Update on Online Dating
Last time I checked in here was several months ago.
I am still on EHarmony for a couple more months. This is a real loser site. At least for people in my age bracket. In my experience, the vast majority of the women on this site will either:
- Not respond to your request for guided communications.
- Not respond at all i.e. not close the file with you but not open it either.
- Communicate with you in guided communications up to the last stage where you are to begin emailing or telephoning each other, and then suddenly close the file on you.
- Not respond to your request for Fasttracking, which means trying to write or speak directly with them through EHarmony (they still don’t have your email so its safe for them). By not responding, I mean they don’t respond either way and they also do not close the file on you.
Sometimes you have to wonder whether these people actually exist or whether EHarmony made them up so it looks like they are giving you leads so you will stay with their program, i.e. to string you along.
Of course, some of the women on EHarmony are free weekends only. Which means they may be there for only one weekend. They have to resubmit their free request to be free on Eharmony every weekend. Of course, EHarmony does not bother to tell paying members who is on free for the weekend and who is a paying member.
Now this is interesting because the vast number of people on this site request Guided Communications instead of Fasttrack. But you have to ask yourself – why would anybody that is on this site for a weekend only request Guided communications considering that this is a multistep process of canned multiple choice question communications back and forth between the two parties that usually goes on for some time before you get to open communications. If you are on for a weekend only, wouldn’t you want to go with Fastrack? Its still safe because you don’t have to reveal your private email until you are ready. And besides, anybody can create an email account anytime for free. You can create multiple email accounts on several sites. Nobody is going to know who you are unless you actually give them a telephone number. So why do people play these games? In fact, why doesn’t everybody on this site just go directly to fasttrack?
I also joined Plenty of Fish, which is free and Mate1, which is not free for men but is for women. I have yet to use Plenty of Fish. Now that I know POF is one of the few sites to actually organize singles events and parties in your city by having members sponsor such events, I plan to use this site more.
Mate1 is deceptive. You can leave a canned email message that says something like “I am interested in corresponding with you, blah, blah…” I often get multiple canned emails from the same women on this site. On several occasions I have received multiple canned emails even after I have responded specifically and directly with a personalized email. This site lets you open up a persons file as if they are a new member that you have never communicated with even if you have communicated with them before. Hence, the continuing canned emails from women even after I have emailed them with a personalized response to their initial canned email. Apparently, they don’t open up my email and later don’t even remember that I emailed them, so they click on the canned button that lets them create a canned email that says “I would like to correspond with you, etc.”.
This site does have instant chatting, but if you are emailing somebody, your screen gets locked up so you can’t send your email until you let the person who wants to chat know you want to chat or want to decline. If you decline, you return to your email you were corresponding. If you decide to chat, you automatically lose everything you already wrote in an email to whomever you were emailing to when you were interrupted by somebody who wanted to chat.
Beware on chat of younger women who are actually working for pornographic sites that promote on-line chatting and on-line lap dances with their models for a monthly fee. The way this works is that a young woman on Mate1 will invite you to chat. Then after a few Hi there how are yous and what are you doing, she will ask you if you want to see her show. If you say yes, she will tell you to plug in tinyurl.com with some extension after that into your browser and select free trial. She may ask that you type in a slash followed by her first name. Tinyurl.com is a site that disguises longer real names of dot coms. The apparent purpose of this is to hide the identity of the real site. But the real sites name comes up as soon as you press enter after typing in Tinyurl.com/whatever.
There is a lot of spam on Mate1. This site apparently hires women to send you emails saying they are interested in your profile. While this is typically harmless, (aside from wasting your time that is) there is another breed that will spam you with the intent of extracting money from you. You can tell its spam because: (1) They will be much younger than you (2) They generally can not write very well, stringing sentences together and using poor grammar. This may be due to the sheer volume of responses they have to send off to get one reply. It is kind of like fishing in a stream with a lot of little fish not worth catching but with a few really big stupid ones. (3) They will have beautiful modeling pictures of themselves posing alone, never with anybody else, and (4) They will eventually (usually the second or third email) have some amazing story of theirs such as taking care of a sick mother or father in Asia or Africa, having inherited a lot of money but for some reason can not access it, doing charity work in Africa, typically Nigeria. Their purpose here is to get you to voluntarily send them money. They probably won’t even ask you for the money until you ask them how you can help them out. In this manner, they can not be legally held liable for coercion, fraud, or harassment. (5) They will talk about you in their emails in glowing terms expressing deep love for you and telling you things like that you are the only one for them, etc.
Another way to meet people is through meetup.com. This is sort of like a database of meetings or those trying to create group to meet on something. There are all sorts of meetings here: photography, social, financial, etc. This is great if you live in a large urban area, but not if you don’t.
Another way to meet people is through meetin.org. This is a free site where single people volunteer to organize events in your town, from simple get togethers at bars to events organized around something major going on in your town such as a basketball game, etc. Your simple RSVP that you intend to go to an event and go, unless tickets are required which you arrange with the volunteer sponsor of the event. Meetin.org exists in many major cities of the world, including Chicago
I have also considered joining a singles vacation/adventure site called highlifeadventures.com. This is Chicago Region based. You fill out a questionnaire on the type of adventures you are interested in and they get back to you. I was supposed to have a meeting with them last week. The meeting was purported to be to see that I am a real person with a real job or life. In reality, they want you to pay them as much as $1,200 a year for membership plus $30 a month for dues. This does not pay for any events that you go to. This organization has a paid staff that sends one person to every event with this organization paying for that person to go using your money. They may very well get volume discounts and have better planned events than meetin.org, but you pay a steep price for this. Possibly, if you go to a large number of events with them, you might get your $1,200 back in savings over what it would have cost you to arrange to go to the events yourself, but I doubt it.
I went on line on Yelp and the Better Business Bureau and found this group got a C- rating from BBB. I did not find a lot of good comments on Yelp and found one person who could not get a partial refund after quitting the service. I have always felt that services are services. If they do not benefit you and they have rolling costs over time, they should be able to give you a partial refund if you are unhappy. I also uncovered evidence the sales pitch at the meeting is intense. Supposedly, you can go to any of the events in their monthly catalog but with this including vacations at exotic sites, Kayouking, whitewater rafting, and so on,
They sponsor about 60 events a month and publish a monthly catalog of the events. You RSVP to go to the event.
Another way to date is through Great Expectations, which has different names in different cities now. This is another very expensive site that uses paid staff to help match you up. But it still uses a computer listing of people and their profiles to find people that you could find yourself. One difference is that you make a short video of yourself which the other person they try to arrange a date for you with sees before agreeing or not agreeing to a date.
Then, of course there is speed dating and proximity based dating using your cell phone to tell you when you are in close proximity to somebody who matches your criteria. This is for quick dating, and is mostly used by the younger crowd.
There are a huge number of dating sites out there. I have come to the conclusion that this is kind of like looking for a job. Send out a shitload of resumes and see what comes back. To do that you need to be on multiple sites, but should only go on the free ones if possible, because online dating can be expensive.
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