This February, I began an experiment in my own social development. I decided to see if I could find a steady gal to date from cyber space. I participated and reviewed the following dating sites and rated them after putting them through the following battery of tests.
Tests
Hottie Quotient:
The number of attractive women on the site was tallied and compared to the number of slime balls like me hitting on them.
Proximity:
Talking to the hottest girls in Sweden is great, but it's not like I can afford a plane ticket any time soon. Therefore, the more girls on the site that lived within 100 miles of me, the better rating the site received.
Making Contact:
Internet dating sites are very much like fishing trips. Some days you are hauling huge catches in with nets and other days you don't even get a nibble. The sites where I received more e-mails, flirts, phone calls, pig hearts with nails through them or actual dates received a higher rating.
I visited each of the four dating sites below and became a member of all of them but one. I signed up for the remaining three for a month. I started this experiment in February of 2008 and it ended in June 2008. I'm in my mid-twenties and live in Southwest part of Virginia so results may vary in the eastern or northern areas of Virginia.
Match.com
Site: www.match.com
Process:
This site has the basic process where you choose a name and you can try it out for free for about a week. However, the only thing you can really do during this process is "wink" for free. "Winking" in the cyber world means that you let a girl know you are interested in them on the site. Match.com is banking on you getting some winks and then paying, which you must do in order to send them an e-mail. If you do decide to pay on the site, you fill out three sections that ask you various questions about what you like to do, interests, and the standard "describe yourself" and "describe the person you are looking for" paragraphs. After signing up they send you your matches for the week and give you the percentage of how you match up with the selected individuals in the e-mail.
Price of Love:
1 month for $34.99
3 months at $20 per month
6 months at $16.99 per month
Hottie Quotient:
This site was lacking in total number of hotties my age living near me, however this may be different in bigger cities like Richmond, New York and Los Angeles. There was a plethora of single Moms and BBWs (Big Beautiful Women) though. The ratio on this site also sucks. I checked out my competition and there is a definite bias towards more men on this site.
Proximity:
There were a couple of good looking girls in the town of which I live, but the majority was about 40 miles away.
Making Contact:
I didn't receive many views, "winks", or e-mails from this site. Many girls also did not respond to an initial e-mail or "wink".
Verdict:
Match.com may be unfairly judged here because it was the first site I tried in my foray into cyber dating. I do have some criticisms of the site. Namely, even after I cancelled my subscription they keep your profile information and apparently leave your profile up for a while after you have gone. I guess this is to facilitate the process when you come running back. This makes me think I was sending e-mails to girls who were long gone from the site. It sort of pads the stats when it comes to number of girls on the site. Plus, I'm not an alpha male and I'm not looking to compete for the attention of an attractive woman with 50 other guys on the site. If I'm going to do that, I like to do it in a bar while being very intoxicated. My final criticism is that the weekly matches they send you tend to be the same girls each week! They are the same girls you run across with the search feature so I don't see why that e-mail is such a perk.
Rating:
½ Heart out of 5 Hearts
True.com
Site: www.true.com
Process:
This is another site where you can sign up for free and they give you seven days to cancel or they charge you for a month. On True you fill out seven modules that are mini exams that ask you questions and also have you answer a lot of them on a scale, like 1 to 10. Some examples of the module categories are interests, sex and commitment. The perks of this site are that they do a background check on each member so you are guaranteed that he/she is not a felon. Sorry swingers, but they also check to see if you are married. So if you are looking for a slice of pie on the side you will have to invest in another site (like ashleymadison.com).
Price of Love:
1 month for $49.99
3 months for $79.99
6 months for $129.99
Hottie Quotient:
This site had much hotter girls than Match.com's site. It seemed more geared for the younger crowd as well.
Proximity:
True had more girls that lived slightly closer to me than the Match.com girls.
Verdict:
I decided to do all the modules in one night and it was like taking the SATs. It was nice to see how you matched up to your potential mates in the various categories before initiating contact with them, however, the site does not require you to do all the modules. Most people don't have all the modules completed so it is pointless in a way. This site is nice in that during the 7 day trial period because you can email for free. It also has a lot more resources and tools than Match.com although I did not take the time to try most of them.
Rating:
2 Hearts out of 5 Hearts
RunningSingles.com
Site: www.runningsingles.com
Process:
This was the site that I did not officially sign up and pay for. It is free to create a profile and you do not have to give credit card information when signing up. The questionnaire is basic and some questions center on running. This site also has a feature in which you can "wink" for free, but you must pay the site if you want to send e-mails to any members. Members' pages are also closely monitored so that you do not sneak in contact information on your page.
Price of Love:
1 month for $19.95
3 months for $44.95
6 months for $69.95
Hottie Quotient:
Most of the girls on this site are very attractive and keep themselves in good shape, however there is just not a lot of people using this site.
Proximity:
Proximity of hotties really hurt this site. There were only a handful of girls in the entire state of Virginia! I could only find one that lived reasonably close to me, which is a reason I did not pay for the site.
Making Contact:
I did not even try with this site because the odds were not with me.
Verdict:
This site has an excellent concept because you start out with something in common. The problem is that this site is a very well kept secret. There are just not that many people on the site. I also noticed that some of the girls on the site were looking for running buddies and not companionship.
Rating:
1 out of 5 Hearts
Singlesnet.com
Site: www.singlesnet.com
Process:
This site allows the user to join for free and create your own profile in which the user will describe his/her personality. This site allows you to "Flirt" for free similar to the "Winks" of the other sites. Singlesnet.com differs from the other sites in that nonmembers can send members e-mails and reply to members' e-mails. However, one nonmember cannot e-mail another nonmember on the site. Becoming a paying member on this site grants you Feature Member status where your profile is moved to the front of the line when people use the search function.
Price of Love:
1 month for $24.95
3 months for $19.95 per month
12 months for $7.49 per month
Hottie Quotient:
This site had a decent amount of girls and a lot of them seemed attracted to a guy like me.
Proximity:
I actually found a few girls that lived in the area; however the majority of the hotties were based in Northern Virginia.
Making Contact:
I finally had a site that functioned like it was supposed to function. I had e-mails, "flirts", phone calls and meetings in person.
Verdict:
This site was the best of the worst for me. I had excellent contact with girls from the very beginning. I think that since there is no pressure to sign up girls stay on this site longer. I think they also cut out the extra stuff all the other sites promote to match up people. People will know if they will like each other after they initially e-mail each other. It's not more complicated than that fact.
Rating:
3 Hearts out of 5 Hearts
Final Thought
Although I did not find true love in cyber space, I did make some friends and had some fun. It was not as scary as I thought it would be and it was a good experience meeting people you would not otherwise meet.
The reality of online dating is that it is a roll of the dice. I've known at least two couples that have met through online dating. One of those couples is married and the other is currently engaged. Choose your dating site wisely and try and do some investigation about it first.
As for me, I think my foray into online dating is over. Now I'm saving up for Amsterdam. There still might be hope for this poor bastard yet.
Besides being a consistently single hopeless romantic, Derek Monthei is also a Ph.D. candidate studying forensic entomology at Virginia Tech. (Editor's note: We don't have the heart to tell Derek that he is probably consistently single because he plays with rotting dead pig meat and bugs all day but we have hope that he will figure that out on his own -- online dating, in Amsterdam or otherwise.)