This was a big step for me… In the past, my theory was, if you can’t afford $30 a month to be on a site like Match, then you probably can’t afford to date me. However, since I CAN afford to be on said site, and am just tired of investing money in heartbreak, I realized that said rationale had flaws. Plus a couple of my friends had tried some of the free sites and thought they were great. So I thought, sure, what the heck.
I started my adventure in free online dating at Plenty of Fish.
I saw a TV commercial and thought, wow if they can afford a broadcast spot, they must be doing pretty good! Pretty good for a free dating site can mean only one thing, lots of eyeballs on their site, which means many impressions to their ad spots. Impressions = users, and in my opinion, a large pool of applicants is a good place to start for a dating site. So, I went on over and started up my profile full of hope and optimism.
An entire 24 hours later, I deleted said profile… that was all it took for me to deduce that plenty of fish was plenty of creepy. I hadn’t had the time to fill out an actual profile – just a picture and some super basic facts – so I was a little shocked by the large influx of emails I received asking me out. Really guys?? Are you seriously asking out a girl you know absolutely nothing about? I can tell you are looking for long lasting love and companionship…
And the messages I received, well they were worse than even the worst match.com emails. Exhibit A: “Well…. Hey,hey,hey, now!!!!!haha How are you doing?” yick!
But my least favorite part of it all was just the layout of the website. Talk about not user friendly or aesthetically pleasing. It felt cheap. And the last thing you want to feel when trying to get a date is cheap. I highly suggest that the pull their money out of broadcast advertising and invest it in a site re-design to make it look a bit less “Craigslist Missed Connections” and a bit more Facebook. Just my two cents…
So I shut down my profile and moved on.
I had heard from some friends that OK Cupid was pretty decent, so with trepidation I headed over there. I will say, I was pleasantly surprised. Right off the bat, it was a much more visually appealing site. Easy to navigate, didn’t feel cluttered, and it had some cool features. I like that they ask specific questions to help you fill out your profile and the abilitly to see if someone replies often, selectively or rarely, is cool as well. I also found the “percent enemy” match ups were pretty entertaining – particularly when one guy emailed me and said, “wow, we are 97 percent enemies. Why do you thinks Ok Cupid thinks we’ll hate each other so much?”
And finally, I have to give them kudos for their email ploy. Upon receiving the following, “According to the views and messages you are receiving, you are one of the most attractive people on Ok Cupid,” I instantly liked the site better. Shameless flattery will get you everywhere…
All that being said, I still have replied to very few messages. I’ve noticed that, overall, the messages here were much less thought out than the ones I’d received on Match. It feels like people on this site just aren’t prepared to put in a lot of effort.
But even though I am not finding any of these messages particularly compelling, I feel pressure to respond to someone (anyone!) because I know there is a big red light next to my name that says “respond very selectively. ” I don’t want to discourage qualified gentleman from emailing me! Sigh, complicated.
In any case, I’ve decided that I will continue my OkCupid experiment for now – but at a minimum. I won’t be spending a ton of time perusing people, and I don’t really have the energy to reach out to guys. But I shall check the messages I get and respond when appropriate.
In the end, I suspect I’ll find that my original take on free online dating was accurate – not for me. However, it isn’t for the reason I once thought. It isn’t because I couldn’t date a guy who couldn’t afford to pay for an online dating profile. Rather, I think what it comes down to is this – the guys willing to pay for dating, are a bit more serious and committed to actually finding someone. They are willing to invest their hard earned cash because they truly want to find someone and it is important to them.
In fact, if I am being truly honest, I am a perfect example of what is wrong with free online dating. In the wake of the D “break-up”, I’ve been feeling jaded and cynical about dating. And yet, I don’t want to do nothing… so here I am, half-assing it on OK Cupid. Not likely that this is going to work out the way I’d hope.
So what about all of you? Anyone here a huge fan of free online dating, and if so, which site is your fave?
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