eFail

[plumtreeblossom]

Following a class action suit, the homophobically managed eHarmony was pressured into finally providing same sex matching services after years of pointedly shunning it. Rather than mix their straight clientele with all the nasty homosexuals, they opened up a bare-bones outboard site called CompatiblePartners.net.

I bet it sucks. It's so clear that they hate doing it. Not only did they give it the most joyless and utilitarian name possible, the registry page features a big, fat disclaimer that all of their research was done on married heterosexual couples and that they have not done (and surely will not do) any research on same-sex matching. The disclaimer is repeated in dramatic CAPSLOCK on their TOS page. And the no-frills graphics show stereotype-reinforcing twinks and probably-not-lesbian stock photography models.

I'm sure they don't care if they ever generate a successful same-sex match. I can only imagine that they put no resources into it and are waiting and hoping it will fail. Part of the class action suit required that they give out 10,000 free memberships. That's a tiny number of people for a national dating service, but there appear to be free memberships left so perhaps potential clients aren't buying the farce. If any of you have memberships, I'd be very curious to hear how your matching is going (or not going).

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I tried a number of dating sites, including match.com, manhunt and OKC. I've found OKC to be completely worthless. If I wanted to meet a married bisexual or a curious 20-year-old, maybe; but there's damn few gay grownups on it. Manhunt, as your friend observed, is about sex, and for that purpose it serves admirably. Match.com started out promising, but after a year or so it became clear that I'd already met everyone I was going to meet through that database, and I gave up.

All gay dating sites, as far as I can tell, suffer from the same problem: the number of gay men is relatively small, and only a fraction of them are willing to put themselves out there on a dating site. I assure myself that there must be some winners, since, after all, I'm one of them; but there are an awful lot of curious, married men, or twinks who consider anyplace outside the South End to be inaccessible, or men who are online all the time but never respond.

So yeah, online dating sucks. The only thing worse is not dating—or hanging around bars.

[trouble4hire.livejournal.com]

I've heard that there is a gay craft social at Diesel Cafe on Monday nights that was started for gay guys who wanted to meet guys in a non-bar location.