Free Online Dating Sites: You’re getting what you pay for
For those of you who are members of the “freebie” online dating sites, are you getting more spammers responding to your emails than actual live human beings?
I signed up for OKcupid about a month ago. Put up a profile and a picture and browsed the profiles and send a few emails to a couple of girls that I thought were cute. I have been using the online dating sites on and off for almost 10 years. I can pretty much tell if someone is legit or not. The profiles that I responded to seemed completely legit. In fact, so much so that I could have sworn that the girls lived in the same building as I did.
Since I created my profile on OKcupid, I have received no less that 10 SPAM emails. The one I received this morning took the cake. It started off as:
Hey their, you replyed to the ad I put on craiglist. It’s been a while since you first contacted my ad. I had to head out of town for a family issue unexpectedly and Ive been very busy ever since…
WTF? I have never responded to an ad off of Craigslist. I think there is a new trend amongst the spammers. I didn’t include the full email (along with the spam website they tried to direct me to) but it’s pretty much safe to say that the person who wrote me that email does not reside in the United States of America. Yet going back to their “profile” on OKcupid…..they exhibited a strong command of the English language, along with knowledge of some of the more popular local hot spots. I’m willing to guess that the spammers are now working with locals in the US who are writing the profiles for the spammers. I was fooled hook line and sinker into believing that this girl was a local from Hermosa Beach.
Anyways, this is just a small rant on my part. You get what you pay for in the online dating sites. I’m pissed because I spent a few minutes composing a decent email to this “girl” and it turns out to be nothing more than a spammer.
I tend to liken the free online dating sites to playing the slot machines in a real chintzy Las Vegas casino. Yeah, you might hit the jackpot, but more often than not you’ll wind up wasting your time chasing a fake reality.
Singlestnet.com, Plentyoffish.com, OKcupid.com. They’re all in the same boat together. Is it really in their best interests to employ the same techniques that eHarmony, Chemistry, PerfectMatch.com employ in order to combat spam? No. They don’t have paying members, they don’t have a huge staff to keep gainfully employed and they don’t have a reputation to uphold. At the end of the day, they’re banking on the fact that you will come to their website because it is free to use. Their banking even more than you will click one of the advertisements on their webpage, because that’s how they monetize the site.
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July 24th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Hear hear !!
I was a member of Plenty of Fish for almost 5 months. Not one single girl responded to my profile. I’m an average looking guy, nothing wrong about me.
I did however get a ton of:
“If you want to see more of my pictures, visit my website”
type emails. They were nothing more than spam.