You Could Be Flirting On Dating Apps With Paid Impersonators (qz.com)

Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin sheds some light on the world of paid impersonators on dating apps like Tinder. Here's an excerpt from the report: Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas -- a client. I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential "Opportunities." For every phone number I get, I make $1.75. I'm what's called a "Closer" for the online-dating service ViDA (Virtual Dating Assistants). Men and women (though mostly men) from all over the world pay this company to outsource the labor and tedium of online dating. The matches I speak to on behalf of the Texan man and other clients have no idea they're chatting with a professional.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that these ghostwriting services exist. Tinder alone produces more than 12 million matches a day, and if you're a heterosexual American, you now have a one in three chance of meeting your future husband or wife online. But as e-romance hits an all-time high, our daily dose of rejection, harassment, and heartbreak creeps upward, too. Once you mix in the vague rules of netiquette and a healthy fear of catfishing scams, it's easy to see why someone might want to outsource their online-dating profile to a pro, if only to keep themselves sane. But where does the digital social assistant end and the con artist begin?

Comments

Weird

[war4peace]

I did this once, non-professionally, when a couple American friends came to visit me last year. One of them gave me his phone and asked me to help him talk to Romanian women on Tinder. While that didn't lead to getting his dick wet (due to lack of time, they only spent 3 days at the seaside), it was fun to talk to them as him and realize how much locals change their attitude and willingness to talk and meet if the person on the other end is an American.

Eventually he got his dick wet through means of a professional :) but that's offtopic.

Re:cool

[K. S. Kyosuke]

As multiple women told me, "women don't know what they want and they won't stop pestering you until they get it". Maybe that was it?

Re:cool

[ShanghaiBill]

This isn't really news though.

Yes it is. This is totally different from what you describe. Both of your examples are of the site using fake profiles, which is well known (although I never heard of them hiring people to go on actual dates, and I am skeptical whether that really happened).

TFA is describing members hiring people to impersonate them. So they are actually looking for a match, but are paying someone else to go through the tedium of sending introductory inquiries, and the back-and-forth chit-chat before exchanging contact info.

I just closed all my dating accounts

[slaker]

I had a Match.com account for 21 years. I paid for it for about 10 years of that. I'd go to cancel and magically someone would start messaging me. Nothing ever came of it. I joined OKCupid and Plenty of Fish within a year of their launch and, by last February, I was to some degree active on 10 dating services.

I've read books about how to game the systems. I've paid photographers and tried to get feedback on my dating profiles from tens of friends, acquaintances and even total strangers. I tried all manner of strategies in making first impressions, created multiple profiles and basically I've spent two or three hours a day trying to meet someone for over two decades.

I'm not messaging models. I'm not holding anyone to any ridiculous standard; my sole filtering is that my partner be childless (which, admittedly, is much more difficult as I am now a person in my forties). But across platforms and years of effort, I might get a reply to one out of approximately 300 messages sent on a dating site. One out of ten of THOSE might lead to an ongoing conversation.

I've been on seven dates in my entire life.

And before anyone says that I need to work on myself: I have over the last 20 years gone from an obese BMI to a healthy one. I do work out and dress like an adult. I have solid academic achievements, a good job and a life-long interest in fine arts. I can carry a conversation. I'm not terribly attractive but I'm also not ugly. Fundamentally, I would call myself unremarkable but certainly not unacceptable.

I did finally outsource Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel to a sympathetic friend, albeit mostly because I refuse to agree to Facebook's terms of service. I paid for her to get a new phone in exchange for her work on my behalf. It didn't help. No better luck was had.

I cannot think of an activity less rewarding. Dating sites seem to be actively hostile to almost everyone who uses them. Women are barraged with harassment. Ordinary guys might as not even exist. No one is happy with the state of affairs, but I'm not a person who is going to do well in a bar or other traditional meeting-space and I already teach adult education, I don't see what other choice might be available. I have a great deal of free time now that I don't spend time on dating sites. I get a lot more reading done, but I also have a lot more anxiety at the parts of life that I have failed to experience. There doesn't seem to be a way out of this particular loop. I wish I could have those many thousands of hours and all of the hope of my life back.