I started the week with the free edition of Elite Singles but once I found out how much it costs to “go premium” and actually get to see people’s pictures and communicate with them, I decided to try Match.com. Now I am learning the Match.com search tools. It’s not easy.
(Last week I wrote about Dating app questionnaire: Facing the Fear; the week before I wrote about Going on a Dating app… )
Elite Singles is $60 a month or so and you can’t buy less than three months. eharmony.com is $57.00 a month. Match offered me a special deal, about $100 for three months. I didn’t try for Bumble, I was just getting overwhelmed with it all, and besides, Andrew told me Bumble is $15 a week. Who knew.
I chose Match. I’m not actually sure about this but now I’m invested. Meanwhile I was too lazy (and I got sick last weekend) to remove myself from the free versions of eHarmony and Elite Singles and now my email box is full of emails with subject lines like this:
Sam likes you!
It invariably rattles me when I see emails like this. What did I do, I wonder, to make him like me? Who the hell is this Sam guy? Is he able to figure out where I am? I hope not. I only gave the profile my first name. The sensation of unease is worse if I was on the app and already noticed that Sam had visited my profile and I had decided not to respond in any way … and now …I feel I’m being digitally pursued.
The answer, of course, is to change my settings so that I don’t get notifications every time someone opens my profile. I just did that. Okay. That’s better.
Five days after buying the Premium version I am still learning how to operate the Match.com home page. I cannot overemphasize that Match’s interface is archaic. Match.com’s homepage looks like it came out back when Web 2.0 was pretty cool. It’s still got that appearance of the late 2000’s when they taught webmasters to set up sites so the text doesn’t run down past the bottom of the screen.
When I woke up on Monday morning, I listened to Meghan Trainor during breakfast.
Late in the morning, while I’m minding my own business, checking my email to find out what time my younger brother is arriving this weekend, I find an email from Elite Singles:
Visitor Alert! Find Out Whose Interest You Sparked!
Oh no. I’m *afraid* to find out whose interest I sparked. But for some reason I can’t log in. Eharmony is still on too, but they don’t send as many emails so I don’t notice them as much.
I Share my Fears with Bob
I wonder to myself if I’ve created a monster. I talk to Bob, my son in law. He says succinctly, “Being on a dating app is awful. It sucks. All the rejection! I used to like ten girls for every one that I could get to talk to me. And I was a medical student! Come on! And then, you’d go on a date with them, and they weighed 50 pounds more than in the photo. You’re like, okay, how old was that photo?” He looks at me straight. “I’m not saying you should give up. You’ve already paid for it, after all.”
Swipe Left? No. Try Taking out the Trash
“I’m afraid to “swipe left,” I tell him. Of course, on Match.com’s archaic interface, you don’t swipe left. That would be easy. There’s a garbage can icon and you have to click the garbage. I feel guilty for doing this. Throwing a (possibly) nice guy in the garbage! And then, what about the ones you think you might like?
A “Like” is a Big, Red Heart!
I don’t want to say I “heart” them … you know, on bumper stickers, heart means “love” … I don’t even know them! I don’t even know if they are who they are claiming to be! “Heart,” that seems way, way, way too forward. I just want to indicate the very beginning of approval, or, perhaps to put it another way, I want to note the fact that I don’t disapprove yet.
“You gotta lose all that, Susan, you’ll never get anywhere,” Bob tells me. “They don’t know you put them in the garbage, and anyway, they probably had to like so many women to get a response, they won’t even remember you.”
This jives with a video I found about how men should operate on Match.com, where the vlogger says he hired a professional copywriter to create a high-selling dating profile and into letter and then got a guy from India to submit this “Hello” letter to 50 women a day. Just so he could get a few conversations going.
This story just blew me away.
Everyone is Somebody’s Likeable One … But Those Ones Were Not Mine
I went back to the app. I looked over my suggested matches. I threw a bunch of profiles in the garbage can. Then I decided there were three that I could talk to. They weren’t exactly what I was looking for … but … they seemed interesting and I don’t think any of them possessed an actual “dealbreaker.”
It’s hard to tell, of course, because, as I told you, the Match.com interface is tricky to negotiate. And a lot of people would be hesitant to put things like, being an alcoholic, on a dating app profile.
I started a conversation about skiing with a man from Denver, I talked about travel with someone from Arvada, and then I started talking about Las Vegas with a guy from Fort Collins who collects cars.
I don’t know if this will work, but if I stop, as Bob pointed out, its guaranteed not to work *and* I will have wasted $100.
I Think I Can Do This. But Then …
One of the guys asked me to go to coffee.
Oh no I can’t do that. I’m afraid.
I ignored the question and asked him if he’s buying an Epic pass to ski Keystone next year.
Before closing down the computer, I check Match one more time. Sam, who liked me in an email yesterday? It turns out he has six cats. I channel Meghan: No to the No to the No No No No.
And more will be revealed.