eHarmony Blog.com

Copied in entirety with permission from east village idiot, dated 5 January 2008. Thanks Chris!

In a misguided attempt to move forward in the New Year, I decided to join eHarmony last Thursday. After all, communication was free this weekend! If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. After all, it seems a bit ridiculous to put a price on the prospect of getting a date. Especially when that price is something in range of $20 to $30 a month. I’m not that desperate. And what if I commit to six months and I find my perfect match in six months and two days? Even worse, what if I commit to six months and I find my perfect match on day two? You just wasted money that could have paid for a fancy date for you and this perfect match. This is a clever business model they have, but it’s for suckers. And I am not a sucker.

Anyway, the first horror story I had heard about eHarmony was that it was far too easy to be rejected. Now, there are some very easy ways to get rejected, but I played it safe and answered the questions they asked in a very conservative manner, careful not to slip up and get the a big shot of the rejection juice before I could even get started. For example, my religious beliefs? “Spiritual, but not religious.” I’d say that’s fairly safe. I could have paid respects to my baptismal certificate and claim to be Catholic, but I may have ended up with a match that was pro-life and saving herself for marriage.

Once I was approved, I was excited to get online and meet all these people who matched me on 29 different emotional levels, a special matrix based on closed-ended questions, numerical representations of our personalities, and an algorithm of six ranking systems that drops the highest and lowest rankings of six coaches’ polls.

Total matches within 60 miles of New York: 2.

Both of them were in New Jersey. And not like Hoboken, but rather in distant towns I had either never heard of or had no idea how to pronounce. Clearly, this computerized data is flawed. I would never date a woman who lived in New Jersey voluntarily. And if this matching system is so sophisticated, it would have inferred that I don’t cross state lines to date. Unfortunately, it didn’t ask a question like that.

Dismayed, I decided to edit my profile a little bit. The profiles that eHarmony displays are so closed-ended that you can fill them to the brim with information and still feel as though your Facebook profile is more reflective of who you are as a person. For example:

Three things I am most thankful for:
1. My family
2. My friends
3. My job

Just about every single profile I ultimately ended up reading had precisely these answers. How else are you going to answer these questions? You’d pretty much be obnoxious if you put anything else. I am thankful for cable television. I am thankful for beer. I am thankful that I didn’t get jacked walking home drunk last weekend.

After revising my profile, I decided I’d try to add a bit of personality to these responses. For example, I answered:

Three things I am most thankful for:
1. Having a supportive family, i.e. my mom, who makes a mean chicken soup
2. Having great friends who have helped me through the thick, the thin, and the cheese-stuffed
3. Having a job, given the way I watch a friend get laid off nearly every week lately

This didn’t last long, because two minutes after submitting these responses, I got this e-mail:

Dear Chris,

During regular site maintenance, we noticed some content written by you that violates our terms and conditions. Here is what we found:

{ABOUT ME}Having a job, given the way I watch a friend get laid off nearly every week lately

Because this violates the terms and conditions that you accepted when you joined eHarmony, we have turned off your matching. You will not receive any further matches.

Yes, “get laid” is a phrase that is absolutely banned on eHarmony. Never mind that the next word is “off.” Never mind that the words preceding it are “watch a friend.” Oh, well, yeah, that’s pretty dirty. But if I was into that sort of thing, wouldn’t my matches have a right to know?

So, I was no longer receiving any matches. It’s eHarmony’s equivalent of getting put in time out. And that’s about when I threw in the towel.

Except that one of my matches contacted me. I felt obligated to answer her questions and send a set of my own. eHarmony forces you into this ridiculous and repetitive line of closed-ended generic questioning that, once again, gives you no opportunity to show your personality, wit, or charm. One of the questions I chose to ask:

2. On Saturday night, would you rather go to:
A) ballet/theater/symphony
B) a professional sporting event
C) a popular new movie
D) the latest dance club

She chose answer D. I don’t usually make snap judgments, but considering that any dance club – regardless of being the latest or not – is pretty much my own idea of hell, that was the end of that.

By Friday afternoon, eHarmony and I were through. I quit. I’ll stick to meeting women through more traditional channels. You know, like Twitter, Facebook, and this blog.