Orwellian dating world

Recently, at the suggestion of a co-worker, I decided to take a look at the online dating world. Just to get my feet wet, I registered for Match.com, but didn't fill out the profile, since it costs money. Plenty of Fish was free, so I said what the heck?

After a week on the service, I'm realizing why it's free. Apparently, it was created by one geek sitting in his apartment who is trying to rake in all the ad money for himself without hiring any help. He keeps the labor investment down by automating various aspects of the service, and being the geek he is, can't resist constantly tweaking his database and site.

During the week I've been poking around, ads went from not too obtrusive to having a GIANT ad of a half-naked woman next to the picture of the person you're trying to figure out whether you want to date. Essentially, plentyoffish is a way for the guy to make money by advertising paid dating sites, and if plentyoffish doesn't work very well, guess what ? His advertisers are happier and he makes more money ! Nothing like finding a way to make money from your own incompetence ? Brilliant !!

My troubles with plentyoffish began when I ran into a particularly seductive, dream-like profile. In fact, the woman's face was shown so that her lips were close to the camera, but not in an obvious way, like when you're on a date and you're either working up the courage or trying to figure out if the person wants you to kiss them or not. And when I say it was dream-like, her self description mentions a sleeping pill -- so we're talking LITERALLY dream-like.

It went something like this, "Oh Abe, Abe, where are you?" Then it mentions something about the "glorified rat" and the whole thing being part of an ad for Rozerem, a sleeping drug. She pines, "Abe, if you don't come back, I'm going to have to start dating the Geico Cave Man!"

How could you not want to help a woman in that situation out ?! But being the know-it-all geek that I am, I had to set her straight on a few things. First, that "glorified rat" is a BEAVER. And they used to make hats out of felt made from beaver fur, but we WON'T go there. I pattered on about how interesting her profile was, and ended with, "you have nice lips."

The next day, I was unable to log on to plentyoffish. I got around that by creating a new profile, and then I was able to see that my old profile still online, potentially catching fish like a drift net abandoned at sea. Not only that, my old profile said that I was online, when in fact, I was only able to be "online" via my new profile, which no one could access from the dead driftnet of my old one.

The next experiment in self destruction came when a woman from the Midwest requested an instant message chat through the system. I was chatting away, not realizing my words were cutting off my feet, that is... we were discussing having to move somewhere for a job, which is what career-oriented people do. I said, "I've always moved somewhere, and found a job once I got there. Unfortunately, this has had a bad effect on my bank account, which has only recently recovered."

Maybe I'm just incompetent at trying to impress women.

I immediately realized the Orwellian attitude of plentyoffish when I typed those sentences. Big Brother deleted the words "bank account" as if I were some Nigerian spam/scam artist requesting a check deposit. In place of "bank account" was ****a******. OK, plentyoffish is trying to protect users from internet bank scams. I suppose, but... wait. The next day, I was able to log on, but the text of my profile was deleted.

After the first glitch, I looked more carefully at the "terms" of plentyoffish. The terms are that you can be deleted at any time WITHOUT WARNING. So, in the Orwellian world, you don't know if you did something wrong, or what you did wrong, you just know that you've been exterminated (and no one else suspects you've been exterminated, except, maybe the person who might have turned you in as an irritant). Just wait until the Bush/Cheney administration gets ahold of this technology ?!
links: Rozerem
beaver hats - NOT OBSCENE