Strongly Worded

More Matchy Matchy

So if JDate is a barren wilderness, then Match is a forest populated by lush flora and birds with colorful plumage. I trolled JDate for ages, often alone, and often in shame. I had to suck up my pride, and defend my self-esteem, and write to people, many of whom responded (by which I mean they failed to respond) with indifference. On Match, however, I am sought after. Without any effort on my part, my stunning beauty and astonishing wit has attracted the attention of 99 guys over the last 6 days. True, that includes an exceptionally unattractive 59-year-old guy from Yonkers, several inarticulate "winkers" from the Midwest, and a guy whose primary photo features him in a Spiderman outfit. But still.

Here's the thing. Match is confusing. You can correspond through the site, but Match also forwards messages to your inbox. So during a day of obsessive email checking, I may receive several messages or "winks" (which I despise). But I don't want to respond until I've checked out the prospective suitor's profile. I resist doing this at work because I suspect that my co-worker may have caught on to my plummeting productivity. So I end up logging in really quickly (like when he's at lunch or something), and then I write back (or not), and clear browser history and everything. And yet my regular Yahoo inbox still contains an ostensibly unanswered message. Then I get all confused. It doesn't help that I'm corresponding with two former doctors (without beepers!) who are both named Bill (for our purposes).

The other thing that sucks about Match is that there is no way to hide that you are a) online and/or b) stalking other "members". On JDate, no one is the wiser if you check out people over and over, and no one has to know that you're actually online scoping people out, like now.
With Match, I'm extremely self-conscious and log in and log out really quickly, which adds to my anxiety of mixing up people and responses.

I'm sure that soon I'll have funny-but-disappointing upDATES to share with you guys, and the the novelty will wear off, and then I'll sulk around my apartment feeling back at Square 1, unable even to distract myself with a healing infusion of Cable TV.

But in the mean time, this is pretty fun.

Posted by Dori at 5:41 PM