Our multi-part series into investigating whether or not online dating works continues as we test two more online dating sites.
Welcome to part 4 of our 6 month investigation into whether or not online dating even works at all.
In part 1, I discussed how I approached this research as well as the profile I used among other things. In part 2, I discussed my experience with the dating apps/sites of Bumble, OKCupid, and Facebook dating. Finally, in part 3, I discussed my experience with eHarmony, Tinder, and Hinge. Today, we are going to go over the last two online dating sites we tested: Plenty of Fish and Match.com.
Plenty of Fish
This is another dating site that I actually tried in the past. In the previous attempt, I not only got no one interested in my profile, but I had a couple scam accounts contact me and ask me for money ‘to prove true love is in the air’. Yeah, I laughed at that as well. Eventually, like the others I tried in the past, I gave up because there was no one there for me despite having extremely low standards.
Nevertheless, that was a long time ago and in order to ensure that my testing is relevant today for the results to be fair, I joined the site again.
Again, I was dealt with a number of questions explaining who I was, what I did, and many other details. I, naturally, filled all of that out as best I could. I did note that the site does allow a single picture profile (in fact, a number of profiles had no pictures at all, though having pictures is probably a much better idea for obvious reasons).
This is also one of those sites that absolutely requires a cell phone. You cannot create an account without a phone to receive a verification code.
What’s more, this site also uses facial recognition technology. As it turns out, the facial recognition technology it employs, while similar to other sites, it doesn’t appear to be very good.
Like the other sites, I had to use my HD webcam to take a shot of my face. It does the weird oval shape, asking me to fill the shape with my face. Then, it increases the size of the oval, asking me to do the same thing. Despite having the same lighting as every other site, the site determined multiple times that the HD video quality wasn’t good enough. So, I had to get creative.
At first, I grabbed a flashlight and shined it in my face to brighten the picture, but that didn’t make a difference. I also indirectly shined it on my face to remove some of the harshness of light hitting my face, but the result was the same. I even shined it directly at a wall behind my camera to slightly brighten my face, but that didn’t work either. Suffice to say, I was getting frustrated.
So, I looked around and found a dusty mirror. I figured that the dust on the mirror would diffuse the light reasonably well, so I can gradually increase the brightness. I used the room light to reflect off the mirror to my face. This by angling the mirror so that I could see the ceiling light. It was tricky monitoring all three at once, but somehow, doing that was what actually ended up working. In fact, it even worked on the first try. It was frustrating that it took something as out of the box as that, but hilarious that this is what ended up working.
Moving on, after signing up, the site went ahead and asked me to do a survey. The survey asked me how I found out about the site, but also proceeded to ask me how my experience was with the site I had just signed up for. It was stupid because I couldn’t answer how the site made me feel when I hadn’t even used it yet. Luckily, the survey had skip buttons, so I skipped through those dumb questions.
Finally, after all that hoop jumping, I was able to start using the site. As I started browsing profiles, I had flashbacks to what a barren wasteland that site was the first time I tried it. Not only were most of the profiles borderline left blank, but many of the profiles were also of people from a completely different province. To be fair, though, at least it wasn’t a province from the opposite side of the country, so there is that… I guess.
Still, in sifting through the profiles that weren’t blank or hundreds of kilometres away, I still found not a whole lot. Some profiles were basically straight up prostitution propositions. Before you get mad at me for being somehow judgmental, the profiles straight up say to follow some links so that arrangements can be made and payments would be discussed. Feel free to explain what else that could possibly mean. Other profiles were completely outside of my age range (how badly do you want to date someone double or half your age?). In fact, I was able to completely exhaust the deck and came up with enough women to count on one hand that I could like in the first place. There is almost no one there. I did try to message the ones I liked, but got no response during the initial run through the profiles.
Now, one important aspect to know is how this site handles premium subscriptions. Without premium access, you can’t tell which profiles liked you, but apparently, you can send and receive messages. It’s somewhat convoluted, but you can use the site without having to fork over cash.
Another thing to note is the fact that the site doesn’t really offer much in the way of filtering users, either. So, if you aren’t willing to date someone who smokes regularly when you don’t, you have to ensure it says as much on the profile. You can’t actually let the site figure out on its own that, ‘oh, you don’t smoke, maybe I won’t recommend someone who smokes.’ It doesn’t work like that on this site. Instead, you are getting people pretty much unfiltered and you have to dig through all the profiles to find someone you might be interested in. Naturally, you are hoping that the person on the other end of that other profile is telling the truth as well. It’s going to be a gamble either way.
At any rate, one person did decided to talk to me at all. She recommended that we talk over the phone. So, when I asked about a phone number that I could talk to her with, she suddenly ghosted me. Despite me saying that we can use online services or continue the conversation within the platform, there was still no response. Well, I guess that’s that then.
There was one other person that spoke to me, but it was very brief. She also ghosted me.
Towards the end of this test, the person that asked for a phone number suddenly messaged me about a month later. She introduced herself as if we never met. It became quite obvious that she had ghosted so many people that she didn’t remember me. This was probably the only time I didn’t respond to someone (and I think it was for a pretty good reason).
Otherwise, I regularly exhausted the deck, get no responses from messages, and ended up with nothing to show for my efforts.
Match.com
The next service I tried was, of course, Match.com. Much like other sites, I dutifully put in the basic information they requested. This allowed me to gain access to the matching part of the site. Obviously, I wanted to put my best foot forward like the other sites, so I went into my profile and started filling out the additional information.
After adding some pictures of myself, the next part of the profile asked for a short essay about myself. So, I jotted down an essay about myself, only going about a little over half way through the limit of 4,000 words. I then saved my progress. When I noticed that the page didn’t update, I decided to refresh the page to see if the changes took effect. That’s where things seemingly went wrong.
The site immediately logged me out. Confused by this, I tried logging back in only to find out that the password I entered didn’t work. I tried to carefully type in my password, ensuring every character was properly typed in. Unfortunately, the site locked me out of my account.
No worries, right? Just click on the help page. Well, that was my next problem. The “Help” page was a 404 error message.
OK, now what? Well, I Googled a help form since there was next to nothing to work with on the home page. I filled out the form and the form also gave an error. Apparently, I had a typo on one of the fields. I fixed the error, but after submitting it, the form insisted that it was still in error (it was not). I manually backspaced through everything on that field and manually re-typed the information again. This time, it worked and a request for help was sent out.
In my e-mail, I got a boilerplate response suggesting I clear my cache (on a brand new account?) and try again the next day. So, I went back to the login page and it let me send a password reset request. Cool, right? Well, I submitted my e-mail and requested a password reset. The site immediately locked up and not only did the button stay faded forever, the e-mail never sent. Frustrated, I called it a day and decided to try again another day.
Well, the next day, I decided to do one better than clearing the cache and opened up a completely different browser. Went to Match and tried resetting the password again. This time, it did go through. I clicked through the password reset and the reset seemingly worked. I then tried logging in again and my account was still locked.
So, I utilized my last option in this situation and did as invited and replied to the e-mail, saying that my account was still locked even after resetting the password. I sent the e-mail off and waited after that.
After 3 days, I received a response which read as follows:
Thank you for reaching out. All ban appeals must follow the instructions located here.
Please note incomplete submissions will not be processed.
So, as it turns out, and this was news to me when I got their response, I was banned within an hour of creating my account for literally no reason. The above message is literally the only correspondence I have ever gotten from anyone on the site, let alone staff. I haven’t sent a message to anyone, liked a profile, or otherwise communicated with literally anyone. I just attempted to write my profile talking about how I write news at night and work a day job during the day. No links were added to the profile, no profanity was put in the profile, nothing. Further, no rules or guidelines were violated. Yet, they saw it fit to ban me anyway just for shits and giggles.
Could I go through the appeals process? Sure. Should I go through the appeals process? Why? When you’re treated this badly in such a quick and rapid pace, why go running back to the service afterwards? As far as I’m concerned, Match.com is a complete and total joke of a service not worth using. So, I left the matter at that and moved on. Thank goodness I never paid for their services because that could’ve been another service that ripped me off.
The Mental Health Toll of Using Dating Sites
As I’ve said from the beginning, I figured that these sites wouldn’t work. I thought this would’ve helped me manage my expectations. If I knew these sites would fail at the one thing they promised to do well at, what’s the harm at that point? Well, there is a lot of harm that is caused and that harm hits the user quite hard.
At first, I was basically making fun of the whole process. I verbally mocked the usability of the sites while sitting in front of the screen, made fun of the people who ghosted me by saying how supporting an animal shelter made me a “creep” in the eyes of women in general, how women obviously hate investors and innovators, that I wasn’t a millionaire and therefore completely undateable for that reason, and so on and so forth. While that was seemingly worth the laughs, the sites and apps themselves are much more deep in basically ripping apart your emotional psyche. My mockery ended up being cover for the welling anger about the whole process and I didn’t even know it at the beginning.
After a few months of using everything I could find, I grew increasingly angry at the whole thing. I wasn’t expecting marriage out of this, but a simple response would’ve at least vindicated me at some level. After all, I heard the statistics about how men get at least 3 or 4 matches per month using these sites. How was it that I was getting significantly less? Well, the reality is that in all likelihood, a number of these sites are packed full of fake profiles designed to give the illusion of choice. This when the reality is that choice is generally non-existent or close to nothing.
While it is easy to dismiss such idea’s when you haven’t been using these sites, the reality is that when you are actually using these sites and apps over a certain period of time, the emotional damage these sites inflicts on the user grinds you away over time. I was no exception to that rule.
After multiple months, the anger slipped into depression. For the first time ever, a journalism project was actually making me have suicidal thoughts. I specifically remember one day driving to my day job thinking that if I just jerked the wheel to the right good and hard, the vehicle I was driving would smash into a tree and the constant emotional pain would finally go away. That’s how bad things got for me. I did do a few mental exercises to pull myself away from these dark thoughts, but it became clear I had bitten off more than I could chew.
So, luckily, I had resources afforded to me that allowed me to seek therapy afterwards. I checked myself in to speak to someone about the awful experiences I was having. We both were actually quite a good team because we were both figuring out solutions about as fast as we were coming up with them. For instance, she was going to suggest I stop using the sites for about a week or so to see how I would respond. Luckily for her, I was a step ahead and about a week before one of the sessions, I opted to do this myself to see if it would have any impact so I could report back to her afterwards.
Well, the results were quite dramatic. My depression and anger went away, I was thinking about being single significantly less, and people at my day job were noticing that I was seemingly much more ‘back to normal’. My therapist commented that this pretty much told the story about why I was such an emotional wreck in the first place. She further recommended that I stop using these sites and apps. The only thing was that I had a few weeks left to go in the experiment. So, I came up with a balanced approach of not using them every day so the harmful effects would be reduced. Either way, my therapist noted how I seemed much happier after taking a hiatus from these apps and sites.
As I completed the 6 month run, I felt like I was simply counting down the days until I could simply stop using online dating altogether. It was less about trying to find someone and more about anticipating the day this prison sentence was finally going to be over. As my therapist pointed out, it is more about content and to try and mentally keep it about just something to create content.
When June 1st rolled around, I breathed a sigh of relief. The awful experience was finally over and I could get to the business of filling out my final report, sharing with you the awful experience I was having all this time – and perhaps confirming just how bad the experience really is.
So, what was the final tally after all of this?
8 online dating sites used.
6 months of time on these sites.
7 people actually exchanging a single message with me at least.
2 scam profiles attempting to contact me (not counted above as they were both quickly deleted by the sites after).
About $300 spent (that’s with all the stinginess I went through).
0 phone calls.
0 dates.
0 friends.
0 contacts.
4 therapy sessions to deal with the emotional damage.
… and, of course, I’m still single.
To say that online dating is a huge fucking scam is a massive understatement.
Coming Up
On the next part of our series, we delve into why online dating is such an awful experience. This along with the fact that we actually got an unexpected person helping us along the way to try and confirm the brutal reality of online dating.
