Find Love. Guaranteed.

With a slogan like that how could I not choose Match.com for my 1/3 of this assignment? Actually I didn't even know that this was their slogan until I had already signed up. I ended up on Match after a night of drunken curiosity during which I made a profile to review my matches for "free." I had no intention of continuing with the site but I'm telling you, Match.com has the best business plan out there. You can see your matches for free but can't do anything else! After waking up the next morning to an inbox with 8 messages from people on Match but unable to read any of them my curiosity again got the best of me and here I am. And I unfortunately have to admit that none of the 8 original message produced any interest on my part, what a tease.

The profile creation process on Match is definitely less complex than other sites like Chemistry or eHarmony in that there are less questions and they are all pretty straightforward. However, while I didn't have to pick a color to describe my personality, I did have to write a small novel describing myself. You might think that it'd be easy, you know yourself right? But when you have to condense everything about yourself into a few paragraphs of 250 words or less, plus try to sound cute and intriguing at the same time, well its harder than it looks. I'd almost rather have the long crazy questionnaire.

One thing I do like about Match is that you can look at everyone's profile...everyone's. This can provide lots of "window shopping" fun! Despite what its name would imply, Match.com does relatively little matching, most of the work is up to the user and this puts a lot of pressure on me! It implies that I know what I want, which given my dating track record, is a very scary assumption. Basically I put in search criteria that I think I want and then sort though hundreds of profiles trying to find someone I'm interested in. And if I find someone I am interested in, I can send them a "wink" or an e-mail. I usually stick to the wink because wtf am I supposed to say to a stranger in an e-mail?

The site does have a couple cute attempts at matching. In SingledOut the computer picks someone that they think is perfect for me. So far the computer is 0 of 3 on this one. I also get my Daily5 matches. The computer comes up with 5 people everyday that I match with, though I'm not quite sure how it figures this out given how little information it asks of you. If I'm interested in a match I click the "yes" button and it lets them know. It also lets me know if anyone clicks "yes" for me, which is a feature I appreciate. Usually about 4 out of the 5 suggestions I'm actually interested in, which I gotta say is more than I expected. Except for that one time when it matched me with one of my guy friends, didn't know he was on the site...oops. There is also a Like At Frist Sight match listing. Basically for this I looked at a bunch of pictures of different guys and picked my favorites. Apparently from that exercise the computer knows what I think is pretty and suggests some people for me on a totally superficial basis. Even I know there is more to a relationship than looks, I do enjoy browsing through these matches!

So far my online dating experience has been actually better than I expected. Online dating stereotypes have been both confirmed and dispelled. While there are definitely desperate creepers out there, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many seemingly normal guys are on the site. And now that I've gotten over the feelings of brutal rejection when I get a "Thanks, but no" response to one of my winks, it's actually kind of fun.

Anyway, off to have some adventures!