You Could Be Flirting On Dating Apps With Paid Impersonators (qz.com) 193
Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin sheds some light on the world of paid impersonators on dating apps like Tinder. Here's an excerpt from the report: Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas -- a client. I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential "Opportunities." For every phone number I get, I make $1.75. I'm what's called a "Closer" for the online-dating service ViDA (Virtual Dating Assistants). Men and women (though mostly men) from all over the world pay this company to outsource the labor and tedium of online dating. The matches I speak to on behalf of the Texan man and other clients have no idea they're chatting with a professional.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that these ghostwriting services exist. Tinder alone produces more than 12 million matches a day, and if you're a heterosexual American, you now have a one in three chance of meeting your future husband or wife online. But as e-romance hits an all-time high, our daily dose of rejection, harassment, and heartbreak creeps upward, too. Once you mix in the vague rules of netiquette and a healthy fear of catfishing scams, it's easy to see why someone might want to outsource their online-dating profile to a pro, if only to keep themselves sane. But where does the digital social assistant end and the con artist begin?
It shouldn't come as a surprise that these ghostwriting services exist. Tinder alone produces more than 12 million matches a day, and if you're a heterosexual American, you now have a one in three chance of meeting your future husband or wife online. But as e-romance hits an all-time high, our daily dose of rejection, harassment, and heartbreak creeps upward, too. Once you mix in the vague rules of netiquette and a healthy fear of catfishing scams, it's easy to see why someone might want to outsource their online-dating profile to a pro, if only to keep themselves sane. But where does the digital social assistant end and the con artist begin?
Weird (Score:5, Informative)
I did this once, non-professionally, when a couple American friends came to visit me last year. One of them gave me his phone and asked me to help him talk to Romanian women on Tinder. While that didn't lead to getting his dick wet (due to lack of time, they only spent 3 days at the seaside), it was fun to talk to them as him and realize how much locals change their attitude and willingness to talk and meet if the person on the other end is an American.
Eventually he got his dick wet through means of a professional :) but that's offtopic.
Re: Weird (Score:2, Funny)
'Got his dick wet by a professional'? Does that mean a waiter spilled his drink on his lap?
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I'll ask him next time, who knows, they might have done that role-playing thing too.
Thanks for the idea though.
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The latter.
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What's wrong with using the phrase "got laid?" It's fewer syllables, it's less obscure.
It reflects back on puritan values, where it was unthinkable to have sex other than lying down in bed.
"Had sex" is even fewer letters.
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"Had sex" is even fewer letters.
It is still a clumsy phrase, combining the passive voice, an irregular inactive verb, and a noun. Sex should be something you did, not something you "had".
English needs a simple transitive verb for this. Of course we have "fuck" but that can't be used in polite company, and is often perceived as derogatory. "I fucked your sister last night" sounds offensive even when said by her husband.
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English needs a simple transitive verb for this. Of course we have "fuck" but that can't be used in polite company, and is often perceived as derogatory. "I fucked your sister last night" sounds offensive even when said by her husband.
There's copulate and fornicate, but they are bound to get you even stranger looks. Depending on where you are, "shag" might be a less loaded word than "fuck" and "screw".
Then there's just "do", but it makes it sound like a chore.
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He said it, I learned it. We're not shying away from being explicit 'round here.
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Maybe you're looking at the wrong tests?
Now seriously, I should have replaced "American" with "Westerner".
Chatbots (Score:2)
Every once in a while (Score:5, Insightful)
I run across a story that makes me glad I’m an old guy... and this is one of them. I don’t know how you young’uns navigate these waters. I had a hard enough time just asking my now-wife out, way back in the day - and that was before all these peripheral complications existed.
Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it!
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Well, I'm an older guy too, and totally agree with you (for once).
After my divorce some 15 years back I put myself on the market the only way I knew worked for me - I hit the beaches, the bars and social events.
Been happily re-married now with a kind, smart, funny and really beautiful lady.
We did not meet on-line, but in a jazz-dancing class.
I don't believe in this online dating crap; get out from behind the screens, girls and boys, and hit the floor. Learn to dance, you'll love it. Top tip - people tend
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I don't believe in this online dating crap; get out from behind the screens, girls and boys, and hit the floor. Learn to dance, you'll love it.
I guess you haven't heard of the latest new dance craze? It's called the touch screen finger tap boogie. All the cool kids are doing it.
Re:Every once in a while (Score:4, Funny)
Learn to dance, you'll love it. Top tip - people tend to make love the way they dance....
Wot, you think I make love with bells on my legs wielding a stick and handkerchief?
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Rimmer, is that you?
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Well, I'm an older guy too, and totally agree with you (for once).
If we (all) were in agreement on everything all the time, it would be pretty boring - even though the disagreements can sometimes be maddening.
But I’m glad to hear we found something we agree on!
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If you go to a bar you are going to meet people that like to drink and hang out in bars. I have zero interest in doing either.
If I go on-line, and filter for "technical/scientific/engineering" in the "profession" field, I can see pages and pages of nerdy women. Just to be sure, I ask for a code sample before the first meet-up.
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I run across a story that makes me glad I’m an old guy... and this is one of them. I don’t know how you young’uns navigate these waters. I had a hard enough time just asking my now-wife out, way back in the day - and that was before all these peripheral complications existed.
Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it!
Same here.
My wife and I still laugh about the humorous "list" of requirements she passed around to her friends, when she asked them to steer someone her way.
These days, some fool would claim they had algorithms to actually try to fulfill the list ...
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Can I get in on this?
*Ahem* Back in my day, most people met through mutual friends/acquaintances. Somebody knew somebody that was just "perfect" for you and you dated and dated until something clicked. At least that's one version.
These days, alas, if I were young single and lookin', I'd just write a Python script to automate the whole thing until I ended up finding a real live girl. I know. Romantic.
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I'd just write a Python script
She seems nice. But it's just empty space in her head.
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Ha! I love it!
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Lol, same here. Yes, I'm an old guy, happily married, and I shudder at the thought of going back into the dating pool these days. I'd fuckin' hate it and I'd probably just not participate.
Dating seems much, much shallower and more commoditized now, but that may just be my perspective.
The enormous expansion in potential mates brought about by apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, etc has actually worked against the people that use them- they're buried in way, way too many choices.
The mechanics of using the app wi
Cyrano de Bergerac (Score:2)
Chloe should be named Roxanne then.
Old News (Score:2)
Re: Old News (Score:2)
Professional matchmakers have always existed for the wealthy. To me, the news is that these services are moving downmarket. Dating apps make it easy to automate much of the time that used to go into building (real life) social networks, keeping in touch with a stable of clients or opportunities from both sides, etc. Now it's just one dude with mad texting skills taking on ten clients in an hour. The price point has dramatically changed.
I'm so glad I'm married (Score:2)
Being single has always sucked. Being single in the internet age sucks even more than ever. Whenever I hear stories like this, I remember how happy I am to have gotten married before all this crap.
Nothing new here - was same on French "Minitel" (Score:5, Interesting)
I once visited a potential software agent in France. They had a good accounting suite for IBM S/36 at the time, but I could not figure out how they had such an impressive office complex based on their small customer base.
So, I got the technical manager sauced-up one evening and its turns out the basement was full of "Minitel rose" (pink, i.e. pron) servers. This was the 1980s, and it seems that online "Johns" were spending hours - and hundreds of bucks - every month hammering away on a tiny keyboard and getting all steamed-up over scrolling black and white horny text on an equally small screen. Rather sad.
The joke was, the "best" online "sexters" were.....men! Easy money, working from home. Kinda like Chinese theatre I guess - women's roles are traditionally played by men, since "only a man knows how a woman is supposed to react". Equally sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/c... [chinadaily.com.cn]
Missing from dating apps. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Why don't profiles on dating apps have user reviews like restaurants on Yelp or similar? It really would be helpful. Things like [ 40 lbs more than her picture ], or [ put's out on first date ] would be great to know. I really would like to know why this feature is missing?
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Because people with undesirable reviews would delete/abandon their account and make another. Or jump to another dating site/app, if they're unable to do that. Also, someone with many reviews would be implied to date lots of people, therefore one's chances of something long-term are lower than with someone who only has a few.
Also, the reviews would be filled with endless drama/bitching/doxxing/overly personal stuff/creeper posts and it'd be impossible to moderate. At best you'd get some kind of star rating i
obCasablanca (Score:2)
I am shocked, shocked that there might be deception on online dating sites!!
{your duped user winnings sir}
Thank you.
I just closed all my dating accounts (Score:5, Informative)
I had a Match.com account for 21 years. I paid for it for about 10 years of that. I'd go to cancel and magically someone would start messaging me. Nothing ever came of it. I joined OKCupid and Plenty of Fish within a year of their launch and, by last February, I was to some degree active on 10 dating services.
I've read books about how to game the systems. I've paid photographers and tried to get feedback on my dating profiles from tens of friends, acquaintances and even total strangers. I tried all manner of strategies in making first impressions, created multiple profiles and basically I've spent two or three hours a day trying to meet someone for over two decades.
I'm not messaging models. I'm not holding anyone to any ridiculous standard; my sole filtering is that my partner be childless (which, admittedly, is much more difficult as I am now a person in my forties). But across platforms and years of effort, I might get a reply to one out of approximately 300 messages sent on a dating site. One out of ten of THOSE might lead to an ongoing conversation.
I've been on seven dates in my entire life.
And before anyone says that I need to work on myself: I have over the last 20 years gone from an obese BMI to a healthy one. I do work out and dress like an adult. I have solid academic achievements, a good job and a life-long interest in fine arts. I can carry a conversation. I'm not terribly attractive but I'm also not ugly. Fundamentally, I would call myself unremarkable but certainly not unacceptable.
I did finally outsource Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel to a sympathetic friend, albeit mostly because I refuse to agree to Facebook's terms of service. I paid for her to get a new phone in exchange for her work on my behalf. It didn't help. No better luck was had.
I cannot think of an activity less rewarding. Dating sites seem to be actively hostile to almost everyone who uses them. Women are barraged with harassment. Ordinary guys might as not even exist. No one is happy with the state of affairs, but I'm not a person who is going to do well in a bar or other traditional meeting-space and I already teach adult education, I don't see what other choice might be available. I have a great deal of free time now that I don't spend time on dating sites. I get a lot more reading done, but I also have a lot more anxiety at the parts of life that I have failed to experience. There doesn't seem to be a way out of this particular loop. I wish I could have those many thousands of hours and all of the hope of my life back.
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This and similar stories make it sound like there is a real market for a breakthrough dating app that actually works at matching people. Its hard - but maybe no harder than self-driving cars and computers that teach themselves to play go.
Maybe humans are getting involved too early in the process. Really - people can be extremely shallow and pick partners based on the wrong sort of things.
Some sort of multi-person optimization might work - it doesn't just try to match individuals but looks at entire sets of
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I thought very highly of the OKCupid approach, when it was run by its creators. I thought they were on to something with the data-driven tools and matching. I believe most of its user base ignores all or most of that in favor of simple profile creation and chat, but to the extent that someone has put data science forward to address compatibility, I think OKC did.
I'm also fairly convinced that humans don't actually know what they want or, in my case, lack the experience to properly say. It may be that nothin
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One of the fundamental problems with dating sites is that it is not financially good for them if you find someone. That is a lost customer. Their highest revenue will be when you don't find someone serious, but it still looks like you have a chance. That is how you stay a customer the longest.
If they display ads it is also important to get as many page views as possible. There are many ways that dating sites could be improved, but most of them would involve creating less activity, i.e. less income from ads.
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I've also come to this conclusion, but as far as I know there's nothing to be done about it. The only online alternative (was?) Craigslist, which was also a wonderful way to get dick pics and had approximately the same sketchy vibe as writing your phone number on wall of a public toilet.
I really don't think online is the right way to meet people. Maybe it works for attractive people in urban areas. Maybe it works for someone who ONLY wants to get laid. But dating apps seem to encourage the worst behavior fr
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I've read books about how to game the systems. I've paid photographers and tried to get feedback on my dating profiles from [...] total strangers. I tried all manner of strategies in making first impressions, created multiple profiles [...] Ordinary guys might as not even exist. ... I also have a lot more anxiety at the parts of life that I have failed to experience. ... I wish I could have those many thousands of hours and all of the hope of my life back.
Well that's not creepy. That's not creepy at all. That doesn't sound the least bit creepy and there's not one bit of creepy vibe here that a woman would pick up on. My friend, this is the kind of neckbeard/nice guy talk that makes woman of quality run the other direction. If this is any indicator of how you communicated in the online dating sphere, you have nothing more to do than read what you've written here to understand what the problem is. Luckily there are a lot of ways to fix it, but believing it ha
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For what it's worth, I was trying things recommended by dating coaches and recommendations of experts of various sorts with regard to online dating. With over two decades of working at it, I wanted to demonstrate that I had put time in to trying to make the services work. I've never been the guy who just writes "Sup?" and expects a response.
As for the content of what I would write, on services where there's a profile to read (e.g. OKCupid), I'd most likely read what's available and formulate about three sen
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I have a large number of female friends. The problem is that they're all gay and/or 20+ years younger than I am. Someone who is in my age cohort at this point is almost certainly married or at least in a long term relationship at this point in their life. I actually don't know any women around my age. I live in a place where I'm definitely a demographic outlier for a lot of reasons, but my job is unique and I really couldn't give it up unless I knew I'd be getting something better.
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I've been trying for decades. Believe me. You're right that the advice given would normally be helpful, but in my case, it hasn't been. Nor was therapy. Everything about the process of dating relies on finding a willing and appropriate party to date. In this matter, it doesn't matter what insights a therapist or self-help book can share. If I can't connect with anyone who might be interested, all the self-reflection in the world isn't going to do me any good either.
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Pick up Artist/NLP bullshit is, so far as I can tell, all about teaching someone to be an asshole. Maybe the people who follow that advice get what they want, but I still have to live with myself and that's now how I want to treat other people.
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If I had the option to get a date once a week, I absolutely would. My average is probably closer to "once per Presidential term" because of the talking-to-a-wall experience of using online dating services.
I do have friends half my age and they appreciate an occasional dinner or movie, but they're not appropriate for my interest, nor are they interested in me. As a pragmatic matter, they're off the table.
I live close but not close enough to a big city in one of those flyover states, such that my location is
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I object to the Facebook terms of service. I'd be happy to explain to anyone why that's the case, and why filling out a profile with misleading information doesn't meaningfully overcome my objection. Most people aren't sophisticated enough about what Facebook is or does and act as if it's some sort of public utility. Those aren't people I'd want to date anyway. I'm actually grateful for all the negative attention Facebook has been getting lately, since some of these things have finally come in to widesprea
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That's true now, but the vast majority of my online dating lack-of-experiences predate Facebook substantially. I don't actually believe that's the issue, nor does every dating service, even in 2018, integrate with Facebook such that it's a requirement.
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I'm already involved in adult education. My students are mostly older men, but I had the thought that being on a campus would at least increase my available pool. It hasn't, but this is definitely an idea I've put in to practice.
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I suspect I'm a little older than you and I do have fond memories of USENET as a watering hole. I've also made friends with and met people from other forum sites like Fark, SomethingAwful and Imgur. More broadly, I know of at least one lasting relationship that grew out of an MMO and another that came from, of all things, Etsy.
The idea of people being drawn together through some kind of general social interaction is not new to me and I will say that two of my longest and deepest friendships originate from c
Professionals chatting with professionals (Score:2)
It seems that lots of these services don't actually have very many women online. So they create fake profiles, and - no proof, just suspicion - probably pay other professionals to keep those profiles active: to chat with guys and give them false hope they might actually be speaking with an actual woman. Given the huge number of fake profiles, it is understandable when the guys to pay another professional to weed out all the fake profiles. Of course, it's a shame for the real people out there, whose time is
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Alternatively, one could try to meet women in the physical world. What a concept...
Scary. Give me Solaria.
I knew a guy who did that (Score:2)
Cyrano something.
Cyrano...de Bergerac.
Yeah, that's guy.
Dueling Impersonators? (Score:2)
And what happens when a paid flirter interacts with other paid flirters? Can an entire relationship be developed by paid proxies?
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Can an entire relationship be developed by paid proxies?
Yes, they'll exchange phone numbers very rapidly, stop talking, and consider it a wonderful relationship.
Relationships have stages, and this only exists at the pre-phone-number phase.
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And thus we come full circle to Blind Dating.
Timeshare arrangements (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a high class escort in the UK and have used dating sites to find love in my personal life but buy and large most dating sites are full of men looking for a free fuck or men I wouldn't look twice at.
The way I view this is simple.You could spend hundreds or even thousands chasing love online via an agency or pay a defined amount for the GFE (Girlfriend Experience) I offer. Like, imagine me as a timeshare girlfriend. I always wear decent makeup and something nice with style and taste. Sex is not an issue. If you want to stick your cock in stick your cock in. If you prefer a chat or watching a movie or visiting a museum I'm more than fine with this to. I'm as genuine a person as I can be and do the best I can for you on the clock. If... If a guy wants an exclusive relationship similar terms apply. The only difference is how and how much.
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One of my close friends is a well-regarded queer sex worker in Chicago. She contends that I just need to partake of a similar service, much as you and she provide. Here is my counter:
What I want is not just sex, or to have a dining or public companion. What I want is emotional engagement. I want the support and access to intimacy that can only be found in free will. I want to be considered genuinely worthy has a companion, to share a bed and a washroom and to be able to touch another person freely and witho
Re:Timeshare arrangements (Score:5, Insightful)
Sex workers have a particular set of issues in their personal lives. They are, in a way, low-grade therapists, in addition to whatever physical services they provide. Sometimes they are an outlet for damaged people. They have to break social conventions for the sake of their professional lives and they have to deal with at least low-grade fear and jealousy from any loved ones aware of their occupation. I don't envy your lot. Your job is much more difficult than the fiction or fantasy suggest.
My problems are 180 degrees opposite of yours. I have a lifetime of alienation and isolation, no hardened exterior for the sort of careful intimacy one might have from starting relationships and only the barest idea what physical relations entail. I am a stereotype and a punchline and the only thing I can say for myself is that I absolutely cannot give up the idea that one day I will join the rest of the species as a functional human being.
Sad (Score:2)
I find this whole thing to be very sad and disheartening. If I wasn't already happily married I'd probably stay the hell away from online dating, since 99% seems to be bogus.
Paid shills wasting your time by dangling a possible relationship in front of you for weeks or months? Sad and hurtful. Death to them for the misery they cause.
ZZ Top (Score:2)
"I been in love ten thousand times,
All you got to do is remember my line."
One of us should make a better dating site (Score:2)
Create a crappy woman's profile, see how many messages it gets bombarded with. Now imagine trying to get this woman's attention and keep it. I
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I recall reading about how a large portion of adoptive parents end up 'giving back' older children that they adopt, due to supposed 'behavioral problems' with the child that can't be reconciled. Turns out these problems are generally with the parents, being unable to adapt to life with that child, rather than anything inherent about the child themselves.
Dating websites revolve around the concept of 'compatibility' without daring to question the related assumptions about the mechanics of romantic relationshi
Tinder? (Score:2)
I met my wife on ICQ. That was 17 years ago.
Been going on for years (Score:3)
I did some consultancy work for an online dating company several years ago.
The alarm bells started going off when I discovered they weren't interested in marketing it to women. They were entirely focused on men.
I got access to their database for some of my work and couldn't find a single, real, female profile. All the female accounts were all "test" accounts.
I was also aware of a huge "marketing" work force in the Ukraine who's job descriptions were ambiguous and when I met one or two of them they wouldn't tell me what they did (they were all women).
One of them later confided in me that they had to sign an NDA about their job roll which was why they couldn't talk about it.
Most of the marketing they did was through the porn websites and they also re-marketed to the cam girl websites.
I'd guess that the "dating" websites are the main source of the online porn industries revenue.
Re:Math doesn't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the old days that was called two-timin', and you could get horsewhipped for it.
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In the old days that was called two-timin', and you could get horsewhipped for it.
It's no different than interviewing for multiple jobs simultaneously. It increases your odds of success. Those who don't do it are just purposefully hurting their prospects on their moral and ethical high horse.
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If somebody ever comes in to interview and they take a phone call to do another interview at the same time... I'm going to honestly mean it when I thank them for their time, because I'm going to get at least 5 minutes of solid belly-laugh out of it.
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If somebody ever comes in to interview and they take a phone call to do another interview at the same time... I'm going to honestly mean it when I thank them for their time, because I'm going to get at least 5 minutes of solid belly-laugh out of it.
No one would ever do that. That's a bad strategic maneuver. Everyone knows that when you're a job candidate you must appeal to the employer's grandiose ego and worship the ground they walk upon by making them think they are your #1 choice. After all, they blessed us with the opportunity to be considered for employment. Everyone plays the same game. Women all make you think you're their #1 choice and so do employers but the reality is they are considering multiple "candidates" for the "position" too. I
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In the old days that was called 'dating'. After you chose the most likely suitor and decided to be in an exclusive relationship with them, that was called 'going steady'. It's only 'two-timing' if you're supposedly going steady.
No all he needs is a fiddle and a rooftop... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hodel: Well, somebody has to arrange the matches, Young people can't decide these things themselves.
Chava: She might bring someone wonderful----
Hodel: Someone interesting----
Chava: And well off----
Hodel: And important---
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your book, And make me a perfect match
Chava: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I'll bring the veil, You bring the groom, Slender and pale.
Bring me a ring for I'm longing to be, The envy of all I see.
Hodel: For Papa, Make him a scholar.
Chava: For mama, Make him rich as a king.
Chava and Hodel: For me, well, I wouldn't holler
If he were as handsome as anything.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, Catch me a catch, Night after night in the dark I'm alone
So find me match, Of my own.
Tzeitel: Since when are you in a match, Chava? I thought you had your eye on your books.
(Hodel chuckles)
Tzeitel con't: And you have your eye on the Rabbi's son.
Hodel: Well, why not?
We have only one Rabbi and he has only one son.
Why shouldn't I want the best?
Tzeitel: Because you're a girl from a poor family.
So whatever Yenta brings, you'll take, right?
Of course right!
(throws scarf over her head, imitating Yenta)
Hodel, oh Hodel, Have I made a match for you!
He's handsome, he's young!
Alright, he's 62.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, true?
True.
I promise you'll be happy, And even if you're not, There's more to life than that---
Don't ask me what.
Chava, I found him.
Won't you be a lucky bride!
He's handsome, he's tall, That is from side to side.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, right?
Right.
You heard he has a temper.
He'll beat you every night, But only when he's sober, So you'll alright.
Did you think you'd get a prince?
Well I do the best I can.
With no dowry, no money, no family background
Be glad you got a man!
Chava: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, You know that I'm Still very young. Please, take your time.
Hodel: Up to this minute, I misunderstood, That I could get stuck for good.
Chava and Hodel: Dear Yenta, See that he's gentle
Remember, You were also a bride.
It's not that
I'm sentimental
Chava and Hodel and Tzeitel: It's just that I'm terrified!
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Plan me no plans
I'm in no rush
Maybe I've learned
Playing with matches
A girl can get burned
So, Bring me no ring
Groom me no groom
Find me no find
Catch me no catch
Unless he's a matchless match.
(Lameness Filter is Lame - Longer lines than in the original courtesy of the not enough characters per line filter.)
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It's news. If you've been in a coma for a quarter of a century.
Grrrrrr Wooof! WOOF! [wikipedia.org]
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This isn't really news though. I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches. He even went on first dates with a few.
Then there was the Ashley Madison leak where it turned out that a significant proportion of their female members were bots.
Re:cool (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't really news though.
Yes it is. This is totally different from what you describe. Both of your examples are of the site using fake profiles, which is well known (although I never heard of them hiring people to go on actual dates, and I am skeptical whether that really happened).
TFA is describing members hiring people to impersonate them. So they are actually looking for a match, but are paying someone else to go through the tedium of sending introductory inquiries, and the back-and-forth chit-chat before exchanging contact info.
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Damn, I should have read TFA.
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This isn't really news though.
Yes it is. This is totally different from what you describe. Both of your examples are of the site using fake profiles, which is well known (although I never heard of them hiring people to go on actual dates, and I am skeptical whether that really happened).
TFA is describing members hiring people to impersonate them. So they are actually looking for a match, but are paying someone else to go through the tedium of sending introductory inquiries, and the back-and-forth chit-chat before exchanging contact info.
Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates. As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.
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Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates.
RTFA. They don't get you a date. They get you a phone number. After that, you are on your own.
As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.
This isn't "back in the day". With on-line dating, a man is lucky to get a 5-10% response rate to initial inquiries. If your time has value, paying someone else to make the inquiry and filter the results totally makes sense. Hand crafting inquiries, when you know that 95% of them are going to be ignored, is not "fun". It is a tedious chore. It is only fun once you are talking to a real person, and that stil
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Hard to imagine the level of laziness required to hire someone to get you dates.
RTFA. They don't get you a date. They get you a phone number. After that, you are on your own.
Ther's a difference with not much distinction. Care to analyze me grammer as well? Telling me to Read the Fucking Artical is a tad rude, me hearty. Chillaxe.
As I recall back in the day, the run up to dating a woman was fun.
This isn't "back in the day". With on-line dating, a man is lucky to get a 5-10% response rate to initial inquiries. If your time has value, paying someone else to make the inquiry and filter the results totally makes sense. Hand crafting inquiries, when you know that 95% of them are going to be ignored, is not "fun". It is a tedious chore. It is only fun once you are talking to a real person, and that still happens.
And if his time really has value, his best bet is to have the person fmor the service go on the date as well. Or eliminate all of that expensive time spent dating and simply buy a mail order bride.
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Perhaps every person ever asked out on a date face-to-face goes out, but I don't think so. Seems like face-to-face asking results in maybe a 30% success rate, and while that is higher (and your own success rate might be higher but for the same reason), in face-to-face interactions, you've already passed on quite a few people.
But to me this hearkens back to the days of John Alden and Myles Standish, 1620 CE in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. That might ha
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This is indeed news to me and something that should be clamped down on hard.
Why should it be clamped? Who is going to do the clamping? The site? How can they know if it is happening or not? The government? You have got to be kidding?
but wasting time on people that are outsourcing the work
The are not "wasting time". The people hiring impersonators (2/3 men and 1/3 women according to TFA) are seriously looking for a match. They just don't have time to send 200 inquiries to get 20 responses, and then engage those 20 responses in some chit-chat to get 10 phone numbers that lead to 5 dates, one of which is "the one". That is an extr
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This isn't really news though. I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches. He even went on first dates with a few.
Then there was the Ashley Madison leak where it turned out that a significant proportion of their female members were bots.
The problem was and is that most women find most men unattractive for one reason or another. Apparently on Tinder at least, the stats on attractiveness are that men rate women on a curve that centers areoud 50 percent. Which we would expect.
Women on the other hand, rated over 80 percent of men as unattractive. But how do you keep men coming back when only a very few of them ever stand a chance of landing a date? And then you would have a lot of women competing for a very small pool of men. (they are anyho
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Those numbers only apply to tinder-style speed dating though. On such sites the ratio of men to women is 40:1 or worse, so naturally women can be more selective. It also ignores that women tend to value other traits as much or more than looks, traits that a photo can't convey.
This flaw extends to all dating apps/sites. They are extremely superficial and it hurts many men's ability to find partners on them. We really need to find a better system.
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Those numbers only apply to tinder-style speed dating though.
Actually, the 80-20 numbers come from OkCupid [okcupid.com].
It is not just a sign that women are pickier, but also that THEY CAN'T DO MATH. They were not asked to judge if the men were "unattractive" in an absolute sense, but whether they were below the median. The men did it correctly, putting 50% above the cutoff and 50% below.
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That blog post is a fascinating insight. Note how women tend to rate men unevenly, but that doesn't seem to affect the rate at which they message them.
I also wonder how much of it is just down to bad photos.
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I remember a guy sued one dating site for using employees posing as potential matches.
I know for a fact that in cheap labor countries there are huge call centers crammed with people pretending to be potential matches for western dating sites/apps, and asked to make the courting process last as long as possible to keep the "customer" coming back to the ad-bloated service. The hilarious thing is that it's not even the same employee who keeps the conversation going, they just pick it up from the log and move it forward.
I think we need a new form of turing test to determine if we're talking to t
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I think we need a new form of turing test to determine if we're talking to the same person online.
We already have that: A face-to-face meeting.
You already read each others profiles and exchanged messages. An extended back-and-forth conversation is not going to give you much more info. Just ask for a simple meet-up at Starbucks or Jamba Juice. If the answer is "no", then move on to the next prospect in the queue.
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Just ask for a simple meet-up at Starbucks
I don't think you have done a lot of online dating. Here's the thing: the vast majority of people are not worth a trip to Starbucks, just like a vast majority of candidates for a programming gig are not worth calling in for an interview.
Behind a cute pic and a casual "hey there lol omg did you watch the latest GoT" there could be some seriously disappointing entity, like a vegan pinterest addict who took a day off to cry when Clinton lost, or an over-the-top party girl who has the constant greasy cough of r
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If someone has major defects that they didn't include in their profile, they are not going to tell you about it in an online message either. Do you really think you are going to learn about her raspy cough and bad breath by exchanging messages? A F2F meeting is a far quicker way to narrow the candidate pool. A quick meet-up for a $5 cup of joe is not a big commitment.
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the vast majority of people are not worth a trip to Starbucks
Propose a meetup somewhere you might want to go anyway. From what I hear most people go to coffee shops a lot (I'm not most people) so you're not even spending much extra time.
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Well guess what - confused females may not want it but will be utterly disappointed if you do not try.
"Confused females"? And the rest of the sentence... This is why things aren't working the way you'd like.
Re:cool (Score:5, Informative)
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Whoever modded that as flamebait is a shitstick. It's a joke, not an attempt to start a flame war. Some of you are so thin skinned you might as well wear you organs on the outside. Faux rage at everything. You miss the forest because foliage might be a racist insult to green people who haven't been discovered yet. It's disingenuous.
It is incredibly funny, specifically for the fact that this trait is common to children, women, men, humans of all genders, and those of anti-gender, dogs, cats, pretty much
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When you're mad that people didn't laugh, just stop talking. Until after you've had a full night's sleep.
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Not mad. You brought that from your own internal frame of reference. Also, down modding someone incorrectly is way different than people not laughing.
Equivocation and false attribution aside, I can't seem to find anything to what you wrote except an exhortation about sleeping well at night. I do, and will continue to do so. Thank you for your concern. I wish you health, happiness, and good rest as well, sir.
Cheers!
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As multiple women told me, "women don't know what they want and they won't stop pestering you until they get it". Maybe that was it?
Wow - Flamebait? This joke has an element of truth, which might be why it got blasted.
A huge problem with the pairing interactions between men and women is that in general, then male asks for the interaction, and the woman accepts or rejects.
I watched a very interesctin lecture by a man talking to women on why many women seem to pick the "Chads" of the world, aggressive handsome men who are self absorbed, and not men who would be considered good for long term relationships.
He used the rule of thirds
Evolutionary success? (Score:2)
I've heard your evolutionary ideas most often from lonely men who take their cue from online dating gurus and pickup artists.
I've heard them least often from men with kids.
That doesn't prove anything, but it does suggest to me that it might not be an evolutionarily successful attitude.
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I've heard your evolutionary ideas most often from lonely men who take their cue from online dating gurus and pickup artists.
I've heard them least often from men with kids.
That doesn't prove anything, but it does suggest to me that it might not be an evolutionarily successful attitude.
Its complicated. And as far as that goes, I'm not remotely lonely, married and with a child - grown now.
This all depends on how far you want to take the idea that and differences between men and women are 100 percent social construct, and not based upon built in physical attraction.
Note these are general traits, and that of course there are outliers.
Some things are social constructs. We've seen that in the workplace that within physical limitations of both sexes, women are capable of doing the same wo
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It's interesting that sex differences in play would be so much larger in monkeys than in humans, especially when it's human toys involved. For example, in this classic (n=102) study which "clearly demonstrate[s] that sex differences are in part biological in origin":
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321
...boys looked at the face 46 percent of the time; girls, 49 percent; boys looked at the mobile for 52 percent of the time; girls, 41 percent, which is not much of a differe
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It is, partly. Standards of beauty have varied over historical times. There are things that haven't changed (preferring smooth skin and symmetrical features) and things that have (preferred breast size).
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This doesn't surprise me at all, I wouldn't expect you to get any better than that.
What I was told was, "She isn't going to tell you what she wants, she expects you to understand her well enough to know already."
Just because somebody simplified the saying for you doesn't mean that reality is that simple. It only means she was trying to understand what advice you'd know how to make use of when she considered her words.
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I gave up long time ago and prefer other paid services
You would assume that in a society where offering the wrong kind of wine to a lady is considered sexual misconduct (ask Aziz Ansari), prostitution would be a booming industry to cater to the needs of men weary of the dark cloud of fake metoos. But look what happened in Seattle where regular customers of escort services were shamed, or how the FBI has taken down backpage because there were ads for prostitution. The only safe space for single males nowadays is gay saunas and pornhubs, which may not be up to e