SWM, Dislikes: Humiliation, Likes: Lawsuits
It's okay to look. It's not okay to defraud.
In the last year, online dating has experienced a huge surge in popularity. One reason is the economy. “People don’t want to be alone when times are tough,” said Sam Yagan, CEO of the free online dating site OKCupid.com. OKCupid has had a 60 percent rise in activity since last year, while Match.com has seen a 17% increase in membership.
Another reason is that social norms have changed. Meeting people online is more common and has less of a stigma. One in four 2009 graduates in an admittedly unscientific New York Magazine poll [PDF] say they’ve tried online dating. And there are millions of users on Match, JDate, OKCupid, and a host of other sites.
(While there’s less of a stigma attached to online dating, there’s still a stigma. I know of at least two great couples who met though online dating sites, but they keep how they met a secret most of the time.)
Part of the attraction of the sites is that users are kept anonymous. You create a random username (a.k.a. cute_artistic_type or low_maintenance_NYC_gal) and browse profiles that usually tend toward the generic. E.g., “I enjoy movies, music, and traveling.” Whoa, weird. Me too! We must be soulmates.
It’s nice to have your privacy while exploring the online dating world, but the anonymity has pitfalls too.
Since your fellow users are just photos and a series of paragraphs, you don’t really know that much about them. In fact, you don’t even know if they’re really actually fellow users.
A Brooklyn man sued Match.com this week for keeping profiles active for attractive singles who were no longer, or never had been, subscribed to the service. Winks and e-mails being sent to the account of the lovely ladies who caught his eye were doomed to be fruitless.
Match allows people to create profiles free of charge. You can start getting winks and messages from other users, but you have to pay in order to read or reply to those messages.
It works well for Match in creating the appearance of more supposedly eligible users. For those on the fence about whether to pay up to subscribe, being told you have messages in your inbox waiting to be read is excellent marketing. One of those messages could be from Women_of_your_Dreams or Prince_Charming, after all.
Here’s the scenario in the suit:
On May 30, subscriber “ajsky65″ sent an e-mail to a former female subscriber called “traehi” and was informed that she was online, the lawsuit says.
Over several weeks, “traehi” received 33 e-mails and hundreds of so-called “winks” from subscribers but could not access them, the lawsuit claims.
“Match misleads paying subscribers by charging them for the ability to write e-mails to members who can’t reply to their e-mails or even read them,” the lawsuit charges.
The plaintiff says he was “humiliated and disappointed” by the unreturned messages. Plus, he was paying $39.99 a month for that humiliation.
And he’s not the only one. Fifteen others plan to join this suit. This will be a $5-million class action case for those not getting action. The case, unlike the non-starter relationships on Match, has serious potential.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I’ve got no sympathy for this dude. Try sending 33 winks and subtle messages to a live woman at a bar while popping $8 drinks, only to have her leave with some idiot who can barely spell his name and has a problem with buttons.
Then tell me what “humiliated and disappointed” feels like.