The Dateable Dork

I just saw a commercial for eHarmony, and when I finished throwing up out of pure disgust (god, those commercials are SO cheesy, right?), I decided to write up a quick little post on my feelings about this mother of all dating sites.  Let me preface this discussion with the following two points: (1) I’ve been on eHarmony and have gone through the entire shebang, so I fully include myself in the “loser” category as my title so boldly announces; and (2) I haven’t been on the site for a few years, so the discussion that follows might be a little outdated.  Feel free to chime in if new features have been added since my last sordid association with Dr. Neil and his evil empire.

So, eHarmony.  When I was a naive little chickadee and first decided to give the online dating thing a whirl, I was deathly afraid of getting murdered by some online psycho with a bottle of hand cream, a butcher knife, and a freezer full of severed heads.  I had heard that eHarmony was a “more serious” dating site and was geared toward long-term relationships and was not as sketchy and ridiculous as some of the other sites.  In fact, I had two friends who had met nice, normal, stable guys on that site, so I figured it would be a good place for me to get my feet wet.  It was like the online dating kiddie pool – go in slowly, see if the temperature is right, and no need to worry about drowning because the water is only a foot deep.  Perfect, right?  Or so I thought…

It didn’t take long before I realized that eHarmony is total bullshit.  I mean, I suppose it *does* facilitate introductions and interactions just like any dating site, but really, I think eHarm is a total scam.  And here’s why:

- It’s seriously overpriced.  I think I paid something like $60/month, and that was a few years ago.  Totally not worth it for what you’re getting (see my points below).

- By far, my biggest beef with eHarmony is that, when I was on it a few years ago (and feel free to jump in here if they’ve added this feature since then), there’s no way to tell if the people you’re matched with are actually active on the site.  No “active within the past 3 days,” no “online now,” no “don’t even bother emailing this guy because he married someone a year ago, never turned off the matching feature, and has no intention of ever signing in again for the rest of eternity.”  This is a MAJOR problem, in my opinion, and is the biggest “scam” factor of the entire site.  For all you know, your matches could be reading your messages right away, or your well thought-out emails could be rotting away in an inbox that’s covered with a year’s worth of cobwebs and dozens of other stale, never-to-be-opened messages.  Combine this with the fact that the site restricts you to only a handful of matches per day (I usually got ~6/day here in the New York area), and you’re left with *maybe* 1 or 2 people who are actually paying attention.  This significantly slows down the dating process (encouraging you to keep renewing and forking over the $$$) and leaves you with little chance of success.  TOTAL BULLSHIT!

- During my brief affair with eHarm, it didn’t take long before I started noticing a disturbing and disappointing trend in the guys that I was interacting with on there (including the handful of guys I actually met in person): they were mostly losers and virgins.  Now don’t get me wrong – they were all perfectly nice, polite, intelligent, non-psycho, non-serial killer guys – but DAMN, these guys were the folks that society left behind.  They were the ultimate social outcasts, the pasty white video game addicts living in their mother’s basement, the guys who wouldn’t know what to do with a girl even if she handed him an instruction manual.  Coming from me – a girl who openly admits to be looking for a dorky guy – this is really saying A LOT.  These guys were just *too dorky* even for me.  One guy actually told me that he was “just like the 40-year-old virgin, only 10 years younger.”  Geez, what a turn on, buddy!  It was absolutely infuriating.  I was getting nowhere.

- Another complaint: the site makes you jump through all sorts of hoops before you can actually send someone an email.  Technically you can opt for the “fast track” or something like that, but I always thought that it gives the impression that you’re just after a piece of ass, which is not really something I wanted to tag myself with.  The problem is that hardly anyone, in my experience anyway, actually takes all those get-to-know-you questions seriously, and you wind up waiting for these losers to get back to you with crappy 3-word responses that don’t tell you anything about them.  On the other hand, my naive little brain spent way too long crafting cute little responses to these stupid questions, only to be disappointed at the lack of effort I received in return.  Pointless, I’m telling you.

Since my eHarm days, I’ve gotten way more to-the-point with online dating, opting to exchange 1-2 emails with a guy before cutting to the chase and meeting him for coffee, god damn it.  Actually, as you know, lately the whole concept of online dating revolts me, and I choose to be alone rather than deal with that bullshit anymore.  Then again, with that said, one of the two friends I mentioned above married her eHarmony guy last year and is expecting her first child after the new year.  So, I guess it works for some people.

All I’m saying is that I think eHarm is more of a scam than anything else, and if you’re really interested in meeting a bunch of people – *dateable* people – then perhaps good old match.com is a much better bet.  Not that I have anything particularly flattering to say about match, but at least you can tell if your perfect guy is “online now.”  Makes it easier to stalk him.  : )