Back in the day, dating online was something no one talked about. Relying on the computer to generate a list of potential dates seemed to indicate a certain desperation, social ineptitude or level of geekdom, and the social stigma was overwhelming. We also had a respectful fear of the Internet; we established emergency check-in procedures, in case the nice quiet Jewish boy without a context turned out to be one of those people who would later be described by neighbors on the local news, as a “quiet, private person who kept to himself — we never imagined he was a cannibal.” Then, slowly, the grudging, sub-audible admissions began. “Well, for the last X [amount of time], I’ve kinda … been … on JDate.” You confessed it softly, in case the music suddenly stopped, yielding to your voice trumpeting truth against a pristinely silent background. Since then, online dating is assumed. We peruse disembodied profiles, no longer fearful of our potential dismemberment, although there is always the possibility of dis-rememberment (“Did I say I’d call her? Which Rachel is that?”) We understand the reality — if you’re really looking, you have to be in many places at once. Attending singles events is a good start, but how many can one person attend in a given week? Online, you can ogle and reject (or even initiate contact with) many eligible singles from the comfort of your own home. Plus, the experience itself becomes an unintentional bonding point: “That guy contacted you, too? I can’t believe he wrote us the same letter.” (Want more proof? Google “I hate JDate” for about 42,600 results.)Want more? Read the rest of the article here.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
"The Truth About Online Dating"
Remember the way online dating used to be? A secret shame? (Now it's a public shame, but whatever.) Reminisce as you read and record your own memories here...
The Truth About Online Dating
The NY Jewish Week, 11/24/05
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14 comments:
googling "I hate jdate" reveals only 18 hits.
I recently quit jdate-and dating altogether for the time being. It's way too frustrating. I'm focusing on myself. Though I don't like the idea of becoming a statistic, there's really no choice- I'd rather not try than be insanely frustrated all the time.
This lonely hot intelligent beautiful Jewish chick is at her wits end from the fact that no who I want to play with wants to play with me......
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The Groucho Marx syndrome. You wouldn't belong to any club that would have you as a member.
As a commenter noted above, googling the phrase I hate JDate with quotes yields 20 hits.
Googling I hate JDate without quotes currently yields about 63,500 hits.
Now look at the actual results that are included in those two searches. With the quotes, those 20 hits are actually people who hate JDate or had friends who had bad experiences, etc.
Without the quotes, it's webpages that just happen to have those three word "I", "hate", "JDate" on the same webpage. In other words, they have nothing to do with dislike of JDate.
I dislike JDate as much as the next person. But using the 42,600 number (which was accurate at the time of writing) was sort of a cheap and inaccurate stunt to manufacture evidence to support a point. There's so much real proof of JDate's problems available that resorting to this was unnecessary.
Esther - still love ya. Keep up the funny topics and musings and blog postings. Hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving.
I like JDate. I can surf it and enjoy the pics of the pretty young things but tell myself that it has possible merit, unlike www.fetish.com.
I've also met over a dozen interesting ladies and visited interesting Jewish neighborhoods. Just not a lot of nookie, please excuse my French.
OK, I get a chuckle for the night. 'Not a lot of nookie'? Who knew?
I've heard of the Match accusations by a few before. Truth be told, they are accused of sending profile 'dings' of interest to people who have given up on their system, or want to retire their profile. You can't leave the game if someone's still interested in playing, right? The Casinos do this all the time with all of their slots, and it's worked since the dawn of time due to a good understanding of human psychology. The state lottery payouts and structures are carefully calibrated for the same basic results. This would not be all that difficult to do, and indeed it would be worth quite a bit to them to get another months subscription from a select group of lonely 'suckers'. I believe from the limited information I've got that they'll plead that one out. Quietly, and of course admitting no guilt.
Now why would they actually pay someone go on a date with some lonely deluded guy? The lovely Chutzpah says they'd be crazy to send someone to meet the guy. I say businesses have done crazier things to keep clients happy. He's a customer who's probably provided them with an excess of $1000 income inside of 3 years. That's a very good customer in almost anyone's book. They want to keep this poor SOB happy, all it takes is an office gal 30 min to have coffee with him at a local Starbucks, (under careful and constant observation perhaps just to be safe), to keep the guy in line and paying thru the nose for his delusions. As your grandad would say, 'Done and done!'
This is a very profitable business plan, gaming lonely, desperate and hopeful people with the intangible benefits of something you provide but do not own. The guy selling NYC air or water to the tourists probably does not make such an easy mark or anywhere near the margins. There are court dockets dating back beyond Charles Ponzi (late of Boston) of businesses 'gaming' their lucrative clients in such a deceptive manner. The case law is chock full of them.
I say you've not seen anything yet. The revelations will come or the settlements will fall like rain. So Chutzpah, get ready to collect. I can confidently predict that you might even have enough to take your kids out for an ice cream. Now admit it, isn't that about the most fun than you can have on most of your dates anyway?
And dear Esther, 'back in the day' we all did this without the benefit of the net, with just simple pen and paper and we'd rack up fairly similar results too. Why should we suspect that human nature has changed from that time to this?
I tried to investigate the Truedater site you mentioned in your article, but found it surprisingly unhelpful and indeed useless to anyone w/o a current membership on one of the sites. I think it's very possibly part of a marketing effort on behalf of these online dating sites. Think about it. Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
An assumption on that last post was that Mr. Desperate, (Chutzpah's suspected paranoid schizophrenic), was using more than one dating service, (I'd put money on it). Hence the figure of $1000 would be for Jdate, in excess of $400.00 would be for just Match.com. I will note from memory that in many jurisdictions that a theft of services in excess of this amount will enable you to be charged with grand larceny. So yes, this IS still big business, even if it was for just a few $100.
And even the word of mouth satisfaction expressed from a suspected paranoid schizophrenic actually getting a decent date using almost any method short of kidnapping would be worth quite a bit to the business too. Just thought I'd add that. As in the 'Geez they even got Kenny a date, and his mom won't even visit him anymore!' sort of street cred. Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
Yes, there are active calculations of the 'churn' rate for subscribers in some forms of the Telcom industry. There you are providing a service that either replaces an existing service, or is added on to your pre-existing phone service. But the models are well known and are highly accurate and very predictable. The Online dating industry is neither. It's much newer, much more heavily dependent on word of mouth advertising, and for net 'hype' for their new subscribers, (for want of a better word).
It's a form of introduction service that was formerly done for free, and still is in many competing venues. So the thought that perhaps an 'office gal' or administrative assistant/friend might be sent in to pinch hit and meet a troublesome dating case I think is not to far fetched at all.
The bottom line is that the business plan for all these sites are quite fluid and ever evolving, and I think are better modeled along the lines of the casino or 'gaming industry'. They are providing intangible benefits that very few people ever get to participate in, and it's sold and experienced more along the lines of an entertainment option. It's not phone service or even cable service. It's essentially a form of online gambling, and one that many clients spend $100's a year on and perhaps a month, when the spirit moves them. Predictive Churn rates are based on more predicatable events and circumstances.
Chutzpah has this touchingly naive faith in the legal departments of these multimillion dollar corporations, which I think history and experience will tell us is wildly misplaced. There are scads of corporations that get caught out just using sillier tax schemes every year.
But this all remains for discovery, which will prove to be very interesting I think. Again it is my suspicion that to avoid all this many of the accused sites will come to 'mutually agreed upon settlemets' long before trial. They'll wait for a decent interval of time to be certain, just to make sure that poor Joe Schmo has some of the goods on them, (and it'll be mostly the guys suing, right?).
And really Chutzpah, why would you think I sounded from the 1920's? 23 Skidoo and oh, you Kid! Cheers, 'VJ'
To that extent, perhaps it was they who infiltrated SYAS last week and delivered the disgusting attack on that poor beautiful young maiden that we read about over at Annibell Lee.
FYI, the SYAS incident was recounted by Sweet Rose, and then recapped by our very own Esther here at JDaters Anonymous.
Dear Chutzpah, Our fearless leader was long time business partners with the Bin Laden family. Salaam Bin Laden for example was a principal investor in an airport in Midland, TX. On 9-11 Poppy Bush was meeting with several members of the Bin Laden family in a Washington confab for the Carlyle Group. Even After 9-11 Poppy Bush refused to sever ties with the family, who they considered long time friends. Most of this is covered in perhaps 100's of websites and in the best selling books 'House of Bush, House of Saud'.(See [HouseofBush.com]). This intimate connection is also covered by ex-Nixon Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in his magisterial coverage of the Bush family in 'American Dynasty: Aristocracy, fortune and the politics of deceit in the House of Bush' [Americandynasty.net]. So no cahoots, that would be not so profitable in the oil biz. They were official business partners until recently.
And of course the entire Enron fiasco was a figment of our imaginations, along with all those other corporate criminals in recent years. Yes, often they were rotten from top to bottom. Enron WAS a ponzi scheme, perhaps the largest ever seen in this country if not the world, and they were successful in bankrupting CA for starters. No one ever mentions that, because the DOJ refused to investigate this crime, costing the state & power customers in excess of $60 Billion.
And yeah, we knew exactly where Osama was 2001, in Tora Bora. Bush made the strategic decision NOT to capture Osama in order to marshall the military resources necessary for the attack on Iraq. G-d might forgive him for that tragic error of conceit, but history certainly won't. You want references right? Start here: [http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0304/p01s03-wosc.html]
Again this misplaced 'faith' that the authorities will know what's right and proper to do and then go ahead and do this is touchingly naive. Publicly traded Fortune 500 corporations are responsible for upwards of 100+ Billion dollars in lost tax revenues every year through various schemes fraudulent or dishonest, and you think we can 'trust' them not to cheat their customers? Come on now! Who's living in a fantasy world now? Geez, I can cite recent cases from the DOJ where our AG overruled staff attorneys in order to instate a deeply corrupt result. Happens everyday. Wake up and semll coffee & the corruption, eh?
Cheers, 'VJ'
My goodness how charming Chutzpah, an unreconstructed Repug. in NYC! Yeah, our Dear Leader knows how the enemy thinks, (The Saudis, representing 15 of the 19 hijackers and the money bags behind most Islamic terror), because they've been Bush intimates & biz partners for well over 2 decades. The former Saudi Ambassador was so close to the family that he was known as 'Bandar Bush', but after 25 years Prince Bandar has gone home. Even he sees the writing on the wall.
And yes, corporate crime matters and is a very serious matter. We lose Billions of dollars a year due to this fraud, it's a drag on the economy, and we could pay off 1/2 the debt inside of 5 years if we recovered just 50 cents on the dollar from it.
When honor and integrity are important to you, never turn to a Bush to govern. They've been the most openly corrupt administration in over 130 years. Their arrogant incompetence is also losing us 2 separate wars. It's a poisoned legacy of fiscal malfeasance and mismanagement, corrupt cronyism, foreign adventurism, and rampant criminal incompetence in ALL things that our grandkids will curse us for 50 years from now. Count on it.
And if knowlege is power, we're losing that war too. (Creationism, Stem Cell research gone etc...) See "The Republican war on Science" here: [http://www.waronscience.com/]. I know, knowledge is only what the Repug's say it is like in KS where they recently redefined Science to include their own brand of Christian Fundamentalist religion. This way the Dark Ages started. We've been set back 20 years in biomedical research what with the Bush Lysenkoists in charge at the NIH and elsewhere. Singapore, S. Korea and China are beating us at basic cell research in cloning technology. Again future generations will come to curse us that we gave away our store of knowledge so easily to pander to the likes of Pat Robertson & the radical right. We've met the enemy, Chutzpah, and the Bushs' really don't care much to do anything serious about them. But thanks for your insights, they've been marvelously enlightening. Cheers, 'VJ'
Chutzpah, I think we're getting a fuller portrait here of your plight. But let me state here that 1.) I'm not a liberal. Never have been, probably never will be. I'm a conservative, a real honest to goodness fiscal conservative, and pretty conservative in most other aspects of my life too.
2.) As someone who helps run a corporation (a small closely held one), I stand by all my prior comments. I do appreciate what corporations can do for the economy and the populace, but this does not and should not give them blanket immunity from their manifold crimes. BTW: There are very few places on earth where it takes anyone all day to gather the equivalent of a loaf of bread. Unfortunately you are again talking to someone who knows the facts. See this paper from the NBER [NBER.org]
[http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11754]
Getting back to dating, I had no problems with dating women who were smart and successful. You don't get that way in the world by talking out of your hat mostly. The woman I married is and was brilliant. I really expect nothing less. It was about my only real solid 'qualification'. And yes, we are both very conservative in most things, and very much Democrats. You can't be a Repug. today and think of yourself as a true conservative. Not if you want the respect of anyone when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. But again, it's been enlightening. Cheers, 'VJ'
Oh yeah, here's another real true conservative who could no longer countenance what he was doing for the administration and their manifest and many lies: From the LA Times: 'A Journey That Ended in Anguish' The tragic story of Army Col. Ted Westhusing, PhD., a former instructor at West Point.
Also heard on NPR.org and ATC tonight.
[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colonel27nov27,0,6096413,full.story]
Read it and weep for what our country has become under this most corrupt regime. 'VJ'
"Why don't we put another peanut farmer who knows nothing about oil in the white house and go back to the oil rationing of the 70's."
Why is it that whenever someone criticizes the current administration, instead of defending it a typical answer is "Well your guy wasn't perfect either" or "Clinton did it too" or something like that?
Bush criticized Clinton for not having an energy policy. It's years later and our energy policy seems to be to use it up, not to try to find ways to make it last longer.
I am so sick of this online dating world, but I keep coming back to it because its the easy way to meet people. I am convinced that online dating turns perfectly nice people into a-holes. I just went out with a guy who asked me out for a second date at the end of our first, called and left a message 2 days later to say hello, I left him a message back, and then just chose "DATED" on Saw You At Sinai. Explain that one. Its the paradox of choice.
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