Online dating vs. my concept of reality
I’ve been bored lately, so I decided to try something new. Knowing in advance of how dumb it is, I decided to partake in an online dating service. I won’t mention which one it is, but I must say I found it an appalling waste of time. All the clichés are true. Nobody is who they say they are in their profile, and the service will try to cheat you in every way possible to keep you a subscribed member. Needless to say, I wasn’t a paying member. I used a free seven day trial, which gave me full use of the service. There’s no way I’d pay for that garbage since it is $30 a month. I have a lot better things I can think of to spend that money on. I don’t believe in online dating, but I thought it would work to meet some new people in the area. Needless to say, there were very few girls on there from Monroe, and the ones from Monroe were ugly. I had no real preferences in my searching other than no kids, blacks, or fatties within a 50 mile and 18-31 age range. I only wanted to see profiles with pictures, and this search produced about 500 girls; I’ll admit that I looked at every single one of them. Many of them were laughable. I have never come across so many lying profiles though. One could describe their “body type” in their description, and these choices were slender, average, athletic, a few extra pounds, thick, voluptuous, or large. I saw some girls that must’ve weight 200 pounds whose description said average. I loved those pictures of girls that were either just headshots or cropped pictures to omit what their body looked like. That was a clear indication that a fatty was at your hands.
I quickly learned that anyone can produce a profile for free, but only subscribed members have the ability to send messages and see other subscriber’s contact information in messages. The system adamantly censors profiles to exclude anything indicating contact information; all messages are handled through the system. An automated Hitler scans every profile and bars it if it has any personal details in it. My profile was rejected on many occasions. Several times, I tried to indirectly sneak my personal email address in my profile, but it was barred once since I put down the name of the restaurant that I worked at, even though there are 600 of these restaurants in the country. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the profiles I saw were from non-subscribers. As a trial subscriber, I was able to send these people messages, although the messages themselves would be screened to disallow personal contact information- mainly email or MySpace addresses. Non-subscribers could read these messages but could not send messages back. Whenever I did sent messages, I had to hide my email and MySpace address within the body of the message if I ever wanted these people to get a hold of me. I sent out some 75 messages to any girl that looked decent enough with my age and distant range. Of course, these girls had to have some good qualities, and I had to fit their description of the ideal person. For example, though my age range was a wide 18-31, not all girls in that age range had the age near mine in their own range. Plus, if some girls looked like douchebags just from what their profile said, I excluded them. There were a lot of details a person had to list in their profile.
On this service, I had the ability to also see who viewed my profile. In all the messages I sent, most of them were just copy-and-pasted and inserted with only one or two sentences to comment on something specific in their profile. Out of the 500 or so people that came up in my search, about 75 of them seemed decent enough to message. I didn’t send messages to some girls though, especially those that were overly attractive or seemed to have a personalities conflicting with my own (such as smokers, the sex-savers until marriage, or those that demanded way too much from a guy). It told me when the last time these people were active on the service, so I knew some girls would probably never see the message in the first place. I sent more detailed messages to those girls that were particularly interesting. Within no time, I got responses back from two girls. They weren’t subscribers but they figured out the simple clues in my message for them to find my email address. I ended up chatting with both of these girls- both coincidentally from Garden City. From their pictures on their profile, they both looked decent, but you should know in advance what they really looked like. I ended up chatting with both of these girls for quite some time before eventually getting their MySpace address to look them up further. I was appalled and absolutely pissed at myself for thinking otherwise. One girl, who described herself as “voluptuous” in appearance and loved to play sports, must’ve weighed 300 pounds. You would’ve never guessed from her headshots that her cankles were wider than my waist, and she looked like she would have difficulty accurately taking a shit in a toilet. The other girl, who was slightly younger, was decent looking. Her pictures were all strangely cut off under her breasts, which were hiked up in the picture to give the impression of a bountiful bust. However, when I saw her full pictures on MySpace, she was very sloppy looking and probably weighed just over 200. The sad thing is both of these girls seem to be online 20 hours a day, so now it’s difficult for me to get online now since I want to forget about them. I’m mad, because both of these girls, prior to me actually seeing more pictures, described themselves as energetic, athletic, and healthy. We carried out long and informative converstation online, but I don’t feel like I should have to settle with someone who is fat. A few extra pounds or “thick” is okay. I mean, Rachael was a little chubby, but I still loved her. I just don’t think I should have to ever settle for a fat girl. Plus, fat girls are gross and embarrassing to me seen with.
Two positive things did come from my use of messaging on this service. One girl, who is actually attractive and resides Downriver, messaged me back, and we exchanged MySpace names and screen names. She thought I was good looking and loved my description in my profile. Unfortunately, when I saw her pictures on MySpace, she appears to be a very loose girl. By that, every other picture has her with many guys at parties, and she’s a flaunter of her appearance in sexual manners. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that, and I think she’s pretty sexy. But, that’s probably not the kind of girl who would want anything to do with me other than a one-night fling. The other girl who got a hold of me lives in Farmington, which isn’t really that far away. She’s a pretty girl, slightly older, and also a questioner of why she can’t find anyone. We’ve been exchanging long emails, but I’m not looking too much into it since I don’t know her that well. I’ve met people over the internet before, and nothing good has ever really come of it. I’m optimistic though, because I’m looking to meet someone new. But, people can lie so easily over the internet. I could very well say I make $50,000 a year, played varsity quarterback in high school, workout everyday, or anything else to suit the desires of a girl’s particular wants in their profile.
Needless to say, my seven-day trial subscription ended 1½ days before it said it was supposed to. Now that I’m not a member at all, I’ve been getting strange messages now. I can still read these messages, but I’d have to be a paying subscriber to respond back in any way. These messages are clearly fabricated. They are all written in the same manner from people who would clearly never send me messages. One example includes a message I got from a girl in Detroit. Her pictures on her profile are model-quality and very nice, and her profile pours out her heart to find that special someone. Here is what her message to me said:
Hello Richard
How are you doing today? It's nice to come across your profile. I think I like what im reading from your profile so far and i would love to know more about you. I am cool, honest, loving and a pretty down to earth person. I have been on [this service] for a while now and i have not really met anyone interesting, most of the men on here are just down for sex and looking for a one night stand, I hope that would be change with you. I think you look very nice. It would be so amazing to meet you, I would love to get to know you better. Please message me back so that we can keep up this conversation and can share my pics with you and maybe much more.
I hope to hear from you soon.
This message clearly came from a fake account ran by the system. I’ve gotten several similar messages from different girls but only after my free trial ended. The system clearly wants me to pay for a real subscription so that I can message back these girls. I’ve looked up some criticisms of this service and others like it, and many people have said that the system might have robot accounts to lure members into resubscribing. That’s pretty pathetic if they do, but I wouldn’t doubt it. I also read that some services create various fake accounts by location so that people will believe that there are more single people in their area than there really are. I wonder how many of my messages went to girls that don’t even exist. I’ll complain more later on my negativity in my brief five days on an online dating service, but it was a pretty big waste of my time.
I quickly learned that anyone can produce a profile for free, but only subscribed members have the ability to send messages and see other subscriber’s contact information in messages. The system adamantly censors profiles to exclude anything indicating contact information; all messages are handled through the system. An automated Hitler scans every profile and bars it if it has any personal details in it. My profile was rejected on many occasions. Several times, I tried to indirectly sneak my personal email address in my profile, but it was barred once since I put down the name of the restaurant that I worked at, even though there are 600 of these restaurants in the country. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the profiles I saw were from non-subscribers. As a trial subscriber, I was able to send these people messages, although the messages themselves would be screened to disallow personal contact information- mainly email or MySpace addresses. Non-subscribers could read these messages but could not send messages back. Whenever I did sent messages, I had to hide my email and MySpace address within the body of the message if I ever wanted these people to get a hold of me. I sent out some 75 messages to any girl that looked decent enough with my age and distant range. Of course, these girls had to have some good qualities, and I had to fit their description of the ideal person. For example, though my age range was a wide 18-31, not all girls in that age range had the age near mine in their own range. Plus, if some girls looked like douchebags just from what their profile said, I excluded them. There were a lot of details a person had to list in their profile.
On this service, I had the ability to also see who viewed my profile. In all the messages I sent, most of them were just copy-and-pasted and inserted with only one or two sentences to comment on something specific in their profile. Out of the 500 or so people that came up in my search, about 75 of them seemed decent enough to message. I didn’t send messages to some girls though, especially those that were overly attractive or seemed to have a personalities conflicting with my own (such as smokers, the sex-savers until marriage, or those that demanded way too much from a guy). It told me when the last time these people were active on the service, so I knew some girls would probably never see the message in the first place. I sent more detailed messages to those girls that were particularly interesting. Within no time, I got responses back from two girls. They weren’t subscribers but they figured out the simple clues in my message for them to find my email address. I ended up chatting with both of these girls- both coincidentally from Garden City. From their pictures on their profile, they both looked decent, but you should know in advance what they really looked like. I ended up chatting with both of these girls for quite some time before eventually getting their MySpace address to look them up further. I was appalled and absolutely pissed at myself for thinking otherwise. One girl, who described herself as “voluptuous” in appearance and loved to play sports, must’ve weighed 300 pounds. You would’ve never guessed from her headshots that her cankles were wider than my waist, and she looked like she would have difficulty accurately taking a shit in a toilet. The other girl, who was slightly younger, was decent looking. Her pictures were all strangely cut off under her breasts, which were hiked up in the picture to give the impression of a bountiful bust. However, when I saw her full pictures on MySpace, she was very sloppy looking and probably weighed just over 200. The sad thing is both of these girls seem to be online 20 hours a day, so now it’s difficult for me to get online now since I want to forget about them. I’m mad, because both of these girls, prior to me actually seeing more pictures, described themselves as energetic, athletic, and healthy. We carried out long and informative converstation online, but I don’t feel like I should have to settle with someone who is fat. A few extra pounds or “thick” is okay. I mean, Rachael was a little chubby, but I still loved her. I just don’t think I should have to ever settle for a fat girl. Plus, fat girls are gross and embarrassing to me seen with.
Two positive things did come from my use of messaging on this service. One girl, who is actually attractive and resides Downriver, messaged me back, and we exchanged MySpace names and screen names. She thought I was good looking and loved my description in my profile. Unfortunately, when I saw her pictures on MySpace, she appears to be a very loose girl. By that, every other picture has her with many guys at parties, and she’s a flaunter of her appearance in sexual manners. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that, and I think she’s pretty sexy. But, that’s probably not the kind of girl who would want anything to do with me other than a one-night fling. The other girl who got a hold of me lives in Farmington, which isn’t really that far away. She’s a pretty girl, slightly older, and also a questioner of why she can’t find anyone. We’ve been exchanging long emails, but I’m not looking too much into it since I don’t know her that well. I’ve met people over the internet before, and nothing good has ever really come of it. I’m optimistic though, because I’m looking to meet someone new. But, people can lie so easily over the internet. I could very well say I make $50,000 a year, played varsity quarterback in high school, workout everyday, or anything else to suit the desires of a girl’s particular wants in their profile.
Needless to say, my seven-day trial subscription ended 1½ days before it said it was supposed to. Now that I’m not a member at all, I’ve been getting strange messages now. I can still read these messages, but I’d have to be a paying subscriber to respond back in any way. These messages are clearly fabricated. They are all written in the same manner from people who would clearly never send me messages. One example includes a message I got from a girl in Detroit. Her pictures on her profile are model-quality and very nice, and her profile pours out her heart to find that special someone. Here is what her message to me said:
Hello Richard
How are you doing today? It's nice to come across your profile. I think I like what im reading from your profile so far and i would love to know more about you. I am cool, honest, loving and a pretty down to earth person. I have been on [this service] for a while now and i have not really met anyone interesting, most of the men on here are just down for sex and looking for a one night stand, I hope that would be change with you. I think you look very nice. It would be so amazing to meet you, I would love to get to know you better. Please message me back so that we can keep up this conversation and can share my pics with you and maybe much more.
I hope to hear from you soon.
This message clearly came from a fake account ran by the system. I’ve gotten several similar messages from different girls but only after my free trial ended. The system clearly wants me to pay for a real subscription so that I can message back these girls. I’ve looked up some criticisms of this service and others like it, and many people have said that the system might have robot accounts to lure members into resubscribing. That’s pretty pathetic if they do, but I wouldn’t doubt it. I also read that some services create various fake accounts by location so that people will believe that there are more single people in their area than there really are. I wonder how many of my messages went to girls that don’t even exist. I’ll complain more later on my negativity in my brief five days on an online dating service, but it was a pretty big waste of my time.