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Conclusions of Match.com part deux: Still not worth the money

By 4L

My second attempt at Match.com, this time as an entry-level employee as compared to as a student had much less success. My conclusions as to why are strewn throughout this entry, but essentially echo those found in these other sites: Match.com sucks for the professional type, if there is such a thing. See Life's Little Vent Sessions: Internet Dating: Why it sucks... (correctly positing the three most common dating types found on the match.com site); Looking for Love in all the wrong places with Match.com (explaining why "about average" is a little misleading in most cases among other lessons to be learned); Online Dating: Great for Women, sucks for men (explaining why it appears at first to be a supply and demand issue, but only for women and providing further explanation); and Why Match.com sucks (providing a funny example of an email).

Perhaps these sites are all biased because they are written by guys (my opinion included), and I would be curious to see what Law With Grace would have to say about Match from a woman's perspective. Or if anyone else has comments or anecdotes, I am slightly curious whether my experience is unique or commonplace. I just hope I never have to become associated as a client number.

For what it's worth, my own experiences this time (and last time) are much the same. Most women, ages 23-33, are just as clueless as I am as to what I think would "work" in a relationship; these same women, however, are not as receptive as to just going out to see if there is a spark beyond the internet screen. I base this statement on the large numbers of winks I would get, which I would wink back at, and then nothing. The couple times I would write rather than wink back, I would get a response less than 10% of the time. And this was keeping to the general rule of writing less than 4 sentences in an email.

While I could deconstruct myself as to why I'm much more successful at in-person introductions than online ones, I am left to think that maybe it was my "about me" description. If I try this again (and I may once I relocate to the city of BigFirm), I'll be less descriptive. Even so, I think that it's still simply going to be a matter of looking at pictures first, then a description, in which case online dating is really no different than going to a bar except that it's much harder to translate charm into written wit without coming across as creepy or desperate.

I also decided to see if it is just the part of the country I am currently in or something else. So I tried LA, Dallas, Chicago, Topeka, Miami, Nashville, Augusta, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. to see if more areas had contact than others. Success in this effort? Zero. Maybe I deactivated my profile by mistake; who knows.

Other things of note: At least three of the girls who I contacted complimented me for having no spelling errors in my profile, which I have accepted as a compliment, even though I thought this was a pretty strange introduction. Another wrote that she liked my profile because I had actually written more than a few lines to give an insight into my personality, which she thought was nice. The opposite however, at least upon my reading, did not appear to be true.

I also attempted to email a few women who I thought matched up with me pretty well - other professionals, doctors, teachers, that sort of thing. Of the emails I sent, only one even looked at me. Now, this either means that they were not paying members (so they could not tell who had sent the email) or that they simply saw my picture and thought, nah, or thirdly, what I wrote did not merit a further response. At first I thought it would be nice to have the closure of "no thanks," but after getting a few emails myself, I'm thinking that saying nothing is probably just as polite. Conclusion: Politeness in the virtual online dating world is satisfied by not responding to barrages of emails.

I also attempted to find my "ideal" match by searching for what I thought were things I look for in women (namely height, age, education, profession, body type), and then figured that I could increase my search by plugging in a 3000 mile radius. To my surprise, 792 women matched. Upon clicking through a few, however, I am nearly positive that the match.com algorithm does not attempt to connect with what you are trying to search for.

At the risk of exposing my secret identity, I will say that I attempted to keep my introduction short, put five or six pictures of myself online, and really only limited what I was searching for by height, age, and education. Knowing that the searches only show you either a picture or a 10-15 word description before seeing the whole thing, I attempted to portray myself in such a way that my cleverness would come through. After three months of doing this, I must conclude that I missed the mark completely. I would say it's frustrating, and it is, but I'm not sure what I can do at this point. For now I will simply put on an optimistic hat and continue the assumption that things happen for a reason. That, and I will simply have to return to the bar scene.

For now though, a couple closing thoughts on the topic: Could you meet your ideal match through an on-line dating service? Theoretically yes, but in reality, probably not. At least not for this under-29 year old. Is it worth the money for a one, three, or six month subscription? I would think that if you can't find success after three months, the match.com market will not change dramatically over the next three or six months. Either try another venue (which may or may not have equal results) or join some local group or organization and hope for better sails. Don't spend another dime on this particular dating service.

Bottom lines: Save your $60 for a real date and ask your co-workers to fix you up with someone. Some other thoughts for those who have read so far: Despite my own inconsistency in practicing this, I think it still may be better to do the auto reply "no thanks" rather than doing nothing. At least this provides closure for either an email or a wink. I fully admit that no response after a couple of days should accomplish the same thing because the need to be polite online unfortunately wears thin quickly, at least in my experience.

Without any response, one is left to about whether the responses went through, which could produce real awkwardness. For me, I assumed that they did and simply ignored it, but I could see how others could "try try again." That doesn't work in real life, so why would it work in the virtual online dating world?

Also, if there is a response: The winks back and forth are fine, but I think there needs to be a response after the wink back by the winker, followed by a response by the winkee. Otherwise it doesn't count as flirting.

How much time is enough time in online dating? I think if you haven't gotten a phone number or set up some sort of meeting at a bar within three emails or a week and a day, whichever is first, you are wasting your time or the other person is wasting yours. Meet up or move on.

While I'm on the topic of suggestions as to a better service, I wonder outloud whether there is the need for another online dating source that is highly targeted (e.g., at professionals). If I think all of this warrants a further entry, I'll write one. For now, my opinions about Match.com are even lower than they were before: If you're thinking about subscribing to it, think about it some more. Are there better services? Perhaps, and maybe some others will chime in on them or with their thoughts on this one. Please post away. For me, I'm going to pass on online dating until I'm finished with the clerkship.

Full post as published by The Once and Future Lawyer on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).