you, we will!
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Would we be able to moderate the profiles +1 Interesting or +1 Funny? If so, I could get behind this.
I just got out of a relationship with a girl that was a part of the paid popular night life. Liquor promotions, Entertainment Sales, sensual massage, etc. etc..
You'd be quite surprised what a woman relevates to whoring. I find that the general consensus among young women is that as long as they aren't getting paid for "Happy endings", they're working a legitimate job. Same goes for strippers, they don't feel as if they're whores, they think they're giving an audience what they want to see; nothing more. In this day and age, socially acceptable jobs and hobbies have come a long way. Used to be pen and paper games such as Dungeons&Dragons was the work of the devil, now it's for the most part widely accepted and even a curiosity for most people. Walking around downtown with tops off (bikini's replacing) used to be something only gangsters and mobsters do, now it's commonplace on hot days. Socially acceptable has come a long way and women are very keen to this.
But on a more relative note, I myself use an online dating site and have found it to be quite worth my time. Have already met with several attractive and intelligent women, and am meeting with another tomorrow. Now here's something you'd never guess, alot of women are using sites such as Match.com to meet men for no strings attached sex. It varies between site to site, but women too these days are looking for NSA sex, and using the fact they're rarities to their advantage and boning only the most attractive guys they can find on the site. I've met a couple of these women and was surprised to see that they were actually quite attractive! Imagine the look on my face when they say "You ready to go fuck?"
Personally, I promptly turned around and walked away, there's no way to know how many diseases they have if they had been on a romp with every attractive guy on the site. As I said, socially acceptable has changed in this day and age, and women are very keen to that fact.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
" I met my wife on Yahoo Personals."
I met your wife on there too.
If I wore a police uniform and some guy came up asking me for help could I say "Hey! Just because I'm dressed as a policeman doesn't mean I am one." No man, that's just confusing. So next time you decided to dress up like a whore, just remember that you may not be a whore, but you're wearing a whore's uniform.
(Paraphrased from a David Chappelle standup bit.)
My blog
It's just business.
Y'know, I've heard that line excuse some of the most foul, unacceptable behaviour, and I'm tired of it. No, it's not just business. Business is like any other interaction-- you treat people fairly, or you don't fucking treat them at all.
I see all kinds of posts lambasting frivolous lawsuits and the general decline of morals in America; often, those posts are from the same people who stand up for ill-behaved corporations and say inane things like, "It's just business."
Well, fuck them in the ass with a spinning roto-rooter.
Things done in the name of business represent some of the most immoral things in our culture today-- the purchasing of government by corporations, for instance. So, no, it's not just "business;" business should include treating each other with decency and ethics, just like all human interaction.
Now, where the hell did I put my lithium?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I've dabbled with online dating since there was an "online". My first experience was on The Source when I started chatting with a customer service rep and we developed a rapport online. She eventually flew down to stay with me for a week, and later I went up and stayed with her in Virginia. We ended up being friends for many years.
Since that time, I've tried most of the online services, in between dating women that I met out in public or through friends. I've had plenty of ups and downs. I even turned one experience into a published story on the "classified dating" scene when I set up an experiment, taking out five different classified ads, written in five different styles, and analyzed the results. It was quite amusing. I had a funny ad, a serious ad, a romantic ad, a sexy ad, etc., and I kept a diary and a spreadsheet of the women I met and my experiences. If you think men are "players", let me tell you I ran into plenty of women who "played" men. A common thing I discovered is how much women BS guys virtually. I was contacted by several women who responded to several of my ads at the same time, not knowing I was the same person, telling me, "your ad was the only one I responded to." Some women I met turned into really weird stalkers, while others were obviously looking for free meals and guys to pay for stuff and entertain them and had no intention of getting involved. Later when I started dabbling with match.com, yahoo.com, lavalife, matchmaker.com, salon personals, and others, I discovered that the same M.O. applies. I know some female friends who actively do the online stuff just to get a chance to go out to eat more often without paying.
That's not to say I didn't have some positive experiences. I've met many great women through the online services, and many who are still great friends. I had a few serious relationships, but by far, the women I met online were generally much less emotionally stable than women in real life. This is probably due to the ease with which someone can pretend to be someone they're not online. But you find out soon enough. It's still very eye-opening to find out how totally psycho some of these women are. (I've heard similar stories from my female friends about men they've met too.)
In the last 4-5 years I started to notice a pattern of diminishing returns from the online dating services. When sites like match.com initially were discovered by the mainstream, the quality of people online was much higher than it is now. I would not get involved in these services now, even just for fun because there's a lot more deception going on than there used to be. Yahoo is probably the worst in terms of bogus solicitations, but there are new breeds of sites that are inherently deceptive by their very design, such as eHarmony.com, which I think is probably one of the worst offenders, comparing their process to that of an impersonal "mate shopping spree" and structuring the process so there's no way you can get to know the other person (or even see what they look like!) without paying lots of money.
After many years, I decided I would not participate in these mediums any more. Most of my friends also have lost faith. If there's one thing that the online sites teach you, it's that you're better off looking in real life. The only exception to this is if you're very antisocial -- in which case you'll find a plethora of equally antisocial people to mingle with, but you might not like the results. Usually we seek out people that compliment what we have to offer and a lot of the terminally insecure online personalities are looking for people to "save" them. Two needy people end up as a recipe for disaster. Take a cruise, go do something you like doing and look for people that are out there. Online is great for meeting new friends and stuff, but don't take it seriously, and don't believe what you read.
I got an online diary (blog, I guess) at BloopDiary.com in January of 2003. After having "met" and talked to a certain girl on there for a few months, that fall we talked on the phone. Long story short, she now lives in my town (In Missouri; she's from Pennsylvania), we've been together for over 2 years, engaged for more than 1, and will be getting married next December. The important thing is to go online looking for FRIENDS, not dates. Make the right friends, and go from there.
I had a IT professor back in the end on 80's which had set up a minitel (*) chat room to "round the end of the month". The way he did it , was to hire some women, mostly 50+ "housewife", and then they chat under many personality. So sure he did have to pay them, and pay for his own connection, BUT since they chat with a lot of men and had "notice" about those, he did make some money. Not enough to be rich but enough for himself to live comfortably. He had to drop it later when traffic got low due to internet pick-up.
(*) french telephon network with limited terminal capability
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He might be wrong if the girl was just seeking attention. Dating sites are a venue of choice for women who just want attention, but arn't tech savvy or honest enough to be a cam whore. If you wanted to design a really effective online dating site, you'd simply make one where women had to initiate communication. It's got lots of advantages for the girls, as it locks guys into fewer choice.. and it helps ensure that the girls are serious for the guys. OTOH, Why bother making a better online dating site? Just get out more.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I asked about this on a women's forum when they were discussing online dating. Most of them said that they felt that saying 'no' was unfriendly and that not replying would send the same message, only in a more friendly way. Guys feel it the opposite way of course, rejection is disappointing, but shows that she's friendly, being ignored totally is more disappointing and considered rude. So men and women just see this differently.
One thing I noticed about online dating that people don't apply their knowledge or intelligence. If a geek is programming/repairing his PC/solving some problem, they try different things, notice that it's not working, change something until it works, and then they analyze what change made it work.
However when dating (and that's also what you write), they just try one thing of which they have determined in advance that it will work, try the same thing hundreds of times, and then give up saying "this sucks/this site sucks/women suck". They convince themselves that the copy/paste message they send everyone is "friendly" while to women it probably comes across as bland/too careful/too weak/uninteresting. If guys applied their skills to dating they'd send all kinds of messages, short, long, rude, friendly, demanding, funny, etc. and then look what gives the best results.
I found someone on match.com who I ended up marrying a year later. I did receive a few messages from various people looking for dates, although none that I had actually sent messages to (my wife signed up just so she could send me a message).
One of the biggest problems people have on these sites is that their photos suck, and I mean really suck. For god's sake, use a good photo of yourself, not some party-picture candid shot with your ex's arm still in the picture around your waist.
We got my sister-in-law to try lavalife, and jeez was she picky, just based on the tiny thumbnail photos. So guys, do yourself a favor and use a good picture. And just because a girl doesn't have a picture doesn't mean she's not hot - quite often the opposite. The hot girls get so many emails they often have to remove their pictures just to make it manageable.
Women... use logic to figure them out... hmm, obviously, you've never had a girlfriend...