Just in case you needed a quick break from all the turkey, here's the quick and dirty lowdown on all the dating insanity! Brief notes on a few sites below and I'll be back tomorrow to pontificate on the meaning of it all...Happy Christmas!

ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK: Singlesnet, Be2, Match, Chemistry, Jdate, Nerve/Fastcupid, Eharmony, Yahoo! Personals, TrulyMadlyDating, BeautifulPeople

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT: Lavalife, PlentyofTweeps, PlentyofFish, DatingBetter

BRAND SPANKING NEW: Flirtbox, Kizmeet, OkCupid, Millionairematch, Friendfinder, SeekingArrangement, BadOnlineDates, Spark, Omnidate

Millionairematch: what? I have to try them all! Yes, it's as hokey as it sounds. Signed up on this one for Vancouver - very few in metro Van and I'd be very, very surprised if any of these men actually had any money. Really guys? Really? I'd imagine any self-respecting millionaire wouldn't want a public, searchable profile - but hey, that's just me.

Seekingarrangment - Ha! ....and I’m pretty sure if you’re signed up on this one, you’re a guaranteed douchebag! Oops, did I say that out loud? I’m so glad that Seekingarrangement runs this warning as you sign your rights away: “Please take note that we prohibit anyone from promoting illegal activities (such as prostitution)… If you are an ESCORT, please do not join this website.” – ooo, I’m sure that works wonders! I had to sign up as a "sugar baby" and specify the monthly budget of support I was looking for (I went with "open/negotiable") and yes, I did throw up in my mouth, just a little. Ok, a lot. But they offered a lifetime membership to Lindsay Lohan after she got dumped by Samantha Ronson last spring (or hadn’t you heard?) – I mean, how could I not investigate such an amazing opportunity for a young, screwed up woman to post her entire life in a public, searchable space so that she can sort through profiles of um….I dunno. Dirtbags with gobs of money? Or dirtbags pretending to have gobs of money? Gee, I wonder if Lindsay turned them down! Totally classy Sugar Baby pic (#1) is below.

Datingbetter: Ever try searching your username after signing up on one of these sites? Dating.com makes your profile public and searchable to members -- and to the public. As in, my username popped up right at the top of my google search and then gave me complete access to the profile and pic while I was logged out of my account. (Plenty of Tweeps does the same thing). Datingbetter is another classy one using pics of hooker-women in their designs. Which is fine if that’s what you’re selling – but they say it’s not. Make up your own mind: Pic #2

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Click here to download:

24_Sites_on_the_25th_A_Happy_X.zip (208 KB)

Singlesnet: Seriously, not a collection of men who inspire confidence and 2/3 of “local” Vancouver choices are in Washington. If only pics were taken by someone who could explain to these guys that a sunny day and a smile do wonders for first impressions...also that bare lightbulbs and your bleak basement/laundry room clearly visible in pic make you look like the unabomber. Just saying.

OmniDate: Virtual dating! Award winner for creepiest dating site I’ve signed up on to date - let alone creepiest collection of male pics. If there was anything to pay attention to in their profiles I didn't notice because I was too baffled by the rest of it. Why, why, why would I want to use an Avatar that looks like a hooker to represent me during an online date with men who look like guys I'd cross the street to avoid?

OkCupid: Described as “free, fun & smart” – and so far, does seem to be. Profiles are very well written – I have to admit I did actually go back to re-write mine because I felt like an underachiever after reading some of the interesting ones. No Vancouver presence unfortunately, so I signed up for Seattle - and even then I'm getting contacted by guys in Portland. Overall I wish that there was less going on with the site – and that they’d stop badgering me to play the match games. But generally this one seems like a big plus.I mean, considering the alternatives.

PlentyofTweeps: Sent emails and “likes” to three guys on Plenty of Tweeps – asked if they’d like to meet for coffee. Received one response after a few days:

Subject: Re: hi

What are your qualifications?

Have we met?

Ummm….right. Elected not to respond. The Vancouver-based pool of 30 – 40 year olds remained unchanged in the 2 1/2 odd weeks since I signed up: including one co-founder twice (who, from his twitter feed, appears to be attached), his business partner, another member I’ve been advised has a girlfriend and is only there for research purposes, and qualifications guy who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a dating site. After finding out that POT profiles are searchable on google (as noted above), decided to delete my account. Except go figure, there’s nowhere to do it! Clever. And extremely annoying. So I deleted the twitter account I created for the site. Which still, even more frustrating, leaves my photo up on the site as a recent visitor and dead link. Apparently I have to deal with my profile footprints surviving on POT until site traffic eventually tramples out my path. Ugh.

Badonlinedates: “This dating and social network has been created to turn negative dating experiences into positive ones” – ok, fair enough. The site is indeed a bit quirky, there's some kind of a web series I couldn't be bothered to watch, if you care, you can upload video content and you do get to add a little blurb about your worst date, which is fun. But the site doesn't actually do anything about changing the dating process. Same old profile sign-ups, same old gallery search and shopping. And zero West Coast presence: 2 men within 100 miles of Seattle . 79 within 100 miles of a Beverly Hills zip code.

Einstein was very helpful in shedding light on how EHarmony's matching system actually works. Basically, he told me to stop pussyfooting around what I want. I thought the whole point of grinding my teeth through the psychological profiling was so they'd find people who matched me based on those characteristics. Apparently not. Einstein said he wasn't even sure what any of that ended up being used for: the system really only takes what you ask for into consideration in the section where you specify what you'd like in a partner. Which is the part where I usually go...well, as long as he's over 6 feet I'm good. And ignore the rest. Except that it seems that within EHarmony's system, anything checked off at a level less than “utmost importance” will make the system disregard.  So based on the fact that I pretty much have no choices listed for what I want in a partner - including height (I think I chose "would be nice") - EHarmony is, indeed, sending me every single guy in Vancouver. Fantastic.

Can we all please take a moment here and think about what this means? Maybe this won't feel like quite the pie in the face that it is until until you've filled out 10 of these profiles (yes, 10 - new sites!) in less than a week - and, more to the point, paid (for almost all of) them - but EHarmony and Chemistry in particular, are promising lonely singles a chance at happiness based on having access to a highly touted psychological matching system which in the end plays little or no part in how the companies execute the process itself. Which they don't explain in the slightest. But why would they, right? This is an industry built on the misery of others - and their level of success is measured on keeping you just unhappy enough that you'll keep paying, keep thinking that love will be right around the corner if you just hang on. Because they know what they're doing. They have the system. It's still all Shamwow though, right? With classier editing and a better timeslot.

It's vaguely worth noting here that I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge of the ACTUAL inner workings of the algorithms EHarmony and Chemistry match by. Just my first-hand annoyance. And Einstein's theory of relative ignorance. Ha Ha.

New dates!

Thursday: Perfect Match! Ha! Match thinks this guy is 86% perfect for me - and so did Chemistry, except he says he's never even subscribed. ooo the intrigue!

Sunday: Lawyer from POF...well, they're only 15 min. dates - I can be curious for round 2! Did I tell you about the lonely firefighter yet? I met a lonely firefighter. Um, somewhere. I forget.

Site Re-Cap:

CLOSED PROFILES

Lavalife - uuuugh (see previous entries). Also not a peep other than the "we'll get back to you in 24 hours!" auto-response. stellar.

Plenty of Fish - received 26 emails from guys I'd never want to talk to. Mostly felt creepy. The guys I contacted myself turned out much better obviously, clearly if you're willing to sift through the huge, huge haystack it's fine for what it is....(Russian Roulette got back in touch to apologize for how our coffee ended and I think we're going to hang out when this whole thing is over...so that I don't have to write about him again!) but not excited to contact others and just generally feel uncomfortable having my photo and profile up - even under a different name. Clicking on the guys who have viewed my profile was not fun either.

NEW -

Nerve.com - dating site is actually through fastcupid.com. Same as usual although very few in Vancouver and it wouldn't let me switch to Seattle once my profile was up.

Yahoo Personals - large dating population in Vancouver. Was surprised to find out this is a paid site - had understood it was free. Is technically free to sign up and make profile searchable - not sure how long I can coast along as free if I want to get in touch with others though. Will leave it until profile is approved in 24 hours in any case. They have a nice feature that I haven't seen else where: you can choose to withhold your profile as private and only display to people you contact - also make a big deal about registering with a first name instead of a "username".

Singlesnet.com - Same old but quick and painless sign up. Another one of these US sites that I think I'll need to switch my location to Seattle for...but I'll give it a couple days (there was a big "lots of Canadian singles!" ad on the front page but when I signed up the quick matches were all in the US and...Chilliwack. yay.)

 ....30 days for one determined redhead to figure out whether the most well-known online dating services across North America actually have a hope in hell of lighting a romantic spark outside of cyberspace. With a totally open mind! Ok, with a dump truck of skepticism. Lavalife, E-Harmony, Match, Craigslist, OkCupid, J-Date, Plenty of Fish, Nerve, Yahoo Personals...