I was going to write about when one should or shouldn’t buy new Apple products (having just bought a new pair of HomePod speakers…), but anyone actually following Apple should know the basics of Apple’s release schedule. So instead I thought, let’s talk about computer matchmaking/dating. That’s a fun one. I love the Big Bang Theory clip, it pretty much sums it all up. 

Given my association with computers and technology, it shouldn’t come to anyone’s shock that I sampled computer matchmaking/dating going way back to the 1990s. In the early days it was all text-based, with the option to send images but no direct voice or video contact via the service. I just remember that because it was all user-names and text, you could spend a week communicating with someone and then they could just disappear and that was that. Long before “ghosting” was a common term, I got ghosted a couple times. Of course, I was using the free side of these services, so it was more a curiosity than a serious thing. I never met anyone that I communicated via these services. 

Then in around 2005 I went to a graduation gathering at the house of a professor whom I had at Pepperdine and met a couple who had met on e-Harmony. It worked for them, so they really promoted the service. My love life wasn’t going anywhere, so after the free-trial period I paid my $30 a month to be matched with more women than I could possibly have met any other way. That’s the thing about these services, or any automated service, is that it greatly extends the possibilities. But as is joked about in the Big Bang Theory video clip, the increase in “matches” also greatly increases the number of “no thanks/not interested.” In my case, having started in January of 2006, after 34-months, I had 872 rejections. In many cases I would see the match, check out the info and picture and before clicking my response, I’d get the “no thanks” message. That’s what prompted a “Not Fair” blog 

Not Fair-eHarmony Closed
Not Fair-eHarmony Closed

After 43-months (July 2009), I’d gotten 1,251 matches, I met two matches in-real-life, dated one for a couple weeks before breaking it off and was rejected 1,236 times. In the beginning I justified the monthly $30 fee thinking that I could easily spend that much on a single date with someone and have it go nowhere, so spending $30 to avoid having the bad experience made sense. But after three and a half years and over $1,200 I was no longer seeing the value of getting rejected exponentially more times than the number of women I could possibly ever actually meet. It was brutal and had an unfortunate tendency of making me feel unwanted on an almost universal level. I mean, I wasn’t limited to the small pool of women who I knew in my small social circle, but we’re talking about women all over the United States getting a little notification of my existence and deciding “nope” and then moving on the next one like it was nothing. Needless to say, I decided to close my account and get more involved in small common-interest groups via meetup.com. 

So, a bit like how the advent of word processing or desktop publishing wasn’t going to do anything for you, if you were a shitty writer, computer matchmaking is probably not the answer that one might want, especially if you have difficulty making friends to begin with. In my case, I admittedly have not made it a priority to find and “settle down” with a significant other, especially since my divorce in the late 1980s. And it probably doesn’t help that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten used to being on my own most of the time, at the same time recognizing that it isn’t really healthy to always be alone. I’m sure when I finally get around to consulting with my A.I. psychologist, they’ll lecture and cajole me on this point for a small reasonable fee (less than $30 a month?). 

past girlfriends by joe bustillos
past girlfriends by joe bustillos

I’ve listed below my thoughts and experiences with online dating, including an interview with a happily married couple who met online through the Plenty of Fish website. If you are interested in other relationship tales, you can find them at the following link: Sex & the Single Brain Cell. Enjoy. 

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