Dear Amritsar,
I am considering joining an online dating service, but I cannot tell which of the 1,237 is the best. Can you help me? Oh, and can you display your results in chart form? Thanks.
Anne On a Must
Hey, Babe,
Sure.
| SpotTheFish | eHarmonica | lavalamplife | litematch.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How it works | Everybody posts a photograph of the celebrity they would most like to look like, along with a minimum of personal information in order to not spoil the illusion. They then connect to people whose celebrity photograph appeals to them the most. | You pay $50,000 to join and a monthly fee of $10,000. After six months, you are told that only people with a net worth over $5 billion can join, and are denied membership. You pay the monthly fee for another year and a half. | The doddering grandpa of online dating. Everybody answers questions about abstract blobs of ink (sort of like Rorschach tests, but without the poignant symmetry); after they are submitted, people with similar answer sets are kept as far away from each other as possible. | Once you have filled out and submitted a detailed profile, everybody on the site votes on who would be your best mate. It’s like Survivor: The Concrete Jungle, only less polite. |
| Advantages | Since it’s free, anybody can join. | Because the threshold for joining eHarmonica is so high, you won’t be embarrassed by being paired with your hair stylist, your dental hygienist or your banker. | The number of couples who met on lavalamplife involved in gruesome axe murders is lower, per 1,000 members, than on all of the other dating sites in this survey. And, yes, that includes eHarmonica. | You know how you often have difficulty choosing between gouda cheese and new water skis? Although litematch.com boasts seven million members, your indecisiveness will not get in the way of finding a mate. |
| Disadvantages | Since it’s free, anybody can join. | Only three people have qualified for membership so far, and they’re distant cousins. Awkward. | Because you can only choose a potential date from a pool of people who do not share your psychological condition, you’re unlikely to have matching drug regimens. This can make conversation complicated. | You know how, in high school, you used to play a game where you put the least likely people into couples? It was really funny to imagine that the quarterback of the football team making out with the 300 pound girl who knew everything there was to know about atomic orbitals, wasn’t it? Well, when you’re in your mid-30s, it’s about as funny as an episode of Two Broke Girls. |
| Commonly heard response | “You don’t look like your photo…aaaaaand, why would I expect you to?” | “You know, we’re not that closely related…” | “You have Aggressive Root Rot Instantiation Syndrome? Funny – I rate high on the Gollum Interstitial Pandemic Panic Spectrum! It’s like we were made for each other!” | “You wouldn’t have chosen me, either? Well, that’s something we have in common, anyway. Why don’t we…why don’t we give it a few weeks. I mean, the crowd knows more than we do…right?” |
| Hot tips | Men who choose Brad Pitt usually look like Bela Lugosi and act like Colin Farrel after he has received bad room service at his hotel. Women who choose Angela Jolie often look like Ma Yokum and act like a young Angelina Jolie. Remember: if you look at the people around a virtual table and cannot spot theeeeeee fiiiiiiiishshshshshsh, the fiiiiiiiishshshshshsh is you. | David H. is a quiet homebody who enjoys busting unions and watching Red in Tooth and Claw on the Discovery Channel. Charles G. is the wild one who enjoys buying elections and attending cock fights. Francoise, you should probably stay away from both of them, but, then again, if you’ve been paying attention to the family gossip, you probably already know that. | It helps to have copy of DSMV-XIV by your bedside to interpret some of the postings in the chat rooms. It’s also really good for killing spiders. | litematch.com is the only site that takes the selection process entirely out of your hands; your best bet is to marry the first person you’re paired with in order to avoid repeated embarrassment. |
From this brief overview, you may get the impression that online matchmaking is a recipe for disastrously humiliating experiences. Of course it is. Why should it be any different than dating in the real world?
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: the human heart is a tough old organ, but it is not indestructible. Be sure to have plenty of Lipitor of Love on hand at all times.