at it again

my experiences with match.com inspired the name for this blog, and now i'm at it again, this time with eHarmony. i took a little detour on okcupid.com, but i don't think that's my crowd. for example, either it attracts people looking for poly relationships, or 10% of the population is into that and i just didn't realize it. i went on 1 1/2 okcupid dates (with the same guy, the 1/2 came first), and that was enough. though he did inspire me to go back to a paid site (he actually told me i'm more of a match or eHarmony girl).

i've been on eHarmony for 6 days and so far what i find most amusing is the web site. first, there's the choice of advertisements. take, for example, this pairing with a "why isn't there anyone out there for me?" FAQ:



yesterday i noticed that when i go to eharmony.com, it redirects me to the URL www.eharmony.com/return/female:



huh, i thought, i wonder what the guys see? well, this:



there's so clearly a psychologist or sociologist behind this. and i like the 3-to-2 ratio, "you do the math" part. uh, 1.5? or am i missing some subtext here?

for those that don't know anything about eHarmony, there's this notion of "guided communication" where first you ask some canned questions and answer some, then send a list of can't stands/must haves and read theirs (a vacuous step, if you ask me, it's just a long list of near-universal bad and good traits), then ask some open-ended questions and answer some. then you finally get to the point where you can (gasp) send the person a message. from the way they approach it, you would think this communicating-on-the-interweb thing was a new and scary technology:



i read Dr. Warren's message and it amounted to a tutorial on e-mail etiquette and tips for protecting your privacy and security. you have to check a box if you don't want kindly Dr. Warren reminding you how to behave every time you send a message.

anyway, so far i've had canned conversations with some attractive, reasonable-sounding people. we'll see where it goes.