So, this weekend, at the behest of Sister #1, I joined match.com. She said it kinda jokingly–via text message, no less–but I thought about it and decided I’d give it a try. I’ll capture my experience via blog and tell all the world (or at least the part that reads reddit.com) about it!
Some background
- I’m a dater. I like to date. Even though I’m a solid Type B personality I like to have some events planned out with expectations laid out. Usually, I aim to have about a date a week–which I think is a fairly aggressive dating policy. If one date happens to go really well, and there’s the possibility of a relationship, I’ll still schedule one more date: just to be safe, and also to use as a basis for comparison.
- I’m gay. This will seriously affect my experience online, as match.com is primarily a heterosexual dating/meeting ground. I expect I’ll still get decent results, but I’ll still be seeing this through the lens of t3h h0m0.
Initial research
A guildie in World of Warcraft bragged (or commiserated) that he spent some $5000 a year on a dating service that would hook him up with women in his area. He likened it to a newspaper subscription or a game subscription, since he didn’t want to have to do the work of actually looking for date-able women, and could pay someone to do it. Well, that’s all well and good, but I balked at the $16.99 a month ($101.69) cost of the guaranteed 6-month subscription with match.com. That’s a bit expensive…and I found out that there’s a lot of things this money doesn’t pay for–getting their phone numbers, finding out when someone has read your email…it’s the little things. So for a hundred bucks I get to see their listings and then email them for free… Yahoo Personals is a bit cheaper and really, I don’t pay attention to the little “matchmaking” tools they have.
Initial experience
Updating my profile was a cinch, and if anything, I felt like I built one of the better profiles I’ve done. It’s similar to Facebook in that its descriptive areas call out specific information–and I liked that I was able to put in specific information that potentially could be searched off of keywords. I sent out five emails to guys I found attractive that evening, after taking the time to read their sometimes-interesting profiles or more-interesting pictures. This was Saturday, and I haven’t received a reply, much less an individual response from the general population.
Wild ideas float through your head. Am I ugly? Do I need to work out more? Was putting “stocky” as my body build a death sentence for my profile? So far, I’m having huge buyer’s remorse and don’t think I’ll have much luck with match.com. I’ll continue to send emails, but the only thing I am looking forward to at this point is the potential free time after my guaranteed time runs out.
Tags: dating, match.com, reviews, romance, social networking
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