Matching

©03 The Media Desk
http://themediadesk.com

     A friend of the Desk is all enthused about Web dating services. He has been out on several dates with women who seemed to have picked him out of a lineup of the most eligible bachelors on the East Coast.
     OK. Great. Wonderful for him. Right? "Of course right."
     While the Desk is not ready to go out on a date or social anything with almost anybody anytime soon in something remotely like a serious way, it thought it would at least look at a few of them and see what all the hype was about.

     So over the weekend it picked eHarmony.com and a couple of other 'Singles Listings'. Then for no particular reason it spent several hours over the course of about three days filling out eHarmony's 'twenty minute profile'. Then it signed up, under various alias's with the others.
     This is an overview of those efforts.

• eHarmony
       Yeah.
       Their Compatability Profile is where it all starts... And for the Desk, ends.
       The only way anybody could fill this thing out in twenty minutes was if you didn't even read the questions and just clicked stuff at random and then hit the Next Page button. So what their really neat radio commercial says, is simply an out and out lie. Oh, well, why should the politicians have all the fun. Right Hillary?
       And while it is extensive, it is also so oddly worded some of the questions were unanswerable.
       For example, the Desk occasionally smokes a pipe. It only wants to know if you smoke cigarettes.
       Are you a leader or a follower? Well, depends on what's going on.
       Are you more socially outgoing or reserved? The Life of the Party? Athletic? Again. Depends.
       In the end the Desk spent all that time and deep soul searching for... Well, the note it got at the end of all that says it all.

  eHarmony.com is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive testing of married individuals. One of the requirements for it to work successfully is for participants to fall into a rigorously defined "profile".
  Unfortunately, you do not fit within this profile. eHarmony's matching system is not suitable for about 20% of potential participants, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from the matching part of the eHarmony site. But there are many more benefits to using eHarmony.
  We hope that you understand our regret in our inability to provide our matching service for you at this time. We urge you to participate in our other services such as the eHarmony Community, or take advantage of the opportunity to get to know yourself better through our free personality profile.
  If you are receiving this message as a subscriber please contact userservices@eharmony.com for a refund of your subscription.

  
       So according to good doctor Neil Clark Warren, eHammony's founder and chief promoter... The Desk is too weird to match.

       So it goes.

  [NOTE: The Desk emailed eHarmony for comment, so far, it has not received a reply. ]

• Yahoo! Singles
       Using another alias the Desk fed its information to the Yahoo! Singles database then looked through the shopping list of potential matches.
       And then it got a shock.
       A lot of the listings were actually for adult websites and phone sex chatlines and dating services that under another guise would be outcall 'massages'.
       Oh well.
       The listings that were for Real People contained almost as much fiction as any congressman's resume. One woman who claimed to be 'young and vibrant' looked like she was on the high side of 60. There were two transsexuals in the straight women category, and another was a couple looking for a bi-curious man.
       Not that adventurous, the Desk went and changed it's listing's mailbox to a completely fictional address and then decided to let it go altogether and deleted the account.

• MSN's listings
       Again, as one of its aliases, the Desk changed a mailbox to an MSN ID and signed up in their Singles category.
       Immediately its mailbox's inflow of SPAM tripled. Mostly ads for porn and escort services. Fifteen new messages in less than one full day. Terrific.
       Here too there were ads for 'professional services', porn outfits, more 'hot chat' phone services (does anybody actually call them?) intermixed with the best of the Lonely Hearts Club.
       Oh please.
       Thank you, no thank you.

• Ifriends
       The Desk checked out Ifriends and then unchecked Ifriends.
       Their 'free' service is useless since to enter into any chat worth entering and chatting in, you have to be a subscriber. Which is a billed service.
       Their menus look enticing and their range of options is impressive. But again. To get into anything anybody would want to get into, you have to pay, and pay, and pay.
       Thank you, but no thanks.

• Other Listings
       The Desk didn't get very far with two other ones. They wanted a credit card number up front. One of them before they even assigned a user name and password.
       Sorry.
       The Desk does not provide a credit card number for 'Identification Purposes' for anything. Once they have that number they can bill you for anything they want. And you have little, if any, recourse since you did sign up for it. Nevermind the three pages of legalese in fine print about not charging for services not used, if you sign up you are using the service and they can charge. Whether or not you ever email or contact anybody else is irrelevant.

Overview
     It is a very good thing the truth in advertising laws do not apply to singles ads. The Desk was already aware that in personal ads 'full figured woman' means 'fat woman' and 'manly build' means 'fat man'. 'Homebody' is polite for 'couch potato' and 'frugal' is another way to say 'you'll pay for your own drinks'. 'Mature' equals 'old' and 'appearance doesn't matter' means they are uglier than you are.
     But in the online world things are even worse. 'Adventuresome' now means 'cross dressing lawyer with trashcan fetish seeks bisexual Eskimo with condo'. When a woman puts in her ad she 'enjoys new experiences' it means she charges by the hour and will send you a picture of her riding crop collection on request.
     The Desk was honest. Even to the point of filling out one 'self description' as:

Half crippled ugly perverted drunken old ex sportswriter seeking whatever it can find. Recently widowed. Not ready for commitments yet, just somebody to spend some time with.

     And in doing so it violated several of the service's guidelines. You were not supposed to put down negatives about yourself, mention personal issues or give the impression you were just 'looking'.
     Sorry, that is all there is to the Desk's life right now. Negatives, personal issues, and it is just 'looking'.

     So what is the Desk's opinions about online dating?
     It may be fine for the Desk's friends and those that call the 'sexy chat' lines that are all over the TV at two in the morning... But it ain't for the Desk.

-30-

Email from eHarmony:

The process of taking our personality inventory will help you clarify your desires -- it lets you know what kind of person you are, and what kind of person you might find compatible! If you choose to go on, we'll make some meaningful matches for you. Maybe you'll find a best friend or even a soul mate.
    How do we do it? We match people using 29 key relationship factors in a method proven to work. We've made over one million matches, have enabled thousands of really fun dates and have seen hundreds of matches lead to marriage. eHarmony makes meaningful matches for people just like you.
    Visit: http://www.eharmony.com// to complete our personality inventory. We'll show you the results and tell you how you can use them to clarify your wishes. If you want to go further, we will compare your personality with hundreds of thousands of profiles. We'll show you the very best matches, and you don't pay a thing until you're convinced you'd like to get to know someone. When you do, you'll get a free month's service!

[NOTE: the Desk did not PAY for any of the services it describes above. It is not otherwise affiliated with any of them. And it is not sure it would go out with someone it met through one of them if it got the offer anyway. No Defamation of any of the above services is intended. All names and identifying information is trademark of the services listed. Nothing mentioned in this article is an endorsement of any of the services. All questions about said services should be sent to the service's customer service desk, if you can find it. Thank you ]

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