Match.com's Deceptive Practices

I was running down Broadway to get to the office when I was stopped cold in my tracks by the headline--LAWSUIT: MATCH.COM IS THE HEARTBREAKER.

I had to read it and was so excited to see what it said; Sean McGinn of Brooklyn has sued Match.com for deceptive practices. Great move Sean...let's get a class action suit in the works!

I have been doing on-line dating workshops for years and one of my major points has been that a major part of most, if not all, dating sites business models is built around a deception. A majority of the people you see on-line are not actually there. They were members for a while and then quit. But little do most of them know that their profiles keep on surfing the endless wave of new members. Sure Match.com promises 15 million members, but they don't tell how many are active. Why? It's a lot smaller number.

Dating is about risk and rejection. So getting up the nerve and the money to put yourself out there is hard all by itself. Why should that be exacerbated by your wasting time and money (these sites run about $40 a month) writing notes to and winking at doppelgängers that are not there?

I was recently reminded of this by a personal encounter I had with Match's sister-site, Chemistry.com. I created a profile as I think the science behind their business is sound and I wanted to see how it worked for myself. A few weeks in I saw a friend of mine in my list of five daily prospects (this site does not have searchability; they "hand pick" five prospects for you). I called him and said, "hey, I saw your profile and you were one of my matches, isn't that funny?"

He had no idea what I was talking about.

He had logged on one night, created a profile and then decided not to join. He had not paid a penny but there he was, offered up to me as a candidate for dating and potential mating. What a sham.

So what is the workaround? Two ideas:

1. When you search, make sure you seek out those who have been active in the past 2 weeks, or at the most, past 30 days. That insures that at least, to some degree, the people you make a pass at are not past.

2. Get off the Internet. I am not anti-net but I am anti-excess. Too much of anything, including web-time, is bad. Go out into the world, get involved and talk to others. At least you know they are there.