A few posts ago I made reference to sneaky/deceptive practices that many dating sites engage in. I want to share a quick tale of such an experience I just encountered:
In my research of literally hundreds of sites, I…er, a guy I know…has signed up for many of them. One site in particular, which in concept is sort of in competition with TruConnection, has been sending me messages several times per day.
These messages are called Love Alerts, and until today I have mostly ignored them. Just now I clicked on one, and found that I had a new message from someone (which is surprising, because I don’t have a photo, and my profile is empty). The subject line read ‘it’ll be my last Email if you don’t answer’, and it was from a girl in the UK.
Curious, I looked through past Love Alerts from this site, and found that I had received several messages from females all around the world — Germany, Hungary, Johannesburg, to name a few — and one girl in NY had added me to her Hotlist just last week! Again, with no photo or profile, this was pretty flattering.
This all sounds innocent enough — the site is trying to get me more engaged as a member — but here’s the issue: I couldn’t read any of the messages unless I became a paying member. I couldn’t see anything more than the subject lines. And I couldn’t initiate messages without paying, either.
So the girls that DID message me, they must be paying members from around the world who choose to spend their time messaging a guy in NYC with no profile or photo, right?
It’s more likely that these messages are not real, these girls are not real, and these efforts are an attempt to get me to become a paying member. This type of practice preys on the vulnerable, desperate, and less-than-brilliant.
And it is all too common on online dating sites, whose goals often have nothing to do with bringing single people together.
