Last week I admitted I was struggling with Match.com search. I turned off the email notifications and almost slid into despair. But … whenever it’s darkest, there is seen a light at the end of the tunnel.
Cynics, of course, say the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming the other way.
How Bad Could They Be?
This reminds me of the video from The Lorax: How Bad Could I Be?
All right, let’s be fair, none of the guys on Match.com search is going to turn out to be The Onceler.
Oh, So Now They Want to See Me in Person?
I have figured out how to communicate. I continued chatting to the three guys I had identified. This seemed to be going well until, about five days into the conversations, they each said, in their own individual way, that they wanted to meet me.
Panic. Of course, I could not complain about being surprised by this, this was, after all a dating app. But I had figured I could keep the thing on a slow burn for weeks, like what you do in real life.
Was the Match Algorithm Adversely Managing My Access to the Datables?
What’s worse, I looked at the new likes coming in and there wasn’t a huge number of good new prospects. What is going on, match.com search? Either 1) the guys I had met were the only ones that were going to meet my criteria, or 2) Match.com had a regulation mechanism on the app that gave you a couple dozen potential matches each day, and maybe one or two likes, and they weren’t giving me any more until I had decided what to do about the current conversations.
Now wait just a minute, Match.com, this is not what I am used to! I am an American girl and I want my way! If I want to string along a dozen guys with no intention of every meeting them … go me! Scarlett O’Hara isn’t one of the most popular romantic heroines in history for nothing! That’s the way we do things here!
But I had to admit, Match.com search had me over a barrel. They must have some metric that showed them that I had already connected with several guys and was chatting them up. I hemmed and hawed and delayed and checked a book out of the library on Match. I read a blog post on EveryGirl by a young woman who had done a five-app check on dating apps, whether they worked, how you did them. She called Match.com “the OG dating site.” I thought that was pretty clever. But it didn’t answer my question about whether I was being reasonable with these guys. Or whether Match was being reasonable with me, or, perhaps they were creating a drought of datable guys so I would accept the ones they’d already let through the Matrix.
I discovered in the EveryGirl report: in one week, she had 128 views, 21 messages, and perhaps a dozen matches.
Okay, so we have now got a basis for comparison.
Unfortunately I didn’t have a count of how many “likes” I got. I had been using the garbage can icon to get rid of the guys that I didn’t approve of. Also, those guys I decided to talk to, or even to message, left the “like” panel and moved to the “chat” panel. By the time I read the article, there were only three likes on my like panel. These three were “gray area” characters. Not so hopeless that they got canned, but not interesting enough to be contacted. Sort of like the U.S. army reserves. But not.
Anyway, I was able to count how many views I had in a week. I had 80-odd. Naturally I was mad because the EveryGirl journalist had more than me. Although it could be my snooty attitude: the interface clearly says you have to give more likes to get more traffic. My likes list wasn’t huge.
I am the princess.
In my mind at least. Perhaps not in real life.
So Much for My Right to Be Unavailable and Unreasonable
I decided after thinking it over that I would meet one of the aspirants for breakfast. Even though I found out that, like Leo, he is … Italian. Uh oh. Now, I know, I can’t disqualify people for their ethnic identify, especially an ethnic identity that in the past was good enough for marriage. But …
The guy in question was thoughtful enough to give me his actual name and address. He must have figured out I was a nervous nellie. Did I tell you that Elite Singles had me listed as “more than average neurotic” on their personality spectrum? Thank you very much. E.S.!
Anyway, breakfast. What could go wrong?
Well, as I like to say, more will be revealed.