I’m not sure why any online dating sites are still allowed to operate, and why anyone, especially men, continue to subscribe to them. First, you must get past the obvious scam, that being…there are *few* paying female members, when you are led to believe the site is buzzing with activity. Beyond that, you then have to weed through ads from other zip codes, ads for the morbidly obese, not to mention hundreds fake ads that clutter these sites. The writing in the profiles is often so incoherent, it’s like reading Xmas wish lists written by people with marginal literacy. Negativity, whining and complaining are the norm and some have such little written info you’re at a loss how to respond. If you do happen find an interesting profile, it’s obvious she’s only posted it there in hopes of dating someone in a higher income bracket. That slot for ‘desired salary’ is just so romantic.

The biggest joke about online dating is the pretense that it allows you to ‘connect’ with someone based on intangible qualities, like personality, mutual interests or goals…when in reality all it does is enable someone to efficiently evaluate you based on shallow, pre-determined criteria. Once you read about a hundred profiles you will realize anything that makes you remotely individual or interesting basically works against you and to get any sort of response you have to ‘pad your resume.’ It doesn’t matter if you speak Latin, love photography or compete in bodybuilding, writing an honest profile gets you nowhere. In the online dating world, apparently all women(regardless of their imperfections) want the trifecta…a 6ft. tall, 6 figure income trophy with a square jawline (who“doesn’t mind dressing in nice clothing for a night out on the town”).

Most people post the ‘free trial’ ads during cubicle screw-off time at work and have no intention of ever joining, let alone respond to every schmuck who sends a wink or icebreaker. Determining who the paying members are is difficult, and the amount of time you will waste sending out emails is directly proportional to how far you deviate from the prototype mentioned above. If you are ‘fortunate’ enough to meet a few of these women in real life, you will see they used their most flattering photo(s) in their profile. And of course, since many of them bring nothing to the table themselves, other than a nasty smoking habit and a warped sense of entitlement, you will wonder why you had to exchange three emails and misrepresent yourself just for a coffee date.

Granted, online dating is relatively inexpensive. But it’s essentially the exact opposite of speed dating--once you factor in your time, it quickly becomes a losing proposition since you will have to invest a lot of it to meet few women in return. It’s inefficient at best, and at worst, an outright fraud.