Singles / Dating Websites

If you're financial situation is steep, why the hell would you be trying to date? That shit is expensive dog!

Well there is always OK Cupid. I've had good luck there, but it's a numbers game. I travel frequently and work way to much so I pretty much use it to make sure that I have a hookup wherever I am or someone to go out with when I'm home on the weekends. I don't want to be wasting my weekends trying to pick someone up. So here's the deal with OKC because it's free women get an absurd number of messages, and the attractive women get so many messages that they can't even cope with all of the ones coming into their inbox. So spending a bunch of time crafting messages for women that may or may not get read is sort of a waste of time.

To that end I'd suggest having a few templates ready to go so that you can fire off messages quickly. Templates about coffee, travel, and outdoor activities should get you about 90% of the way there. For anyone that doesn't mention one of those things in their profile have some sort of automatic standby ready to fire out, but something that proves you've read their profile. Your success rate sending out templated messages will be lower than crafting messages, but it does offer some benefits. The return on your time is way better, and you can fine tune your templates. If you have even the slightest hint of programming skills you can begin just automating your message sending. Obviously you need to be in a major metropolitan area for this to work well, but it's been pretty successful for me. Having a pretty tight profile that is easy and fun for women to respond to is also key.

The last fun fact is that you should go in there and answer a few questions or change a few words in your profile fairly often. It'll bring it to the top of the active queue. Ideally you want to do this during prime time when women are on there.

Anyhow, that's my $.02

Plenty of Fish is good for getting laid if that's what you're looking for. Relationships not so much.

eHarmony is really good if you're looking for serious dating/relationships. It's shitty if you're just looking for friendship/casual stuff because it has lots of initial hoops to jump through before you can really start communicating with someone.

Plenty of Fish or OKCupid are probably ideal for your situation. 1) they're free, 2) they're more friendly towards casual dating than pay sites and 3) as an ex-drug addict you'll fit right in with the average user.

McCheese_sl said:

3) as an ex-drug addict you'll fit right in with the average user.

Click to expand...

Fucking lol

It's probably a dubious honor but I've tried most of them at one point or another with varying success. They've certainly gotten me laid more times than I can count.. Here's my feedback:

Eharmony: Total shit. Probably the worst of the bunch. You have to wait for them to send you matches and once you eliminate the trolls you aren't left with much. Though you aren't obliged to, you generally have to go through a 4 step process of multiple choice questions and short answers before you get to the actual direct communication point. The girls I met were the farthest thing possible from "compatible", so I don't know what their "matching algorithm" is but it seems to suck ass. Oh yeah, it's also the most expensive of all sites unless you pay for 6 months up front.

Plenty of Fish: You can tell this service must be free because the site is programmed like shit. The women on the site are generally poor white trash, though you can find some decent picks if you dedicate enough time and effort. Of course it is free, but if you can't afford to spend $35 a month on something better you aren't in a position to take a chick out on a date anyways

OkCupid: From a feature and compatibility profiling aspect I liked this site the most. They have hundreds of questions you can answer that then match you up with other people, so if a chick has answered 200+ questions with 90% similarity to your own, you pretty much know you'll get along. However, despite having the best features of the bunch, the quality of the chicks was pretty underwhelming-- mostly either trashy or hipster/tattoo types in my area and very few "working professionals". I would probably attribute this to the fact that most of the site features are free.

Match.com: Mid range in terms of features but an extremely high quantity of females and the best "quality" chicks amongst all the sites. I was disappointed that they don't have more sophisticated matching like the OkCupid questionnaire, but the site itself is solid, has most features you could ask for, and has a lot of professional as well as hot women..

My recommendation is to sign up for Match.com with the free version of OkCupid as secondary..

Eharmony: Total shit. Probably the worst of the bunch. You have to wait for them to send you matches and once you eliminate the trolls you aren't left with much. Though you aren't obliged to, you generally have to go through a 4 step process of multiple choice questions and short answers before you get to the actual direct communication point. The girls I met were the farthest thing possible from "compatible", so I don't know what their "matching algorithm" is but it seems to suck ass. Oh yeah, it's also the most expensive of all sites unless you pay for 6 months up front.

Click to expand...

I had great success with eHarmony*. It varies wildly depending on where you are, but I was matched with some awesome girls and had some really great dates. The main thing I liked about it was that it didn't require me to craft some witty message to get girls' attention; I just signed up and waited, and a couple times a week I'd have some girl starting that silly "guided communication" thing, which is really quick and easy to do. It's very low-effort and I liked that.

Bottom line to anyone thinking about using these sites: try as many as you can--or at least, try the free ones + one pay site. Results will be different in every city so you never know unless you give them a shot.

* I should add I am in the D.C Metropolitan area, which is apparently one of the better places in the country to find 20-something singles, so that might explain the success.

I think that the sites can be pretty regional. Being that POF was started out of Vancouver, it tends to be pretty big in Western Canada and I think along the West Coast of the US. In Edmonton anyways POF is pretty much the main dating website from what I can see, with everything from complete trash to classy bitches. Eharmony I also found terrible, with next to no selection and overall just a super fucking annoying process to go through. Never really used Okcupid or Match at all.

I've used Match, OKC and POF.

I can basically echo most of what Wombat said. The exception being that on Match, because people are paying for it, they tend to fall into the trap of "I will find the PERFECT person". I met a lot of very insincere people on Match who were trying to front themselves as some sort of saint to attract the most people possible. A lot of the women were dating 3 or 4 guys at once just to "get their money's worth". Of course... I was doing the same thing but... it's not great for finding something real (all the sites have that problem though honestly, when so many people are at your fingertips it's hard not to see what else is out there). The difference was on the free sites people are far more honest about it.

On POF I had plenty of good dates... with broken people. Getting blown in a public parking lot or going home with someone on a first date is fun, but it's also empty and meaningless when you realize you really have nothing in common with this person.

On OKC I usually had to wait until the second date for any of that. I guess the women their hold themselves to a higher standard than women on POF? I actually met a few girls I was genuinely interested in on OKC. In fact I am dating one right now.

The first time I used Match I was on it for two weeks and met a girl I was sure I was going to marry. We dated for about a year and half, lived together, talked about having children and then it just ended. When that didn't work out I tried it again and found absolutely nothing. There are far more professional, ambitious women on Match. There are also far more judgments being passed. Because you are a recovering drug addict I would recommend staying away from Match. I think it would only be a depressing venture for you.

I've never tried eHarmony because I don't want to be told who I should and should not date. I'll make that decision and send messages as I see fit.

Tits. Post them.

It really depends on your personal geography. Some places are hot on OKC and others POF while others Match. With OKC/POF you aren't out anything since they're free. I found people on match to be more serious since you're behind a pay wall. eHarmony is absolute shit. You can't even actually talk with the people until the final step.

lol I didn't even pass EHarmony's personality test to even be allowed to use the site. Not sure if they still do that or not.

Not sure, but wasn't it started by a bunch of evangelicals or something? I seem to recall reading somewhere that it mostly started out as a Christian dating website or something. They were or still are hardcore opposed to the homosexshuls.

I made a profile on eHarmony years back after I got dumped by my gf, but I never ended up paying/using the site (wasn't ready yet). I put some plenty of "[email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16)).slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */" answers in the personality test and it didn't reject based on that.

As for same-sex stuff, I remember some ad on TV where Match was pointing out eHarmony didn't allow that type of user.

One of my cousins used Match and he found a nice girl through that. My brother-in-law's brother used Plenty of Fish and got dates with cracked out drunks who were crazy. Moral to the story: You get what you pay for with dating sites heh.

eHarmony doesn't actively discriminate against gays, but there are no settings to get same-sex matches. If you're a guy you only get female matches and vice-versa.

Eomer_sl said:

I think that the sites can be pretty regional. Being that POF was started out of Vancouver, it tends to be pretty big in Western Canada and I think along the West Coast of the US.

Click to expand...

OKCupid tends to be more popular in SF. At least from word of mouth.