social networking: a mixed bag

Over the weekend I learned of the existence of a new, way-funner-than-match.com dating/networking site called plentyoffish.com. Resolved to check it out. The site features profiles of some of its members, and right away I can see a couple of promising characters:

• Hunt4whitetails? Alright, he must like playing drunken Big Buck Hunter as well!

• Tryjustme? Hmmm. I don’t know how he’ll feel about joining my polygynous cult and moving to my compound in the Ozarks….

• Looking2bwithu? Aw, maybe he and restraininOrdr4u can hook up with Justin Bieber and form a gender-ambiguous pop group.

It looks as though the site is more than just a venue for desperate males to troll for desperate males pretending to be females. In fact, plentyoffish is aimed at forming and even cultivating deeper, meaningful relationships. The site promises:

Discover Your Relationship Needs. We will tell you what you need in a relationship, where you screwed up (with out [sic] knowing it) in past relationships and a customized action plan to make your next relationship successful. We will also give you 33 topics to discuss that are important for long term success.

I’m heartened by the presence of a typo in this ad. It seems a sure sign the site is so confident of its algorithm for relationship success that it need not employ proofreaders. 

And the promise of a “customized action plan?” Why, making a relationship work for life sounds as easy as going on that Jenny Craig diet fat celebrity has-beens keep yammering about.  And since dieting is obviously so effortless and permanent…

In order to see beyond the superficial publicly accessible pages, I must sign up and create a profile. Because I have no desire to be murdered in my own home and my skin harvested to tailor a nice summer suit, I think I might use an alias at first, just to get a lay of the land. Let’s see….

Username? I’m going to go with an old standby, MaleOrderBride.

Age? 1/1/70, which conveniently makes me a 40 year old virgin and will allow me to discuss in great detail my religious convictions and why I am saving myself for the husband I hope to catch on this site.

Ethnicity?  Apparently I can choose between “Caucasian” and “European,” a distinction I’d like a pop-up to explain.  Confused, I settle on “Mixed Race.”

Country?  Wow. I can specify Iraq or Afghanistan but not Iran. Or I may travel back in time to the days of the Yalta conference and designate Yugoslavia.  What a powerful platform.

Immediately upon agreeing to the terms and conditions, I get an email from the founder of plentyoffish:

My name is markus. I'm the creator of Plentyoffish and sole employee. Plentyoffish gets over 2 million visitors a day, far more then [sic] any paid dating site. Over 500,000 relationships were formed in 2007 as a result of pof.com.

Forget any of those other profiles, now I sort of want to hook up with Markus! Sole employee of a site with 2 million visitors a day? Sounds like quite a catch…. Emboldened, I proceed to the next page for registration. It boasts:

More dates result from plentyoffish than all other dating sites combined so make the first impression count! I know its [sic] a pain to fill out forms like this but its [sic] well worth it and you will thank us your whole life! (emphasis added).

Excellent. More typos to signal confidence and quality. And a dubious, speciously-reasoned statistic thrown in as well. 

However, now that I know that my responses to this form may very well leave me indebted for eternity to Markus and plentyoffish, I think I might need a couple beers to take the edge off before I return to the deep questions the site requires me to answer, including without limitation my hobbies, goals/aspirations, what makes me unique, and my taste in music.

More intrusively still, I need to reveal whether I have a car.