Looking at dating sites
A couple of weeks ago I was checking my spam box to see if something important had slipped through. Especially as I switched from BT Mail to G-Mail a few years ago. And though the former e-mail address are redirected from the inbox on BT Mail, the ones marked spam by BT are not and sent just to the spam box. So I saw one that looked like someone I knew was trying to contact me. Of course it turned out to a web site link to a dating site called MyDates. Not only that it created an account there using my e-mail address. Giving me the generic age of 42. Now I have never used a dating site before so I thought I would give it a go. So I corrected my age and uploaded the photo I used at the start of my Shakespeare video. Plus some details which to be honest I thought would put them off me. But nothing did. Within a short time I was snowballed with women from all over Yorkshire and some further a field.
I was only on the site a few weeks and in that time over 140 women and put a "like" on me. One even said she went all "weak in the knees" at my picture. They were aged between 31 and 65. So what went wrong. Was I really that good looking to women? I couldn't tell from the site. The problem is that in order to talk to others you have to have "coins" and one message costs 50 coins. The good thing is you can send very long messages. But I guess that most uses use mobile phones and thus do not send ages on a monologue to send. This site is quite generous when it comes to the coins, it starts you with so many free coins and allows a wheel to get free coins, one free spin a day otherwise a gamble of 25 coins! Even so an expensive call to make. I did pay for some more coins, about £10 worth, just to see if it could go anywhere with some of the women. But when I ran out I gave up. The profiles of the women were basic. Most had not filled in the about me section. I suspect that again that would be down to the mobile phone thing. Which also explains why everyone is always on line. Some people have said this is due to the operators of the site have paid staff working for them and even if this is the case, which I seriously doubt, they would need a call centre of staff to deal with it. Automated sometimes, but some replies I got back were too detailed to be fake. I also knew that it is common to use a fake picture, something got from another site. So I download every picture of the women I was interested in and put them on a search engine. I found only a few fake ones. Mostly from the Yandex image search. Ironically the Google search found nothing, since it's so security conscious these days, that it also protects the people scamming you. Microsoft's Bing search is brother chip to it. Recently Yandex has tightened it's search criteria giving you a more bland image search. It used to have three settings, one which was totally safe. The site doesn't even have that option now. One woman I thought was to good to be true, turned out not to be from Yorkshire, but was from Prague. (See picture)
I told one about my system of looking at picture of people (see the Strange But True page of this blog). You would expect some kind of reaction. I got "have you ever smoked in bed after sex?"
I added to my profile to visit my blog site to get to know me. But not one mentioned it or visited my blog. After the site I tried the dating site Match. But I soon discovered that in order to message or even see the people who liked your profile you had to pay a fee! The only thing I got was lot's of profiles, but you could only answer yes or no to them, never maybe, before moving on to the next profile. Every day I got e-mails of these, but no actual contact from women. So I quit.
Next was another website owned by the MyDates people called Flirt or something like it. Again coin based, more profiles, but less free coins and no wheel to get more. I got an interesting woman called Caroline, who did react to my question about pictures, which freaked her out a bit, but didn't put her off. She even said that I was a blogger!
Again loads of women, though nearly all where not "my type" to put it mildly. With both of these sites if you looked at a person's profile, you often got them messaging you back, saying what was up. This was because the notification system would send you a message every time someone saw you profile or liked you, not just who sent you a message. Another indication was if you looked at a profile, that someone would look at yours and not then do anything about it. Clearly they were put off and thus at least a real person. I first paid another £10 for coins, but when this ran out I went to get some more at that price only to find that the minimum was now £24. So that was that. I went on two more sites, both very naughty ones. Called Extreme Chat and MILF room. These are sex chat sites. However NOT one of the pictures there are the women behind the profiles. For Yandex showed them all to be porn stars. Or sex pictures off the net. I noticed that even a fully clothed women had the logo of a porn site on it (hamster).
I have to say that some of the women from the dating sites, did pass the picture test. I told a couple of them that too. One I asked her to try my picture using the same technique. But she thought this was strange. However that's me!
I have to say that if these sites are true I would have hundreds of women chasing me. And in my entire life I have not found that to be true. Even when I worked alongside many women. So I will leave readers to decide how good looking my profile picture is or was.
As for me I have done with the dating sites. I did try a completely free dating site. The same sort of profile. Not one message, about five visitors, three of which had no profile picture! I looked at another site, but by the look of it profiles are not removed, even though by the look of it the first contact was over 10 years in some cases! And the number of women on the site was small in number, compared to men and many were very restrictive into what they were looking for in men. It is called Love Awake, but I think it would be a waste of time joining it.
There was one last thing one woman called Nikki who said was from Doncaster on one of the sites, that I picked up on just before my coins ran out. So I wasn't able to get back in touch. It was the site wanting lots more money for coins. I suddenly had visions or my imagination running wild with me, of her being in my house. I sought of saw her sat aside me once while watching TV. I have had these before. Nothing comes of it, but this is what she looked like anyway just in case she does find this site.
Just a footnote to add. The other day I was checking the MyDates link and seeing if it had deleted my profile. Of course the dam thing signed me up again. So I thought I would see what will happen if I put my picture on and added something to the profile to say that I was back on. I was also given 200 coins enough for four free messages. So that's what I did. I visited each one of the women that had "liked" my profile and waited to see what they would say. The strangest thing then happened, first I got messages from the same saying I was new on here. And not one of the women recognised me. Not even the one that went weak at the knees over my picture. So the entire lot seemed to have no memory of me or the conversations we had. So using my 200 coins up I contacted four of them, telling them that. Including the "weak in the knees" woman, saying that she had lost her mind. She replied thanking me for the compliment!!! And that she would go out with an older man. In fact none of the replies got acknowledge that I had been on before, even though it was in my profile. Some members that had not contacted me previously also message me after being on, saying I was "new". By the way the Prague woman has now moved to Sheffield. I can't help but think that the entire lot were paid operators by the Dutch company that operates the site. Where they get the profile pictures from is anyone's guess. Maybe they are from former people that have used the site, quit after forking out some cash. It strikes me that there are just too many women on the site. Plus I noticed a lot of names that were all the same. For example lots of Isabells. I noticed to a lack of more common names such as Carol and Susan. When I was being message they always used the profile name. The site for example picked graham.appleyard. They would quote that too. If I was responding to the person I would have said Graham, or Mr Appleyard. One last thing the online reviews of the site are dreadful and I am surprised that the firm hasn't being prosecuted under the law. Those profile pictures must belong to real people and they are taking 1000's of them from somewhere. I have since deleted the account again. So you shouldn't be able to see my picture there. If you were to look. If you do go there and see my picture (the one above) let me know and will take action about it.
