I have just about had my fill with lavalife. I’ve been using it for a year and a half, and it’s consistently been letting me down, and I have a fairly clear idea why, too.
It’s not that the design is bad, and I get the distinct impression this problem isn’t limited to lavalife. This seems to be a problem with any dating site I test out. It turns out lavalife is simply the cheapest as least annoying.
The problem is, there are two males for every female on the site, and it seems to affect behavior in the following ways.
Females, when faced with the overabundance of males, become ornery, and just generally disenfranchised with the idea of actually meeting all of these men, most of whom are the most obnoxious and aggressive of the available men. For women, it’s like being in a kid in a candy store, or a pet store, in that they have their pick of the litter, and it’s a really big litter. And they’re pooping everywhere, as they all bat their eyes cutely at the girls. Or to get back to the candy store analogy, it’s like being a little girl in a candy store, except the candy is being thrown at you. And they don’t give you eye protection. (And this isn’t just metaphorical either. I’ve read profiles by women pleading men not to send them pictures of their penises. I mean, really guys? Your penises? Where the hell is your shame? Oh, that’s right. Shame seems to be a disadvantage these days.)
And I suppose this overspills into how it affects men on the site. Men who really want to get any attention at all, will hyperspam any woman at all, regardless of how sketchy or incomplete their profile might be. How do I know this, you might ask? Because, after hearing some of my female friends complain about the men, I simply had to try it myself. So yes, I did in fact create a female profile for scientific purposes. That is all, I swear.
So I open up two profiles in tandem, and see how they do. The female profile, which is basically described as a female version of me, with my height, body type, and a really sketchy description, and that’s it. In one day, the female profile got roughly 30 instant messages in the dating section, roughly 10 in the relationship section and a little over 100 in the intimate encounters section. My male account doesn’t get shit! I have to fight to talk to anybody on the site, and of course, I have to pay a premium for every woman I decide to talk to, and there’s no guarantee she’ll bother to message back, even if it was she that smiled at me! Some guy actually sent the female account an entire erotic story that he wrote! I don’t know if that’s creepy or brilliant, but either way, how am I supposed to compete with that?
Recently, a girl sent me a message via facebook saying she recognized me from lavalife. I called her Movie Girl, remember her? Well, she told me that she had to pay a membership on this site, which sounded weird to me. As long as I’ve used the site, as far as I could tell, it’s been the males who’ve had to pay. Well guess what? The people at lavalife figured that out, so now they charge men credits, and they charge women, just for the benefits men get for free! What the fuck is with that? I think it’s completely idiotic. Actually, no, I think it’s brilliant, because they’ve found a way to get both men and women to pay, and as it turns out, women are actually paying more! Movie Girl paid more for 3 months than I’ve paid for 1½ years!
But that’s probably neither here nor there. My big question of the day is, where the heck are all the women? It’s not just because I’m being picky and I don’t like the women I see. I see lots of women I like, you know, dating site, or in real life – but the problem with real life is that most of them have boyfriends. On dating sites, the theory is that they’re all single. But why are there half as many?
I’m pretty confident stats
Or is it? So I get to thinking maybe there are lots of men out there with two girlfriends. I don’t know. It seems far fetched, but I suppose it’s possible. Some of my female friends have found this was happening to them. But I wouldn’t say it’s the norm. So I ask again, where are they? Are they afraid? Are the adds mainly geared towards men? What’s going on?
4 comments:
Maybe it just has to do with the fact that it's online dating. A lot of pervy dudes might see the anonymity provided by something like an online singles site as a way for them to get their jollies by sending innocent single women pictures of their penises or erotic stories they wrote or whatever. It's like flashing people while wearing a mask - there's no risk anyone will really know who you are.
Another theory could be that women have an easier time getting dates than men because they know that guys are, at their core, desperate for female attention and will do just about anything to get it. So fewer of them show up on singles sites because they're out at the clubs shaking their booties in a circle with their friends with their shoes and handbags in the middle. It's like you said, they can have the pick of the litter and it's a big litter...and all the dogs want to come home with them.
That was an interesting experiment. It is amazing your female profile got so much attention compared to your male profile. I don't know why there are more men than women on lavalife, but one possible reason why male profiles don't get as many on spec messages as female may be that some women still want men to make the first contact and then check out their profiles when they think someone is interested in them. Perhaps a lot of women have received these naked pictures and erotic stories and it has driven them away from dating sites - or they could be in loving relationships with these guys by now :).
if were talking about heterosexual girls, logically for each one that gets a date in a club a guy will also get a date in a club..
but in my experience, in clubs, just like dating websites there are a lot more guys than girls
strange yet when they say in the statistics that there are more girls than guys in the country and all....
by the way instead of paying to use a site like lavalife you can use free sites like plentyoffish.com or 2meet4free.com
Its quite simple really, Most men are single. most women are not. How this works I don't know. Probably most women date the same small handful of guys.Probably most men try to date the a small handful of single women very unsuccessfully.It can be kinda irritating for a guy who hasn't realized this, but quite liberating once he does.No good can ever come of a relationship; a few hours of fun here and there but, mostly a waste of time and energy.
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