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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?

116 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. no subject by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    first post! ... and on the other side there is someone paid too. So two paid persons do a date chat via someone else's dating profil. Dating virtualization?

  2. Weird by war4peace · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re: Weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      'Got his dick wet by a professional'? Does that mean a waiter spilled his drink on his lap?

    2. Re:Weird by arth1 · · Score: 1

      What's wrong with using the phrase "got laid?" It's fewer syllables, it's less obscure.

      It reflects back on puritan values, where it was unthinkable to have sex other than lying down in bed.
      "Had sex" is even fewer letters.

    3. Re:Weird by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      "Had sex" is even fewer letters.

      It is still a clumsy phrase, combining the passive voice, an irregular inactive verb, and a noun. Sex should be something you did, not something you "had".

      English needs a simple transitive verb for this. Of course we have "fuck" but that can't be used in polite company, and is often perceived as derogatory. "I fucked your sister last night" sounds offensive even when said by her husband.

    4. Re:Weird by arth1 · · Score: 1

      English needs a simple transitive verb for this. Of course we have "fuck" but that can't be used in polite company, and is often perceived as derogatory. "I fucked your sister last night" sounds offensive even when said by her husband.

      There's copulate and fornicate, but they are bound to get you even stranger looks. Depending on where you are, "shag" might be a less loaded word than "fuck" and "screw".
      Then there's just "do", but it makes it sound like a chore.

    5. Re:Weird by war4peace · · Score: 1

      He said it, I learned it. We're not shying away from being explicit 'round here.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    6. Re: Weird by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I'll ask him next time, who knows, they might have done that role-playing thing too.
      Thanks for the idea though.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    7. Re: Weird by war4peace · · Score: 1

      The latter.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    8. Re:Weird by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Maybe you're looking at the wrong tests?
      Now seriously, I should have replaced "American" with "Westerner".

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  3. Re:Math doesn't work. by Desprez · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's no reason he can't be flirting with multiple women at once in a single 10 min block.

  4. No all he needs is a fiddle and a rooftop... by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hodel: Well, somebody has to arrange the matches, Young people can't decide these things themselves.
    Chava: She might bring someone wonderful----
    Hodel: Someone interesting----
    Chava: And well off----
    Hodel: And important---

    Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, catch me a catch
    Matchmaker, Matchmaker
    Look through your book, And make me a perfect match

    Chava: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I'll bring the veil, You bring the groom, Slender and pale.
    Bring me a ring for I'm longing to be, The envy of all I see.

    Hodel: For Papa, Make him a scholar.

    Chava: For mama, Make him rich as a king.

    Chava and Hodel: For me, well, I wouldn't holler
    If he were as handsome as anything.

    Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, Catch me a catch, Night after night in the dark I'm alone
    So find me match, Of my own.

    Tzeitel: Since when are you in a match, Chava? I thought you had your eye on your books.

    (Hodel chuckles)

    Tzeitel con't: And you have your eye on the Rabbi's son.

    Hodel: Well, why not?
    We have only one Rabbi and he has only one son.
    Why shouldn't I want the best?

    Tzeitel: Because you're a girl from a poor family.
    So whatever Yenta brings, you'll take, right?
    Of course right!

    (throws scarf over her head, imitating Yenta)

    Hodel, oh Hodel, Have I made a match for you!
    He's handsome, he's young!
    Alright, he's 62.
    But he's a nice man, a good catch, true?
    True.

    I promise you'll be happy, And even if you're not, There's more to life than that---
    Don't ask me what.

    Chava, I found him.
    Won't you be a lucky bride!
    He's handsome, he's tall, That is from side to side.
    But he's a nice man, a good catch, right?
    Right.

    You heard he has a temper.
    He'll beat you every night, But only when he's sober, So you'll alright.

    Did you think you'd get a prince?
    Well I do the best I can.
    With no dowry, no money, no family background
    Be glad you got a man!

    Chava: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, You know that I'm Still very young. Please, take your time.

    Hodel: Up to this minute, I misunderstood, That I could get stuck for good.

    Chava and Hodel: Dear Yenta, See that he's gentle
    Remember, You were also a bride.
    It's not that
    I'm sentimental

    Chava and Hodel and Tzeitel: It's just that I'm terrified!

    Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Plan me no plans
    I'm in no rush
    Maybe I've learned
    Playing with matches
    A girl can get burned
    So, Bring me no ring
    Groom me no groom
    Find me no find
    Catch me no catch
    Unless he's a matchless match.

    (Lameness Filter is Lame - Longer lines than in the original courtesy of the not enough characters per line filter.)

    --
    The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
  5. I suspect some dating app do this too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I have more than once got nothing , no response, (as a man this is nearly routine - too many men for women), then i stop coming for a few day, and strangely enough somebody contact me - to never answer me. And lest you say the problem is me, I have no problem getting answer or free dating app. This happens only on paying dating apps which ask you for money for each contact. Now add 1 + 1 ....

    1. Re:I suspect some dating app do this too by umghhh · · Score: 2

      Not sure about other jurisdictions but in EU companies are obliged to write it in terms of service if they use staff to animate the discussion. Guess what - most of them do.

  6. Re:cool by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    This isn't really news though. I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches. He even went on first dates with a few.

    Then there was the Ashley Madison leak where it turned out that a significant proportion of their female members were bots.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Re:cool by umafuckit · · Score: 2

    Well guess what - confused females may not want it but will be utterly disappointed if you do not try.

    "Confused females"? And the rest of the sentence... This is why things aren't working the way you'd like.

  8. Re:cool by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    It's news. If you've been in a coma for a quarter of a century.

    Grrrrrr Wooof! WOOF!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Re:Math doesn't work. by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    In the old days that was called two-timin', and you could get horsewhipped for it.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  10. Chatbots by sanf780 · · Score: 1

    On colleague of mine showed me some talks with chat bots on Tinder. It was interesting to see they can fool you through the first stages of the conversation. However, at some stage you notice something is off. At that point my colleague started foul mouthing, something that the bots do not usually respond properly. It was a fun read.

  11. Every once in a while by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I run across a story that makes me glad I’m an old guy... and this is one of them. I don’t know how you young’uns navigate these waters. I had a hard enough time just asking my now-wife out, way back in the day - and that was before all these peripheral complications existed.

    Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Every once in a while by Bearhouse · · Score: 2

      Well, I'm an older guy too, and totally agree with you (for once).
      After my divorce some 15 years back I put myself on the market the only way I knew worked for me - I hit the beaches, the bars and social events.
      Been happily re-married now with a kind, smart, funny and really beautiful lady.
      We did not meet on-line, but in a jazz-dancing class.

      I don't believe in this online dating crap; get out from behind the screens, girls and boys, and hit the floor. Learn to dance, you'll love it. Top tip - people tend to make love the way they dance....

    2. Re:Every once in a while by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      I run across a story that makes me glad I’m an old guy... and this is one of them. I don’t know how you young’uns navigate these waters. I had a hard enough time just asking my now-wife out, way back in the day - and that was before all these peripheral complications existed.

      Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it!

      Same here.

      My wife and I still laugh about the humorous "list" of requirements she passed around to her friends, when she asked them to steer someone her way.

      These days, some fool would claim they had algorithms to actually try to fulfill the list ...

    3. Re:Every once in a while by zifn4b · · Score: 2

      I don't believe in this online dating crap; get out from behind the screens, girls and boys, and hit the floor. Learn to dance, you'll love it.

      I guess you haven't heard of the latest new dance craze? It's called the touch screen finger tap boogie. All the cool kids are doing it.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    4. Re:Every once in a while by oakgrove · · Score: 1

      Can I get in on this?

      *Ahem* Back in my day, most people met through mutual friends/acquaintances. Somebody knew somebody that was just "perfect" for you and you dated and dated until something clicked. At least that's one version.

      These days, alas, if I were young single and lookin', I'd just write a Python script to automate the whole thing until I ended up finding a real live girl. I know. Romantic.

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    5. Re:Every once in a while by arth1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Learn to dance, you'll love it. Top tip - people tend to make love the way they dance....

      Wot, you think I make love with bells on my legs wielding a stick and handkerchief?

    6. Re:Every once in a while by PPH · · Score: 1

      I'd just write a Python script

      She seems nice. But it's just empty space in her head.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    7. Re:Every once in a while by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Lol, same here. Yes, I'm an old guy, happily married, and I shudder at the thought of going back into the dating pool these days. I'd fuckin' hate it and I'd probably just not participate.

      Dating seems much, much shallower and more commoditized now, but that may just be my perspective.

      The enormous expansion in potential mates brought about by apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, etc has actually worked against the people that use them- they're buried in way, way too many choices.

      The mechanics of using the app wipes away the perceived "value" of a person...because there are another 500 or 1000 or 50,000 possible partners just a swipe away.

      For example, he or she seems perfect but doesn't message you back in 5 seconds? Hi ho, discard them like a used tissue and you're off to click on the next one.

      Dating has been reduced to the level of a crappy video game. It seems very sad to me.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    8. Re:Every once in a while by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm an older guy too, and totally agree with you (for once).

      If we (all) were in agreement on everything all the time, it would be pretty boring - even though the disagreements can sometimes be maddening.

      But I’m glad to hear we found something we agree on!

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    9. Re:Every once in a while by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Rimmer, is that you?

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    10. Re:Every once in a while by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      If you go to a bar you are going to meet people that like to drink and hang out in bars. I have zero interest in doing either.

      If I go on-line, and filter for "technical/scientific/engineering" in the "profession" field, I can see pages and pages of nerdy women. Just to be sure, I ask for a code sample before the first meet-up.

    11. Re:Every once in a while by oakgrove · · Score: 1

      Ha! I love it!

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
  12. Re:cool by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  13. Re:Math doesn't work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Who are we to judge if they prefer getting whipped while flirting with multiple women?

  14. Cyrano de Bergerac by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Chloe should be named Roxanne then.

  15. Old News by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    I think this has been going on for many years. This can't possibly be new news as I am sure there have been paid impersonators for match.com and others.

    1. Re: Old News by reanjr · · Score: 1

      Professional matchmakers have always existed for the wealthy. To me, the news is that these services are moving downmarket. Dating apps make it easy to automate much of the time that used to go into building (real life) social networks, keeping in touch with a stable of clients or opportunities from both sides, etc. Now it's just one dude with mad texting skills taking on ten clients in an hour. The price point has dramatically changed.

  16. I'm so glad I'm married by DalM · · Score: 1

    Being single has always sucked. Being single in the internet age sucks even more than ever. Whenever I hear stories like this, I remember how happy I am to have gotten married before all this crap.

  17. Nothing new here - was same on French "Minitel" by Bearhouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I once visited a potential software agent in France. They had a good accounting suite for IBM S/36 at the time, but I could not figure out how they had such an impressive office complex based on their small customer base.

    So, I got the technical manager sauced-up one evening and its turns out the basement was full of "Minitel rose" (pink, i.e. pron) servers. This was the 1980s, and it seems that online "Johns" were spending hours - and hundreds of bucks - every month hammering away on a tiny keyboard and getting all steamed-up over scrolling black and white horny text on an equally small screen. Rather sad.

    The joke was, the "best" online "sexters" were.....men! Easy money, working from home. Kinda like Chinese theatre I guess - women's roles are traditionally played by men, since "only a man knows how a woman is supposed to react". Equally sad.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/c...

  18. Missing from dating apps. by kurt555gs · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Why don't profiles on dating apps have user reviews like restaurants on Yelp or similar? It really would be helpful. Things like [ 40 lbs more than her picture ], or [ put's out on first date ] would be great to know. I really would like to know why this feature is missing?

    --
    * Carthago Delenda Est *
    1. Re:Missing from dating apps. by tomhath · · Score: 1

      On the internet, the women are men and the children are FBI agents.

    2. Re:Missing from dating apps. by mentil · · Score: 1

      Because people with undesirable reviews would delete/abandon their account and make another. Or jump to another dating site/app, if they're unable to do that. Also, someone with many reviews would be implied to date lots of people, therefore one's chances of something long-term are lower than with someone who only has a few.
      Also, the reviews would be filled with endless drama/bitching/doxxing/overly personal stuff/creeper posts and it'd be impossible to moderate. At best you'd get some kind of star rating in a few categories.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  19. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  20. obCasablanca by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    I am shocked, shocked that there might be deception on online dating sites!!

    {your duped user winnings sir}

    Thank you.

  21. Re:Math doesn't work. by zifn4b · · Score: 2

    In the old days that was called two-timin', and you could get horsewhipped for it.

    It's no different than interviewing for multiple jobs simultaneously. It increases your odds of success. Those who don't do it are just purposefully hurting their prospects on their moral and ethical high horse.

    --
    We'll make great pets
  22. I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    1. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Dude. You can meet woman whenever you shop for groceries. Chat them up. Join a yoga class. Chat them up. Do other activities where woman congregate. Chat them up. Above all else, be causal, not desperate, and shut the fuck up about yourself. Woman *like* going to movies and dinner and shit...just ask them. Like not until youve casually talked several times first, usually. The worst that they can do is decline. Again, be casual. Its no big thing to you. That's your fucking mantra. Literally.

      You can do this.

    2. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You think all that's bad? Try being married.

    3. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      but you still need to work on your self. Now hear me out, you just need to work on your self confidence. Dating is a numbers game, as in the more people that you talk to, the more that you will find to date. The other problem is that you are more than likely coming off as someone who is hunting for a date. This is the biggest problem in the dating world as most people want to feel special and how can they feel special if they feel like they are interchangable with the next person you try to talk to.

      You said you were spending 2-3 hours a day looking for a date, why not spend those 2-3 hours on something you enjoy and while you are doing that, try to make friends with various women (especially if they have boyfriends). If you are just trying to be friendly and not trying to angle towards a date then it generally relaxes the entire conversation from the get go. The other benefit is that women who are into something have friends who are into that same thing, and there is nothing better than a personal recommendation from a friend.

      Stop trying and work on your self more, and by that i mean your enjoyment of life by your self. Stop looking for a date and enjoy the single life because the confidence of being single and enjoying your life is what will garner interest from other people. Show the world that you are complete on your own and people will want to be around you, then you will meet more people and be able to network better to find the woman that you will want to spend all of your time with. Remember people looking for mates are looking for someone to complement their lives not complete it.

      I wish you luck, but you still have more work to do on the man in the mirror. Once you stop looking for dates, they will start coming to you.

    4. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      I have a large number of female friends. The problem is that they're all gay and/or 20+ years younger than I am. Someone who is in my age cohort at this point is almost certainly married or at least in a long term relationship at this point in their life. I actually don't know any women around my age. I live in a place where I'm definitely a demographic outlier for a lot of reasons, but my job is unique and I really couldn't give it up unless I knew I'd be getting something better.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    5. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by joe_frisch · · Score: 1

      This and similar stories make it sound like there is a real market for a breakthrough dating app that actually works at matching people. Its hard - but maybe no harder than self-driving cars and computers that teach themselves to play go.

      Maybe humans are getting involved too early in the process. Really - people can be extremely shallow and pick partners based on the wrong sort of things.

      Some sort of multi-person optimization might work - it doesn't just try to match individuals but looks at entire sets of matches that will make the most people the happiest. (OK, where's my $B for a startup idea).

    6. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      If I had the option to get a date once a week, I absolutely would. My average is probably closer to "once per Presidential term" because of the talking-to-a-wall experience of using online dating services.

      I do have friends half my age and they appreciate an occasional dinner or movie, but they're not appropriate for my interest, nor are they interested in me. As a pragmatic matter, they're off the table.

      I live close but not close enough to a big city in one of those flyover states, such that my location is definitely a factor, but I've been looking all over the USA for 15+ years. Moving is a touchy subject in my case. I have unique job that I wouldn't give up for anything but absolute assurance that I'd be getting something better out of the deal.

      I definitely tried making different profiles just to see if one got more response than another. I tried selecting different geographic locations, wildly different photos (sartorial choices, professional vs. candid photos etc). I have to say that I never saw a difference.

      My experience with dating sites is such that I can absolutely believe that the overwhelming majority of contacts made on them are by people or software working for the sites rather than actual humans. Some sites are so overrun by obvious bots.

      I don't know where the people are, but there is no way in hell that I believe meeting someone once a week or once a month from a dating site is within the realm of possibility.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    7. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      this comment should have gotten more love

    8. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 2

      I object to the Facebook terms of service. I'd be happy to explain to anyone why that's the case, and why filling out a profile with misleading information doesn't meaningfully overcome my objection. Most people aren't sophisticated enough about what Facebook is or does and act as if it's some sort of public utility. Those aren't people I'd want to date anyway. I'm actually grateful for all the negative attention Facebook has been getting lately, since some of these things have finally come in to widespread awareness.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    9. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      I thought very highly of the OKCupid approach, when it was run by its creators. I thought they were on to something with the data-driven tools and matching. I believe most of its user base ignores all or most of that in favor of simple profile creation and chat, but to the extent that someone has put data science forward to address compatibility, I think OKC did.

      I'm also fairly convinced that humans don't actually know what they want or, in my case, lack the experience to properly say. It may be that nothing short of individual behavioral modeling can crack this problem. Self-reported data just may not be trustworthy in this domain.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    10. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by rundgong · · Score: 2

      One of the fundamental problems with dating sites is that it is not financially good for them if you find someone. That is a lost customer. Their highest revenue will be when you don't find someone serious, but it still looks like you have a chance. That is how you stay a customer the longest.

      If they display ads it is also important to get as many page views as possible. There are many ways that dating sites could be improved, but most of them would involve creating less activity, i.e. less income from ads.

      Examples:
      Popular people (mostly women) get too many low effort messages. They want to receive less bad messages, but less activity is bad for business.
      Unpopular people (mostly men) send too many messages that get no response. Some transparency like stats for the other persons response rate could help the user here. But if we only message the people where we have a chance of getting noticed, that means less page views, i.e. it is bad for business.

      All this extra activity that is good for business but bad for the user, that is why we get services like these paid impersonators.

    11. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      That's true now, but the vast majority of my online dating lack-of-experiences predate Facebook substantially. I don't actually believe that's the issue, nor does every dating service, even in 2018, integrate with Facebook such that it's a requirement.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    12. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      I've been trying for decades. Believe me. You're right that the advice given would normally be helpful, but in my case, it hasn't been. Nor was therapy. Everything about the process of dating relies on finding a willing and appropriate party to date. In this matter, it doesn't matter what insights a therapist or self-help book can share. If I can't connect with anyone who might be interested, all the self-reflection in the world isn't going to do me any good either.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    13. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by mopower70 · · Score: 1

      I've read books about how to game the systems. I've paid photographers and tried to get feedback on my dating profiles from [...] total strangers. I tried all manner of strategies in making first impressions, created multiple profiles [...] Ordinary guys might as not even exist. ... I also have a lot more anxiety at the parts of life that I have failed to experience. ... I wish I could have those many thousands of hours and all of the hope of my life back.

      Well that's not creepy. That's not creepy at all. That doesn't sound the least bit creepy and there's not one bit of creepy vibe here that a woman would pick up on. My friend, this is the kind of neckbeard/nice guy talk that makes woman of quality run the other direction. If this is any indicator of how you communicated in the online dating sphere, you have nothing more to do than read what you've written here to understand what the problem is. Luckily there are a lot of ways to fix it, but believing it has anything to do with the way you look or dress or how well-educated you are is not one of them.

    14. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      Pick up Artist/NLP bullshit is, so far as I can tell, all about teaching someone to be an asshole. Maybe the people who follow that advice get what they want, but I still have to live with myself and that's now how I want to treat other people.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    15. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      I suspect I'm a little older than you and I do have fond memories of USENET as a watering hole. I've also made friends with and met people from other forum sites like Fark, SomethingAwful and Imgur. More broadly, I know of at least one lasting relationship that grew out of an MMO and another that came from, of all things, Etsy.

      The idea of people being drawn together through some kind of general social interaction is not new to me and I will say that two of my longest and deepest friendships originate from chatting on forums, but I think the people who actually meet up and make a full relationship work that way are relatively few and far between.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    16. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      I've also come to this conclusion, but as far as I know there's nothing to be done about it. The only online alternative (was?) Craigslist, which was also a wonderful way to get dick pics and had approximately the same sketchy vibe as writing your phone number on wall of a public toilet.

      I really don't think online is the right way to meet people. Maybe it works for attractive people in urban areas. Maybe it works for someone who ONLY wants to get laid. But dating apps seem to encourage the worst behavior from both the participants and the site owners.

      On the other hand, what else is there? Especially for those of us who don't live in urban areas, whose cultural, political or religious leanings don't align well with our location?

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    17. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts by slaker · · Score: 1

      For what it's worth, I was trying things recommended by dating coaches and recommendations of experts of various sorts with regard to online dating. With over two decades of working at it, I wanted to demonstrate that I had put time in to trying to make the services work. I've never been the guy who just writes "Sup?" and expects a response.

      As for the content of what I would write, on services where there's a profile to read (e.g. OKCupid), I'd most likely read what's available and formulate about three sentences that would demonstrate that I read their profile, that we have interests in common and which would include a question to invite a reply. The slightly longer introduction also gave me a chance to demonstrate some level of intelligence and literacy.

      OKCupid used to let users track profile visits. Mine almost never rose past the lowest level, 1 visit per month. That told me that even the people I was writing weren't bothering to visit my profile. I suspect that real women on dating sites get so slammed with messages that there's no reason for them to go looking at random messages or profiles. I have no way of knowing.

      I'm not creepy, nor a neckbeard. I'm isolated from certain common human experiences and I am deeply depressed about that. I'm venting about it in what I suspect is a relatively sympathetic setting. I'm sorry for whatever set your default expectation of a human in distress to that particular set of assumptions.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  23. Professionals chatting with professionals by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    It seems that lots of these services don't actually have very many women online. So they create fake profiles, and - no proof, just suspicion - probably pay other professionals to keep those profiles active: to chat with guys and give them false hope they might actually be speaking with an actual woman. Given the huge number of fake profiles, it is understandable when the guys to pay another professional to weed out all the fake profiles. Of course, it's a shame for the real people out there, whose time is being wasted.

    Alternatively, one could try to meet women in the physical world. What a concept...

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Professionals chatting with professionals by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Alternatively, one could try to meet women in the physical world. What a concept...

      Scary. Give me Solaria.

  24. Re:cool by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    Damn, I should have read TFA.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  25. I knew a guy who did that by swm · · Score: 1

    Cyrano something.
    Cyrano...de Bergerac.
    Yeah, that's guy.

  26. Dueling Impersonators? by devnullkac · · Score: 1

    And what happens when a paid flirter interacts with other paid flirters? Can an entire relationship be developed by paid proxies?

    --
    What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
    1. Re:Dueling Impersonators? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Can an entire relationship be developed by paid proxies?

      Yes, they'll exchange phone numbers very rapidly, stop talking, and consider it a wonderful relationship.

      Relationships have stages, and this only exists at the pre-phone-number phase.

    2. Re:Dueling Impersonators? by mentil · · Score: 1

      And thus we come full circle to Blind Dating.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  27. Volunteer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Best place to meet good women for the following reason: they're inherently giving their time in an activity, you can socialize and get to know them, and you can tell if they're there just to date because you keep going to volunteer and they join you.

  28. Re:cool by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

    Whoever modded that as flamebait is a shitstick. It's a joke, not an attempt to start a flame war. Some of you are so thin skinned you might as well wear you organs on the outside. Faux rage at everything. You miss the forest because foliage might be a racist insult to green people who haven't been discovered yet. It's disingenuous.

    It is incredibly funny, specifically for the fact that this trait is common to children, women, men, humans of all genders, and those of anti-gender, dogs, cats, pretty much every mammal. And for the fact that to some of us, women are particularly effective at getting what they want. That makes it easier to observe in the case of male-female relationships, but its a truism for all nonetheless.

    A less funny quote this reminded me of: "This world is designed to provide you with everything you want. The only problem, you have to know what it is." Points to the same issue. People are generally uninformed about themselves, what is most important, what defines them and their lives.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  29. Timeshare arrangements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm a high class escort in the UK and have used dating sites to find love in my personal life but buy and large most dating sites are full of men looking for a free fuck or men I wouldn't look twice at.

    The way I view this is simple.You could spend hundreds or even thousands chasing love online via an agency or pay a defined amount for the GFE (Girlfriend Experience) I offer. Like, imagine me as a timeshare girlfriend. I always wear decent makeup and something nice with style and taste. Sex is not an issue. If you want to stick your cock in stick your cock in. If you prefer a chat or watching a movie or visiting a museum I'm more than fine with this to. I'm as genuine a person as I can be and do the best I can for you on the clock. If... If a guy wants an exclusive relationship similar terms apply. The only difference is how and how much.

    1. Re:Timeshare arrangements by slaker · · Score: 1

      One of my close friends is a well-regarded queer sex worker in Chicago. She contends that I just need to partake of a similar service, much as you and she provide. Here is my counter:

      What I want is not just sex, or to have a dining or public companion. What I want is emotional engagement. I want the support and access to intimacy that can only be found in free will. I want to be considered genuinely worthy has a companion, to share a bed and a washroom and to be able to touch another person freely and without concern that I'm violating taboos of human interaction. That comes from having a full time partner, not a rental. Were I a busier person, or one less concerned about my long-term emotional health, or someone who was just horny, I absolutely agree: renting is a great option. But that's not what I'm looking for. I wish it was. Everything would be so much easier.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    2. Re:Timeshare arrangements by slaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sex workers have a particular set of issues in their personal lives. They are, in a way, low-grade therapists, in addition to whatever physical services they provide. Sometimes they are an outlet for damaged people. They have to break social conventions for the sake of their professional lives and they have to deal with at least low-grade fear and jealousy from any loved ones aware of their occupation. I don't envy your lot. Your job is much more difficult than the fiction or fantasy suggest.

      My problems are 180 degrees opposite of yours. I have a lifetime of alienation and isolation, no hardened exterior for the sort of careful intimacy one might have from starting relationships and only the barest idea what physical relations entail. I am a stereotype and a punchline and the only thing I can say for myself is that I absolutely cannot give up the idea that one day I will join the rest of the species as a functional human being.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    3. Re:Timeshare arrangements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, you describe a recogniseable enough picture. I disagree with the term low grade therapist given how poor many therapists and sex therapists are within large health organisations especially if outcomes are considered. Any fool can learn a skill. So much depends on attitude and chemistry even with health professionals, or maybe I am just fussy and difficult to get along with.

      Thanks for the chat. I appreciate candidness and honesty, and at least a smidgen of tactful empapthy. You've been very decent.

    4. Re: Timeshare arrangements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Historically, prostitutes have been unlicensed psychotherapists. The sex is merely an excuse for the therapeutic session. The more expensive the prostitute is, the less sex is involved.

  30. I find this whole thing to be very sad and disheartening. If I wasn't already happily married I'd probably stay the hell away from online dating, since 99% seems to be bogus.

    Paid shills wasting your time by dangling a possible relationship in front of you for weeks or months? Sad and hurtful. Death to them for the misery they cause.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  31. ZZ Top by PPH · · Score: 1

    "I been in love ten thousand times,
    All you got to do is remember my line."

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  32. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    This is indeed news to me and something that should be clamped down on hard.

    Why should it be clamped? Who is going to do the clamping? The site? How can they know if it is happening or not? The government? You have got to be kidding?

    but wasting time on people that are outsourcing the work

    The are not "wasting time". The people hiring impersonators (2/3 men and 1/3 women according to TFA) are seriously looking for a match. They just don't have time to send 200 inquiries to get 20 responses, and then engage those 20 responses in some chit-chat to get 10 phone numbers that lead to 5 dates, one of which is "the one". That is an extremely time consuming process, especially if each inquiry is customized to the target's profile.

    it's how low the quality is for women and how ridiculous their requirements are.

    I see. So you are perfect, but all the women are just not good enough for you, and that's their fault. Maybe you should join an Incel support group.

  33. Re:cool by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    This isn't really news though. I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches. He even went on first dates with a few.

    Then there was the Ashley Madison leak where it turned out that a significant proportion of their female members were bots.

    The problem was and is that most women find most men unattractive for one reason or another. Apparently on Tinder at least, the stats on attractiveness are that men rate women on a curve that centers areoud 50 percent. Which we would expect.

    Women on the other hand, rated over 80 percent of men as unattractive. But how do you keep men coming back when only a very few of them ever stand a chance of landing a date? And then you would have a lot of women competing for a very small pool of men. (they are anyhow, but you need new men to rank) This might have been exacerbated by the recent manprovement initiative, where women are now allowed to call men out who do not fit their high standards.

    Since an overwhelming majority of men are deficient and unattractive, you have to tease them in order to get them to stick around. Enter the Bots and employees posing as interested others. Just enough to keep the undateable unattractive men rising to the bait.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  34. Re:cool by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    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.

    Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates. As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  35. Re:cool by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    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?

    Wow - Flamebait? This joke has an element of truth, which might be why it got blasted.

    A huge problem with the pairing interactions between men and women is that in general, then male asks for the interaction, and the woman accepts or rejects.

    I watched a very interesctin lecture by a man talking to women on why many women seem to pick the "Chads" of the world, aggressive handsome men who are self absorbed, and not men who would be considered good for long term relationships.

    He used the rule of thirds. A third of men will never approach a woman, a third might, but are reticent about it, and a third are the aggressive sort.

    The first group is obvious - no go. The second group might, but have a tendency to be friend zoned. The agressive guys have no problem with approaching women, and can be quite charming about it.

    So women after a while expect aggression, and the guys in the second group get friend zoned, mainly because they are too timid, and probably for evolutionary reasons, the women respond to the more aggressive and charming men. I emphasize evolutionary because https://www.psychologytoday.co...

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  36. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates.

    RTFA. They don't get you a date. They get you a phone number. After that, you are on your own.

    As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.

    This isn't "back in the day". With on-line dating, a man is lucky to get a 5-10% response rate to initial inquiries. If your time has value, paying someone else to make the inquiry and filter the results totally makes sense. Hand crafting inquiries, when you know that 95% of them are going to be ignored, is not "fun". It is a tedious chore. It is only fun once you are talking to a real person, and that still happens.

  37. Re:cool by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Those numbers only apply to tinder-style speed dating though. On such sites the ratio of men to women is 40:1 or worse, so naturally women can be more selective. It also ignores that women tend to value other traits as much or more than looks, traits that a photo can't convey.

    This flaw extends to all dating apps/sites. They are extremely superficial and it hurts many men's ability to find partners on them. We really need to find a better system.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  38. One of us should make a better dating site by FeelGood314 · · Score: 1

    The dating sites aren't working for women either. In my area, Ottawa, Canada, the median age of an active POF profile of slim or athletic woman between 30 and 40 is 300 days. (You can sort the profiles by newest first, find the oldest profile that was on in the last 30 days and then message the women halfway between and ask them when they created their profiles)

    Create a crappy woman's profile, see how many messages it gets bombarded with. Now imagine trying to get this woman's attention and keep it. It's almost impossible to do it with out sounding needy and desperate. Also every woman is remembering the best men she chatted with, the funny ones, the handsome ones, rich ones... It doesn't matter that all these are all guys ultimately didn't choose her, they inflated her sense of self worth, they raised her minimum standard of what she will date.

    In the end we end up with most men sounding desperate and undesirable and we created a situation where most people would rather be single than date the bottom 80% of the opposite sex.

    1. Re:One of us should make a better dating site by mentil · · Score: 1

      I recall reading about how a large portion of adoptive parents end up 'giving back' older children that they adopt, due to supposed 'behavioral problems' with the child that can't be reconciled. Turns out these problems are generally with the parents, being unable to adapt to life with that child, rather than anything inherent about the child themselves.

      Dating websites revolve around the concept of 'compatibility' without daring to question the related assumptions about the mechanics of romantic relationships. It may be that some people just can't make romantic relationships work with their lives, or aren't willing to do what it takes to make them work. It doesn't help that these dating site profiles generally leave out one's expectations for gender/relationship roles. If a man strongly believes that women belong in the kitchen and should only speak when spoken to, that should probably be taken into account by other people or the matching algorithm. How dominant or submissive one is, and how dominant of a partner they want, is a good example of an important criterion that people are generally ok with sharing.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  39. Re:cool by lucm · · Score: 2

    I gave up long time ago and prefer other paid services

    You would assume that in a society where offering the wrong kind of wine to a lady is considered sexual misconduct (ask Aziz Ansari), prostitution would be a booming industry to cater to the needs of men weary of the dark cloud of fake metoos. But look what happened in Seattle where regular customers of escort services were shamed, or how the FBI has taken down backpage because there were ads for prostitution. The only safe space for single males nowadays is gay saunas and pornhubs, which may not be up to everyone's taste.

    The only amusing part is that as a side effect of this socially driven emasculation of males, more and more heterosexual females are struggling to find non-limp dick males so they end up pouring billions in the dildo industry.

    Porn and rubber dicks, people, that's the pot of gold at the end of this feminazi rainbow.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  40. Re:cool by lucm · · Score: 1

    I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches.

    I know for a fact that in cheap labor countries there are huge call centers crammed with people pretending to be potential matches for western dating sites/apps, and asked to make the courting process last as long as possible to keep the "customer" coming back to the ad-bloated service. The hilarious thing is that it's not even the same employee who keeps the conversation going, they just pick it up from the log and move it forward.

    I think we need a new form of turing test to determine if we're talking to the same person online.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  41. Re:I just closed all my dating accounts...ASL by slaker · · Score: 1

    I'm already involved in adult education. My students are mostly older men, but I had the thought that being on a campus would at least increase my available pool. It hasn't, but this is definitely an idea I've put in to practice.

    --
    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  42. Re:cool by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    When you're mad that people didn't laugh, just stop talking. Until after you've had a full night's sleep.

  43. Re:cool by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    This doesn't surprise me at all, I wouldn't expect you to get any better than that.

    What I was told was, "She isn't going to tell you what she wants, she expects you to understand her well enough to know already."

    Just because somebody simplified the saying for you doesn't mean that reality is that simple. It only means she was trying to understand what advice you'd know how to make use of when she considered her words.

  44. Re:Math doesn't work. by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    If somebody ever comes in to interview and they take a phone call to do another interview at the same time... I'm going to honestly mean it when I thank them for their time, because I'm going to get at least 5 minutes of solid belly-laugh out of it.

  45. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    I think we need a new form of turing test to determine if we're talking to the same person online.

    We already have that: A face-to-face meeting.

    You already read each others profiles and exchanged messages. An extended back-and-forth conversation is not going to give you much more info. Just ask for a simple meet-up at Starbucks or Jamba Juice. If the answer is "no", then move on to the next prospect in the queue.

  46. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Those numbers only apply to tinder-style speed dating though.

    Actually, the 80-20 numbers come from OkCupid.

    It is not just a sign that women are pickier, but also that THEY CAN'T DO MATH. They were not asked to judge if the men were "unattractive" in an absolute sense, but whether they were below the median. The men did it correctly, putting 50% above the cutoff and 50% below.

  47. Re:cool by lucm · · Score: 1

    Just ask for a simple meet-up at Starbucks

    I don't think you have done a lot of online dating. Here's the thing: the vast majority of people are not worth a trip to Starbucks, just like a vast majority of candidates for a programming gig are not worth calling in for an interview.

    Behind a cute pic and a casual "hey there lol omg did you watch the latest GoT" there could be some seriously disappointing entity, like a vegan pinterest addict who took a day off to cry when Clinton lost, or an over-the-top party girl who has the constant greasy cough of regular drug smokers. Unless you're in for a quickie it takes a lot of screening to get to someone that has no major mental or cultural defects.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  48. Re:cool by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    That blog post is a fascinating insight. Note how women tend to rate men unevenly, but that doesn't seem to affect the rate at which they message them.

    I also wonder how much of it is just down to bad photos.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  49. Re:cool by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    If someone has major defects that they didn't include in their profile, they are not going to tell you about it in an online message either. Do you really think you are going to learn about her raspy cough and bad breath by exchanging messages? A F2F meeting is a far quicker way to narrow the candidate pool. A quick meet-up for a $5 cup of joe is not a big commitment.

  50. Tinder? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    I met my wife on ICQ. That was 17 years ago.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  51. Re:Math doesn't work. by zifn4b · · Score: 1

    If somebody ever comes in to interview and they take a phone call to do another interview at the same time... I'm going to honestly mean it when I thank them for their time, because I'm going to get at least 5 minutes of solid belly-laugh out of it.

    No one would ever do that. That's a bad strategic maneuver. Everyone knows that when you're a job candidate you must appeal to the employer's grandiose ego and worship the ground they walk upon by making them think they are your #1 choice. After all, they blessed us with the opportunity to be considered for employment. Everyone plays the same game. Women all make you think you're their #1 choice and so do employers but the reality is they are considering multiple "candidates" for the "position" too. It's a game. Play to win.

    --
    We'll make great pets
  52. Been going on for years by seoras · · Score: 2

    I did some consultancy work for an online dating company several years ago.
    The alarm bells started going off when I discovered they weren't interested in marketing it to women. They were entirely focused on men.
    I got access to their database for some of my work and couldn't find a single, real, female profile. All the female accounts were all "test" accounts.
    I was also aware of a huge "marketing" work force in the Ukraine who's job descriptions were ambiguous and when I met one or two of them they wouldn't tell me what they did (they were all women).
    One of them later confided in me that they had to sign an NDA about their job roll which was why they couldn't talk about it.
    Most of the marketing they did was through the porn websites and they also re-marketed to the cam girl websites.
    I'd guess that the "dating" websites are the main source of the online porn industries revenue.

  53. Re:cool by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates.

    RTFA. They don't get you a date. They get you a phone number. After that, you are on your own.

    Ther's a difference with not much distinction. Care to analyze me grammer as well? Telling me to Read the Fucking Artical is a tad rude, me hearty. Chillaxe.

    As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.

    This isn't "back in the day". With on-line dating, a man is lucky to get a 5-10% response rate to initial inquiries. If your time has value, paying someone else to make the inquiry and filter the results totally makes sense. Hand crafting inquiries, when you know that 95% of them are going to be ignored, is not "fun". It is a tedious chore. It is only fun once you are talking to a real person, and that still happens.

    And if his time really has value, his best bet is to have the person fmor the service go on the date as well. Or eliminate all of that expensive time spent dating and simply buy a mail order bride.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  54. Re:Math doesn't work. by mentil · · Score: 1

    In the old days that was called 'dating'. After you chose the most likely suitor and decided to be in an exclusive relationship with them, that was called 'going steady'. It's only 'two-timing' if you're supposedly going steady.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  55. Re:cool by nasch · · Score: 1

    the vast majority of people are not worth a trip to Starbucks

    Propose a meetup somewhere you might want to go anyway. From what I hear most people go to coffee shops a lot (I'm not most people) so you're not even spending much extra time.

  56. CPA by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    There's much easier ways to make 1.75... every 2-3 minutes. Ya guys are easy. :)

    --
    [($)]
  57. Evolutionary success? by clawsoon · · Score: 1

    I've heard your evolutionary ideas most often from lonely men who take their cue from online dating gurus and pickup artists.

    I've heard them least often from men with kids.

    That doesn't prove anything, but it does suggest to me that it might not be an evolutionarily successful attitude.

    1. Re:Evolutionary success? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I've heard your evolutionary ideas most often from lonely men who take their cue from online dating gurus and pickup artists.

      I've heard them least often from men with kids.

      That doesn't prove anything, but it does suggest to me that it might not be an evolutionarily successful attitude.

      Its complicated. And as far as that goes, I'm not remotely lonely, married and with a child - grown now.

      This all depends on how far you want to take the idea that and differences between men and women are 100 percent social construct, and not based upon built in physical attraction.

      Note these are general traits, and that of course there are outliers.

      Some things are social constructs. We've seen that in the workplace that within physical limitations of both sexes, women are capable of doing the same work as men.

      But the idea that physical attraction is a social construct is bullshit. It's funny how after so many years, homosexuals are accepted as a built in preference, and not a choice, that certain groups of feminists are pretending now that everything is a choice, because you can if you want, raise a child to be a male or female, and if you want you can take a child born with a penis, which the evil world of cisgender would demand that he be called a boy social construct, and by social molding have him identify as both a female, and a lesbian. A female who identifies as a lesbian can have sex with this lesbian with a penis. and not be sexual, but a true lesbian who has never had sex with a male, and is repulsed by males. In the world ot total social construct, that is completely valid - if not quite sane.

      So men in general have been hard wired to a certain body and face, and the same with women, although they have some added inborn traits as well.

      This is not an unusual thing in the rest of the animal world, I've yet to see a convincing argument on why humans are totally exempt. An empty slate that can be molded any which way.

      Here is an interesting example - young children were given the choice of I guess what you would call cis gendered toys. Fluffy and soft toys versus wheeled toys. Infant interest versus rough and tumble toys.

      The female children were largely interested in soft and fluffy and infant interest toys, while the male children were more interested in wheeled devices and toys they could engage in rough and tumble activities with.

      You might say "This is merely the example of cis gendered enforcement of proclivities by humans upon their offspring. This proves our thesis."

      On little problem though - these children were Rhesus Monkeys. sauce: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

      I'm attracted to exactly what I'm attracted to. Tall slender women with long hair, long legs, and small to medium bosom, big eyes and pretty face. No one told me this was what I was attracted to. As early as I noticed young ladies I noticed that was my preference. Still is, and ummm, I can sorta still tell that - yaknow?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Evolutionary success? by clawsoon · · Score: 1

      It's interesting that sex differences in play would be so much larger in monkeys than in humans, especially when it's human toys involved. For example, in this classic (n=102) study which "clearly demonstrate[s] that sex differences are in part biological in origin":

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321

      ...boys looked at the face 46 percent of the time; girls, 49 percent; boys looked at the mobile for 52 percent of the time; girls, 41 percent, which is not much of a difference when compared to the differences in the monkey study you linked. And a better-controlled later (n=48) study:

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096513001367

      ...didn't find a difference between boys and girls.

      Or this toy study:

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X1200044X

      ...which must've had a really awesome tea set, because the boys played with it 53% of the time and the girls played with it 48% of the time. But thank god for the train, which rescued the testosterone-driven hypothesis in this n=42 study. This n=156 toy study must've had an awesome train:

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25267577

      ...because the girls played with it 80% of the time. (The boys still played with it more, so don't worry. :-) )

      It's interesting, too, that innate toy preferences seem to have changed over the course of a few decades:

      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/icd.2064

      "Additionally, an effect of the length of time since study publication was found: girls played more with femaletyped toys in earlier studies than in later studies ( = .70, p Evolution is still happening, I guess. ;-)

      I've little doubt that my attraction to women is a heritable trait that has something to do with my Y chromosome - no doubt something downstream from the SRY gene - but it seems suspicious that I'd have specific hard-coded genetic preferences which would just happen to be perfectly suited for half of the girls I was surrounded by when I hit puberty. Maybe imprinting has something to do with it?

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691703/

      ...although, as with most of the science on all sides of the "which behaviour differences between the sexes are driven by biological effects of the Y chromosome" debate, the science in that study isn't very strong. Or maybe it's matching, and I was attracted to girls who were similar to me?

      https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/the-myth-of-buying-beauty/374414/

      I have no idea how strong McClintock's science is. One thing that makes me suspicious of all of these studies - on all sides - is how often researchers confirm what they already believe and how rarely they convince each other with their data. (...and how often people on the Internet fixate on studies which support the conclusions they've already come to.)

      One thing that we've learned from animal studies is that a lot of the proxies we've used for evolutionary success - attraction, frequency of mating, social status - don't necessarily map to actual evolutionary success as recorded in DNA. Given the sorry state of social psychology and the parts of evolutionary psychology that share its techniques, I think we're a long way from figuring all this out in humans.

      FWIW, I spend a lot of time interacting with feminists, and I've never seen/heard one say that sexual attraction is entirely a social construct. Many of them do say that the precise form it takes is socially influenced. This makes some sense to me; why else would porn from the '70s do nothing for me, even though the women are just as young and healthy and big-eyed and pretty as the girls/women I grew up with?

    3. Re:Evolutionary success? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      But the idea that physical attraction is a social construct is bullshit.

      It is, partly. Standards of beauty have varied over historical times. There are things that haven't changed (preferring smooth skin and symmetrical features) and things that have (preferred breast size).

      It's funny how after so many years, homosexuals are accepted as a built in preference, and not a choice, that certain groups of feminists are pretending now that everything is a choice, because you can if you want, raise a child to be a male or female, and if you want you can take a child born with a penis, which the evil world of cisgender would demand that he be called a boy social construct, and by social molding have him identify as both a female, and a lesbian. A female who identifies as a lesbian can have sex with this lesbian with a penis. and not be sexual, but a true lesbian who has never had sex with a male, and is repulsed by males. In the world ot total social construct, that is completely valid - if not quite sane.

      Um, huh? Where did this come from?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    4. Re:Evolutionary success? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      But the idea that physical attraction is a social construct is bullshit.

      It is, partly. Standards of beauty have varied over historical times. There are things that haven't changed (preferring smooth skin and symmetrical features) and things that have (preferred breast size)

      Very true. At one time, a woman we would consider "chubby" today was considered the height of physical charm. Probably as a sign of health at a time when a lot of people were a lot less healthy than today. In men, a pot belly in older men was considered a sign of success. .

      It's funny how after so many years, homosexuals are accepted as a built in preference, and not a choice, that certain groups of feminists are pretending now that everything is a choice, because you can if you want, raise a child to be a male or female, and if you want you can take a child born with a penis, which the evil world of cisgender would demand that he be called a boy social construct, and by social molding have him identify as both a female, and a lesbian. A female who identifies as a lesbian can have sex with this lesbian with a penis. and not be sexual, but a true lesbian who has never had sex with a male, and is repulsed by males. In the world ot total social construct, that is completely valid - if not quite sane.

      Um, huh? Where did this come from?

      Indeed - sounds crazy. But here is the thing. There are people who are raising their children genderless because they believe that gender is a total social construct. This is a typical one. https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

      With the concept of society acting as the enforcer of gender identity - who individuals desire to mate with - the concept is that without enforcement, the child will choose any of the huge number of genders as defined by those who insist gender is a social construct.

      The keywords are that the child will make a deliberate and conscious choice.

      This means that there is no hard wiring, no natural proclivity, that all is a choice. The mind as a completely blank device that can be programmed any way society wants it to be programmed. Sex with goats? If society wants it. Homosexual behavior? If society wants it.

      It is obvious that social mores will determine in several aspects the sexual practices of those societies. But in no way shape or form do they make the basic determination. repression, suppression or expression is not what determines gender "choice". So here we have people who just like fundamentalist homophobes, have decided that who a person wants to engage in sexual activiteis is a choice that that person makes all by themselves, that they think one day "I have come to the decision that I want to have sex with men, so I will train myself to be sexually aroused by men." In both gender as a social construct and religious homophobia, a person can believe the same thing.

      Fuggidaboudit! I knew real young who I was attracted to, and what the physical characteristics of women I found exciting. My gay friends also knew early on, even if they were closeted. I think the traits are what we are born with. Some cisgender, some gay, some bisexual, some asexual.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  58. Re:cool by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Nobody simplified it for me; your phrasing is simply not being used around where I live.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  59. Re:cool by minstrelmike · · Score: 1

    Back in the day there was a better response rate?
    Perhaps every person ever asked out on a date face-to-face goes out, but I don't think so. Seems like face-to-face asking results in maybe a 30% success rate, and while that is higher (and your own success rate might be higher but for the same reason), in face-to-face interactions, you've already passed on quite a few people.

    But to me this hearkens back to the days of John Alden and Myles Standish, 1620 CE in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. That might have been before the days of the internet. I can't remember if Shakespeare also had a similar plot in one of his plays.

  60. Re:cool by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

    Not mad. You brought that from your own internal frame of reference. Also, down modding someone incorrectly is way different than people not laughing.

    Equivocation and false attribution aside, I can't seem to find anything to what you wrote except an exhortation about sleeping well at night. I do, and will continue to do so. Thank you for your concern. I wish you health, happiness, and good rest as well, sir.

    Cheers!

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  61. Re:cool by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    No man, you're whining about mods, you should really not try to defend that like an idiot. You got mad because you down-modded and your joke wasn't funny, fucking deal with it.

    Whining about getting downmodded is exactly the same as getting mad because people didn't laugh at your joke.

    You're new here. You're being an idiot. So figure it out. Moderation is the right of the moderator, when you're wrong and whine about their choice that's just you not understanding moderation. Don't be that guy.

  62. Re:cool by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

    Wow, ok...We will do this your way.

    This is how I definitively know, without any doubt, that you are the idiot in this interaction:

    I didn't post a joke. I wasn't down modded. You still haven't figured this out. You are going to have to go back and look at the post history to figure out how much of an idiot you are. I will do my best to help you realize this in my post, but I fear there is little hope for you. You are so bankrupt of real intelligence, adaptability to facts, and the flow of interactions between humans that the best outcome for you and the rest of the world involves a headstone with your name and today's date on it. Would that fate were so capricious that she, for once, could bless us all so infinitely in that way.

    My motivations for commenting on the down mod were not related in any way to me being mad because IT WASN'T ME THAT WAS DOWN MODDED, YOU COMPLETE AND TOTAL IDIOT! You were so eager to jump on someone, so self righteous and self justified in your attack, that you couldn't even stop to read the nick of the person that you were replying to. You could say that no one is that stupid, and you would be right, for once, in your whole life. It takes a special kind of stupid, combined with a powerful and rancorous degenerate character, to plow mindlessly ahead, being at once completely unfounded in your accusations, wrong on every possible metric, completely self absorbed, and unnecessarily rude. You are, truly, in a class by yourself.

    Further proof that you have overflowed a stack internally and your imagined internal world is executing code where reality is supposed to be: My user ID should give you an indication of how long I have been on this site. It obviously hasn't. I'm not new. Are you sure you are ok?

    After considering all of the incomprehensible fuckups in your communication with me, I think you may have had a stroke. I am having a hard time conceiving of a circumstance where I could make such series of colossal mistakes, blunders, and oversights which reveal such deep internal flaws, shortcomings, absences, and voids in my character, intelligence, emotional stability, perception, and processing ability, without referring to brain pathology.

    What I am trying to say, and I am sorry, I should use words you can understand, is this: There is a very real possibility that there is something seriously wrong with your brain. Get yourself checked. Please contact a responsible adult and ask them nicely to take you to the doctor. If the MRI of your cranium doesn't reveal a seeping artery, a blood clot, a tumor, an abscess, or cyst on your prefrontal cortex, or widespread atrophy and degeneration I will be surprised.

    Fortunately, if it turns out that you are just such a worthless piece of shit that your behavior pattern matches exactly with someone who has a serious head injury or dementia, you won't even care. If you aren't pathologically broken in some way on a physical level, the only other answer to your behavior is as result of solipsistic narcissism, possibly complicated by borderline personality disorder. Plainly, you do not have the capacity to give a fuck about anyone other than yourself, and even that is questionable. You proved it here undoubtedly. All you wanted to do was lash out at someone, to demean them, for some unknown internal payoff. The motivation, desire, and impetus to do this is so deeply rooted within your own psyche, such a product of your internal world, and so divorced and unrelated to the other person and the outside world, that it was entirely unnecessary that you got the right person. In your rush to get the rush that you get from attacking people when you feel justified in doing so, you couldn't even be bothered to get their name.

    Think about that. You didn't even get the name of the person you intended to insult and demean, and as a result, you attacked someone else for no reason at all. That right there is proof of what kind of person you are. Now, go sit with that for a while and decide if your c

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  63. Re:cool by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    I stopped reading when you claimed to have not told a joke.

    If you write more words than I did, at least spend the time to comprehend my words before spewing.

    When you accuse people of not having a sense of humor, you are engaged in the idiocy of complaining that people didn't laugh at your jokes. It doesn't need a lot more parsing than that; you can expect in that situation to receive that response, and it is not an inaccurate response. Nobody cares about your take on the semantics; don't whine about other people's sense of humor, and don't whine about mods. Easy peasy. See, now did you really need to spew all that?

  64. Re:cool by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

    "by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) Alter Relationship on Saturday April 28, 2018 @04:20AM (#56518309)
    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?"

    What's my Nickname? Who wrote the post with the joke in it?

    The only joke here is you, and everyone in my office is laughing their ass off at how incredibly vapid you are! Thank you for being so obtuse. It's beautiful! I thought you were trolling, but no. You can't fake your kind of stupid.

    LOL! Thank you, i'm dying!

    PS: read to the end of my previous post, you missed the best part. Also, as much as we enjoy laughing at you, please seek medical attention, your brain is not working right.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.