Silence of the Personals
At one point, Yahoo Personals was a service with moderate competition, it was largely free and it was very popular.
Now that the dating sites started appearing left-and-right, Yahoo Personals has ... changed.
They made themselves a pay service, and they started sending me personal lists via Email despite my not checking the box which should allow them to do so.
It appears that Yahoo has resorted to desperate measures of faking their personals to get more paying clients.
After years of using online dating services, I've got an eye for spotting fakes, and these ones are the best-made counterfeit personals I've seen so far.
Here's why they're fake:
1) There's always a WAY high percentage of cuties in every "match list" they send me, yes, they're all in San Francisco.
Literally every other picture is cute.
This percentage is WAY off the percentage in REAL dating sites as in, www.okcupid.com, or www.matchmaker.com .
2) Their names are generic and sometimes they make a mistake and blatantly give themselves out. I.E. a "nice girl" profile with the actual poster having a nick that belongs to a pornstar.
3) They're all WRITTEN in a way that complies with certain guidelines. They're all on the same IQ and temperamental level - there's no quirky super-introspective goths or anything, everyone is very "normal" and "leveled" and "outgoing".
There IS variation, but it is always stereotypical to the way you would IMAGINE that person behave.
For example, all "quirky looking" blondes are more likely to write stupid generic things about how they don't like "mean people".
This also doesn't match with what Yahoo USED to be, and this generic-ness doesn't match with the clientele that other dating services have.
4) They don't reply. I used to be a master of Yahoo Personals, often got replies, and met 2 people off there in real life.
Guys didn't believe me that I got replies back then either, because it wasn't easy.
Now, nobody replies anymore, it's just silence.
Silent lists with rows of pretty faces, scrolling through my screen.
Silence of the Personals.
That is just creepy and disturbing in a ""Deadpan look at you and don''t even seem to be breathing."" sort of way.
Quintin_Stone wrote:
lunabean wrote:I''d do all those girls.
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*Does a double take on *Legion*''s post.*
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
Ahh, the third one likes being surrounded by nature eh?
""Dear Jaded Me,
I too like nature. I particularly enjoy the even song of birds. It''s such comfort to me on my moonlit walks through forest glades, trying to stop the heavy, heavy, carpet on my shoulder from falling to the ground...""
Rhymes with 'yidcaff'. I don't use smilies. Imagine a wink and a wry grin at the end of most of my sentences. I don't like using exclamation marks either. I'm more friendly than you imagine.
I thought California had a higher proportion of beautiful women than most of the country?
Change your city code to st louis or Oklahoma. Trust me, you''ll see they aren''t faking.
You''d be right, at least based on what I''ve seen living here for 4 years.
Well, I have to share - I put my profile in match.com a few days ago, and I have received 15 ""virtual kisses"", and tomorrow I''m about to go meet a girl that looked pretty hot on her webcam. She waved, and wrote me a letter, so it was definitely her. I haven''t even contacted more than 4 of the dozens of pretty girls available in my area (with photo), and at least one replied
I don''t know, I''m quite liking this personals thing.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
Oh, one of them was completely psycho tho. Isn''t it scary that you can tell over the net when someone''s screwed up? I mean, I''m no perceptive genius, but this girl was an obvious psychiatric case.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
Getting out of NA, I think the highest concentration of beauties is in Spain. I spent about 2 hours in Spain, on a flight stop-over and we went for a stroll. Every second Spanish girl I saw was rediculously hot.
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
What did she do to make you think that?
Yankees rock, you know it's true...
She wrote about 2 pages of her thoughts without me writing anything at all. Then she began having an argument against me because I said ""Yeah, (local actress) is pretty hot"".
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
We''ve found Jay. Now where''s Silent Bob?
Elysium wrote:
Danjo wrote:
Rotting in the ""used DVD"" section together with Jay under label of $3.99 .
Shelter: a post-nuclear RPG.
Best Kevin Smith slam I''ve ever seen!
I once checked out some local personals site out of curiosity. It was just too unreal - almost every girl on that thing was ""perfect"" (looks aside). They all liked sci-fi, they all liked horror, they all liked gaming, etc. Yea, right! Ever since then I don''t trust these sites as far as I can throw them. And them being non-corporeal entities means that''s not very far at all...
Swing harder! Swing harder!
-- Lilarcor, Baldur's Gate 2
Complete agreement. They used to be really good. Now they suck. A lot.
The best personal site I used back in my dating days was the one off of Salon.com. It''s actually shared by lots of other big sites - SpringStreet networks, maybe? Anyhoo, the ads tended to be very detailed, with a high percentage of really interesting women, and you only had to pay for X numbers of credits which could be used whenever, vs. paying for a monthly service. The only caveat was that there tended to be few ads in my area. That''s where I found my wife, though, so I can''t complain too much.
I am completely in the dark about this whole personals thing, but IMHO the quirkiest and freakinest psychos are lurking in personals section at TheOnion.com.
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
Nice.
I am surprised that there is so much discussion on this topic. Not judging, just surprised.
And what''s with the Kevin Smith animosity?
Codexica - GWJ Alliance
Well it''s good to know that the online dating service modeling work is coming in so those girls can score their next fix.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I am very happy that all those ""grade B"" models have found work outside of the softcore porn industry...
Playing WoW as: Vilius (70 NE Druid)