Dating Sites

Now, I don't want to just rant and rave about how I was unable to get a date from a website as that might to some seem like sour grapes, and its the furthest from the truth, I just have a view and I want to express it here and will try to provide a few statistics to help show back up my arguement. (and yes yes, I know ... statistics can prove that black is white and up is down and blah, blah, blah - but please, at least wait til you hear what I have to say before you start to trash my viewpoint).

Now in the interests of fair play, I used google and msn and various other search engines to find what was said to be the top 40 free and premium dating websites, based on number of members.

As an athiest who is not into big women, self mutilation, midgets, christians, goths or any other such subsection or community or sexual fetish I excluded from my research all websites dedicated to finding a partner of a specific type or kind and just joined the generic dating sites.

Then, when I had picked my 40, at the end of November ( thus in teh run up to Christmas when people would have most time off and feel most like having someone to be with ) I joined up to all of them.

Yes, on the same day, with the same photo ( or photos ) being good quality high resolution full face and body shots taken in the last year, used the same profile description where possible ( some had maximum or minimum sizes ) and completed all the extra bits about me, including likes, dislikes, hobbies, interestes, films, music, travel, work, etc, etc, etc.

Whenever the website suggested that I was anything less than 100% complete with my profile I took measures to do so, and again when the website moderators were not overly strict I left my direct email address or facebook details in plain sight so that anyone viewing my profile at more than a glance should be able to know where to find me even if we were not both full paying members.

Admittedly I did not actually pay a full months membership to all the websites, as some were as most were around £20 per month, some as high as £35 per month or had a minimum of 3 months upfront fees before enabling you to make full contact, and as I certainly didn't have a few thousand pounds just lying around in my bank account doing nothing I had to limit my costs.

However, I did log use the same login ID and password on all the accounts and also made sure that I logged in at least twice a day for a full week.

With regard to performing a search, I used as close as possible to an identical and fair search pattern of - single women, between 5'1 and 5'10, aged 23 to 36 of either the caucasian, asian, latino, pacific island or mixed background and if available online in the last month and / or within 50 miles, which distance range happens to include much of London.

I didn't much care for if they smoked, if they had kids, what colour hair or eyes they had, what their religious preference were, or what their job or education was ... thus I was keeping my options open to as large a group of women as possible without being totally uncaring.

On many of the websites the choices were remarkably similar, as were the dating sites themselves, suggesting multiple fronts to the same database of women ( or else a whole load of women happend to chose the very same combination of dating sites to advertise themselves on!).

A few of my searches produced less than 5 hits, while others had more but with members who had not been active in over 2 years or with no photos.

Once I found profiles that I liked I winked / flirted / added as favourites / visited profiles / viewed photos / sent e-cards / sent e-flowers / commented on profiles and wrote messages all trying to attract an interest in me or my profile.

I also replied to all messages that I received, if their system would allow it, though a few sites were extra strict and would not even met me see who was writing to me unless I had already agreed to sign up, and they were the websites that I chose to ignore and close down first as they were a total waste of time and effort.

After 2 weeks the results were all very frustrating and not very encouraging. Not only had less than half of my emails been read, but those that did had not always even bothered to view my profile or photos.

I found that certain websites sent me messages that could only be read when i upgraded to a full profile, and on a few rare occasions when I signed up for a 24 hour trial period in order to read such messags, they were almost always automaticallly generated by the website itself to introduce me to other new members, and not actually real interest in my profile at all.

Other websites were merely fronts for premium webcam girls and when i stayed loggin in i woud receive on average one chat request every five minutes and every one was from a girl asking me to verify my age via for free via this certain website ( which reading the small print would also just so happened to charge my credit card over $100 if i didn't also agree to subscribe to at least 2 hardcore porn sites at the same time!)

Throughout all the websites I could tell a theme of a scammer fairly soon as they would include superbly sexy photos, but say they were just after love and that age, race and distance were no object ... which is of course a load of old bull as I doubt even 0.1% of stunning blond 20 year olds in the world would go for an old and ugly guy half way round the world, but according to their profile these ones would!

Some sites were amusing as their own advertising was clearly lying and claiming to have many more members than they possible could have in reality. To prove my point ass a test I picked the postcode in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and limited my age range to exactly 18 and yet this one website still tried to claim it had over 5,000 women who fitted the category, which was total baloney as the entire island is miles off the mainland coast and only has an overall population of around 21,000!

Again other sites seemed to be the target of Russian, Nigerian or Ghanaian scam artists and even after I amended my profile description on those sites to say " NO RUSSIAN OR AFRICAN WOMEN" they were still the only ones to visit my profile and / or to write me messages - which made me more suspicious still.

To test the theory of whether they were scam artists or not, ( first off not all said that they were from Africa but after a few emails they would want to come clean and tell me the truth, haha! ) I allowed a number of these suspect Russian or African women to start up a email correspondence and usually it only took five very general emails to get to the root of the scam.

Without exception, these scam artists ( or very desperate women!) all fell in love with me, wanted to be with me so very soon but sadly also were unable to and thus needed my financial help as they were unable to get a visa, a flight, a ticket to the airport, a ticket to the main city, etc, etc.

What was unremarkably similar is that none of them would give me a UK mobile, none had access to a webcam or skype and all made pathetic urgent excuses and then log off if my messages got too close to uncovering the truth early. Oh, and of course the second I refused to pay them they all got in a huff and stopped writing to me, without exception.

In the end, after being a member of 40 websites for a complete month, I had made less than 10 confirmed contacts that I felt were real, and they were spread out as far throughout the UK as Scotland from me.

On average 80% of my messages were not replied to, despite from my searches I only chose to actually write direct emails to women that shared many of my own likes and views, well share them at least on paper (or with the computers own compatability rating percentage ).

Now, although I am single and would have very much liked to have found a partner and agreed to go to almost anywhere in the UK for a face-to-face meeting, it did appear that my search was overall fruitless.

It particularly surprised me to find that women just a couple of years older than me and within 5 miles, who (meaning no disrespect) were hardly stunning in the looks department and shared many of the same likes as me still didn't find time to write back to me even though reading their profile they could not find a more suitable match if they lined up all the men in England.

A sad fact was that on many websites I had more genuine appearing messages from women over 45 or overseas than within my own country and age range.

So, removing the girls under age, overage, fakers, scam artists, africans, women with more than 2 kids, women with no photos, women who are greatly independant and women who "dont know why they are doing this, but they were talked into it by a mate and think it might be a bit of fun" over 40 profiles in a month I did not find a single woman that I made a strong connection with enough to give out my phone number and have a good honest and open conversation with.

Around ten women made it as far as adding me to their facebook friends list, but instead of this being a good sign, their interest almost instantly dissappeared and so even when I sent them a private message or fb chat request they ignored them or wrote back one liners to say that they were busy and talk later.

A couple of times I was hassled into giving it out far too soon, and of them one turned out to be african scammer and the othe was a bunny boiler from up north who must have called me a dozen times in one hour leaving offensive messages and I chose to hang up on them earlier and were not picking up their calls.

So what do I conclude from my test of a month?

Well, for starters I still feel that very few attractive and successful women feel the need to put themselves on dating sights, feeling that they would prefer to meet their future match the old fashioned way ... by chance meeting them face to face first.

Furthermore, the majority of women that do go on either add very few additional edscriptive details and / or no photos and of the remaining few that do write something they almost always like "fun men, outgoing, are into pubbing and clubbing as well as a bottle of wine and a dvd at night" - oh and most seem to smoke and have at least 2 children living with them who "are their whole world", thus really looking for a guy that is prepared to be step-dad rather than a date for their own sake.

In fact, despite going on 40 websites including all the free ones I could fine, I had much more luck with dating sites around 10 years ago than I did now, which maybe points to the fact that their popularity with decent women has come and gone, or that as a 23 year old there were just more genuine viable dates going online than do in their late 20's / early 30's.

Or maybe my looks or writing skills have gone way downhill in the last decade, but I dont think thats the case, as I am now more polished in both respects and apart from a tiny good diet belly ( that does not show on most photos ) I feel that I am a better catch now than ever before.