VIP SAMPLE: Is Online dating rigged?

Is Online dating rigged?

You’re reading this because you want more out of your dating app or online dating site, right?

It’s not working for you. There are too many problems. When Craig first started using them, he was always moaning about them.

I have personally read many profiles in which the question is asked…why does nobody ever write back? Or, look, all I want to do is meet a nice partner; indeed, with all the people on this site, it can’t be THAT hard?

But think about this. Maybe the dating websites don’t want you to find the partner of your dreams.

Have you thought about that?

They may make the site good enough to keep you hooked but make finding that elusive person quite difficult.

If you’ve ever seen or read the play by Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting for Godot’, it sums up how we spend most of our lives waiting for some unknown event that never happens. John Lennon summed it up when he talked of ‘life being what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans’.

But isn’t online dating just like that?

How many people reading this, do you think, have been dating on and off for years but have never actually found the love of their life? But wait! Maybe that’s because the dating sites don’t actually want their services to work that well.

Why on earth would that be?

I worked in the smoking cessation industry for twenty years, helping smokers quit the weed. During this time, I paid very close attention to Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) advertising. As I mentioned before, my degree was in Communication Studies, and I was used to decoding signs, symbols, and indices, and I often had to unpack advertisements.

If you look carefully at some of the messages around NRT, it seems like they don’t actually want you to quit smoking for good. For example, in one TV advert, a woman is told by her future self that she will quit smoking with whatever the NRT product is.

The woman who wants to stop asks if she will ever have another cigarette again, and she is told, somewhat conspiratorially, that she does have seven cigarettes and a Cuban cigar at Julia’s 30th, but that she gets there.

Why would you instruct someone who has quit smoking that it’s OK to smoke? Any quitting smoker worldwide will tell you there’s no such thing as one cigarette. And then it occurred to me. If a smoker uses a stop-smoking product and then quits, they won’t use it anymore. Perhaps maybe a week, and then it’s all done. And, if they stay quit, no repeat business.

Maybe the makers of NRT want to encourage smokers to try, fail, and repeat. I also noticed a press release regarding a study by another manufacturer of NRT products. It claimed to have reached conclusions which stated that the average smoker trying to quit will take at least 7 attempts over a period of 5 years.

I suspect what they were really trying to do is make smokers think that failure is inevitable, and if they think that, there’s a good chance they will be to and fro-ing on and off the product but they will definitely be providing repeat business, which, if the product was robust, the manufacturers would not receive.

So powerful was this message that it was even echoed in documents from the British National Health Service, which proudly instructed smokers; Don’t give up giving up.

On the surface, this appears to be a strong rallying cry to smokers to keep going. The sinister subtext is that you will fail.

If you think about it, it is the same with online dating sites or apps. If you find someone really quickly, you will delete the app, and they don’t get any repeat business.

I suspect that something may well be going on beneath the surface. What dating apps would really like is for people to keep trying and failing in their romantic quest.

Let’s look at some of the aspects of internet dating that irritate the users. Here’s one. Why does the app let people put on a series of landscapes instead of themselves and or at least a vague likeness of them?

This is indicative of how the site doesn’t appear to be using any proper quality control. It would be simple. First, you could use software that would alert an algorithm when a picture was detected which didn’t have any humans in it.

This simply causes you to take longer on the app and keep on trying, and maybe after about an hour, you’ll try and match with anyone. You might like the profile, but you can’t see the face. You meet and argh!

Back to Square 1.

They also allow users to simply not post a text profile. After the pictures, the main profile is the most interesting thing to a potential Rightswiper. Imagine seeing some lovely, attractive pictures and thinking you could have found the one! Unfortunately, they haven’t written a profile, so there is certain information that would be useful that you now simply haven’t got.

This could end up in a pointless date or just wasting your time, causing you to be on the site for longer until BANG! It’s repeat subscription time.

Maybe there’s only one picture, and you spend a lot of time and effort talking to this person and arrange to meet them, only to find that this one picture was taken from a very flattering angle and…it’s back to Square 1.

It would be so simple for any app to conduct a little research, find out the optimum number of pictures to post and then INSIST that the user offers this number of minimum pictures, and make sure they’re not of landscapes or you cannot see the face.

Indeed, many users of the sites refer to them as candy stores. The corollary of this is that everyone is talking to multiple potential Rightswipers, spinning as many plates as they can, until eventually they all come crashing down and they have to start all over again.

CHA-CHING! …says the dating app.

Of course, there are success stories on the apps and sites. Some of these, let’s face it, are people who are just lucky to find the needle in the haystack. But if you want to be one of the lucky ones yourself, you have to make your own luck.

It always makes me laugh when I think back to when Craig and I used to pretend we could play golf. We were rubbish! And that’s why we never listed GOLF in our ‘Interests’ on dating apps.

I know it sounds pretentious, but we spent a week near Paris, where Craig had a timeshare apartment. Don’t worry, it was nothing fancy, but it was nice, and we enjoyed smashing golf balls as hard as we could and getting practically nowhere. One day, we were about to tee off (get me!) when a French guy with perfect English caught our attention and asked if we minded if he joined us on the round.

We looked at each other…he seemed like a polite guy and hey, it might be interesting. It became obvious, pretty quickly, that this guy was way out of our league. He was Tiger Woods, and we were playing Crazy Golf. On one occasion, we marveled at one of his wonder-shots, and I made the playful quip, shouting out LUCKY!

He paused for a moment and then looked me in the eye and said, in a beautiful French accent, Englishman, you call me lucky. But you know what? It’s interesting that the more I practise, the luckier I get.

In the online dating game, you don’t have to be all that well-practised; you can take advantage of all the experience, not only of Craig and myself but of all the people I have interviewed and the experiences they have had, not to mention all the experiences of the people they have met too.

If you want to get lucky, avoid the pitfalls made by most when it comes to online dating. Grab yourself a razor-sharp metal detector which will guide you straight to The One.

Even if the dating sites don’t really want you to succeed, if indeed that is true, all you have to do is navigate your way around the obstacles using the hints and tips in this book. And then make a direct dash to the Rightswiper who is inevitably hiding in plain sight, right there on your app. Leave the others standing there, asking questions like; why does nobody ever reply to my messages?

Who knows whether the sites can be so clunky because of design or ineptitude? One famous app drove its users mad by using a light font on a light background for years. Finally, after many complaints, they changed the text to black.

Why did they even need complaints?

It was obvious to anyone that the text was difficult to read! But whatever the reason it made the dating site clunky.

So, whether the site or app is dragging you back deliberately or whether it’s just bad management, you have to navigate the drawbacks.

Remember, the more tools and accumulated knowledge you acquire, the luckier you will get. They are all here, in this book.

Good luck in your search.