Oh dear! Sometimes I read questions and profiles that are so wrong-headed and pathetic that I just want to shake the person! Then, when someone does respond with horrible advice, it’s just “Argh!” Here’s an example below. The letter writer asks the wrong question: You can’t make any man look beyond (ie not see) something as obvious as a wheel chair. So don’t try! And online dating is the best resource ever for people with disabilities, because you can either go on a mainline dating site like Match.com, make your disability clear, but also present your strengths well and see who responds. These folks will be pre-qualified and will know what they are getting into. An even better route is a site for people with disabilities. On those sites, a disability will not be an issue, because either the others have their own, or the able bodied people who are there are ready to take on such problems.
Ask Amy: How can she get men to look past disability?
By AMY DICKINSON
June 16, 2010
Dear Amy: I am a 50-year-old woman who has never been married. I have a disability from an auto/pedestrian accident when I was 25 (I was the pedestrian).
Before my accident, I can’t seem to remember a period of longer than six months when I wasn’t dating a man. Since my accident, relationships have been few and far between.
I’ve tried just about everything—Internet dating sites, dating groups, dating services, a dating counselor (she refused my application when she found out I was in a wheelchair) and even church (the last two guys I was attracted to asked me to introduce them to two other women whom they ended up marrying).
I’ve given up looking at this point, but I truly don’t want to live the rest of my life alone. I’m pleasant to look at, a good conversationalist and have my MBA. How can I get others to look past the obvious (the chair) and see me—the person?
I live alone, own my own house, drive a car, and am out and about almost every day of the week. I’m sure you’ll make the same suggestions I usually get when I pose this question (get involved in activities you like), but maybe, just maybe, you’ll point out something the others haven’t.
Amy says: Your frustrations are common to other middle-age singletons—and you have plenty of company. According to Census statistics released in 2007, there are more than 56 million American adults who have never been married.
What you need to do is to make the life you’d want under any circumstances—traveling, forming satisfying friendships and doing fulfilling work.
It’s healthy to want to share your life with a special person, but if you didn’t find a husband, then what?
During my 17 years of adult singlehood, I developed a plan to build a house with a friend and cohabit, “Golden Girls” style. That might not appeal to you, but it got me through many a rough and lonely patch. The only twist I’d suggest is for you to find a way to stop wishing your wheelchair was invisible to others and instead celebrate the life you’re actually living. Because you adapted so well to your disability as an adult, you might find fulfillment volunteering at your local VA hospital.
My response:
Internet dating sites have become a wonderful resource for all kinds of people who don’t fit the normal, middle of the road picture. Try a dating site specifically for people with disabilities. Google disability+“dating site” and see what you get. On a dating site for people with disabilities, your wheelchair will not be a problem, and your strengths will have a chance to shine. Kathryn Lord http://www.Find-a-Sweetheart.com
Internet dating has been a fabulous addition to any single’s tool box, but the big sites really only work for people who are relatively healthy, average to good looking, and middle of the road. If you are not that, you are out of luck. Except that market forces have spawned smaller niche sites for those who don’t fit the big guys. Here’s a bunch of sites that cater to the differently abled:
Finding love online, despite health problems
By Michael Slenske, Health.com
(Health.com)— Lana, a 38 year-old publicist in Los Angeles, California, was diagnosed with genital herpes in 1997.
Since then, she has “kind of been hiding” from the dating scene.
Let’s face it: How do you drop that bomb on a potential love interest? And when?
She considered a number of online dating venues, but she says Match.com asked too many questions on its enrollment form, eHarmony was too “religious,” and MySpace was too much of a “hookup zone.”
“I wanted to meet men with my same diagnosis so we wouldn’t [need to] have ‘the talk,’ or fear of rejection and transmitting,” she says. “Most of us with this don’t wish to spread it.”
Despite—or perhaps because of—the economic downturn, the billion-dollar online dating industry has been booming. But not everyone has felt welcome at the party.
While sites like Match.com and eHarmony don’t discriminate, they also don’t cater to people like Lana who are coping with sexually transmitted diseases, disabilities, or mental health conditions. All of these can make dating—often an ego-shattering minefield for those in perfect health—even trickier.
“On bigger dating sites the competition is tremendous,” says Jim Houran, PhD, a clinical psychologist and columnist for Online Dating Magazine. “And let’s face it, depending on what [the illness] is, it could very well make you uncompetitive in the larger dating pool.”
Fortunately, there are a number of alternatives. A new breed of dating sites has emerged to play cupid for people with chronic diseases and disabilities.
Over the past five years, several sites—such as Prescription4love.com, Nolongerlonely.com, and Cisforcupid.com—have launched to serve the needs of people with conditions ranging from bipolar disorder to Crohn’s disease. Together these sites now boast tens of thousands of members.
In addition to providing their users with a more hospitable environment, these websites defuse the tension over how and when to disclose an illness, which is often an issue for people with diseases and disabilities who venture onto mainstream dating sites.
When health problems equal heartache
After some “horrible” results on other dating websites, Lana joined Prescription 4 Love and the STD-specific site Positivesingles.com.
Both sites require members to disclose their illnesses upfront, clearing the air for what might be a deal-breaking revelation later. Within her first week on Positive Singles, she went on three dates and has since gone on seven more, which fostered one romantic relationship and a friendship over the past two years. She’s even rejected a couple dozen guys.
“I don’t think I would have been able to have 10 dates without the site,” says Lana. “It’s easier to get rejected via email, and you can take baby steps online without hunting outside.”
Though Prescription 4 Love didn’t yield any dates for Lana, this fast-growing online community offers an alternative to mainstream dating sites for thousands of singles.
Now three years old, the site currently has 8,000 members who represent nearly 40 health conditions ranging from genital herpes (2,425 members) to Tourette’s syndrome (32 members).
Ricky Durham founded Prescription 4 Love in 2006, inspired by his late brother Keith, who lived with Crohn’s disease for 15 years before passing away in 2004.
“He was a good-looking boy, and he could find dates, but when do you tell someone you have a colostomy bag? The night you go out? Two weeks after you go out?” Durham asks. “He was having a hard time with that, so I thought if he could find someone who had the same disease, or someone with a colostomy bag, he wouldn’t really have to discuss that.”
Since launching the site, Durham, 48, who previously dabbled in the stock market and worked as a bartender, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Though he doesn’t find it appropriate to be a member of a community he founded, he says he can empathize with his members.
“It’s nice to find someone who’s going through what you’re going through,” he says.
Love for less
Niche sites are also a lot less expensive. Prescription 4 Love, which started charging in May 2009, is $9.95 per month, while most of the features on No Longer Lonely (including the dating service and chat rooms) are still free.
(Access to the site’s full features is available for $24 per year. That’s substantially cheaper than sites like Match.com and eHarmony, which can cost upwards of $35 per month.)
“To me, that’s pressure right there,” says Robert Watson, the executive director of the nonprofit dating service DateAble.org, which caters primarily to those with physical and mild psychiatric handicaps. “If it’s the 30th day of the month, you’re thinking, ‘I’ve got one more day to find someone or it’s another $35.’”
DateAble, which was founded in 1987 by a Washington, D.C., doctor who wanted to give her patients a way to combat the isolation that accompanied their physical disabilities, charges a $125 initiation fee for the first year and $25 every year thereafter.
For that fee, members get a more personalized experience, as DateAble is more akin to an old-school matchmaking service. The organization has been responsible for almost 1,000 marriages, according to Watson. As one of its first members, he should know: He met his wife, Lynn, at a DateAble Valentine’s Day party in 1988.
“I didn’t want to try it,” says Watson, who has moderate cerebral palsy and was working as a national project director for the United Cerebral Palsy Association at the time. “But I probably knew everybody in my community and nobody I knew wanted to date me or vice versa. Lynn lived 60 miles away, but we made it work.”
By pushing a “friends first” concept, which has been emulated in the communal blog and forum features of Prescription 4 Love, No Longer Lonely, and other illness-specific sites, DateAble members can get up to speed on the dating world in a familiar environment without the prying eyes of the Web.
“People with disabilities, especially developmental disabilities, are typically behind the eight ball because they haven’t had the practice of dating in college or their young adult life,” says Watson. “Many of them never had the puppy love, been broken up with, experienced the fights, or the good stuff.”
To make up for this lost time, his best bit of advice is to be totally honest. Even in our post-Americans With Disabilities Act society, notes Watson, failing to mention that you’re confined to a wheelchair or dealing with another type of handicap might bring a first date to an abrupt end after a courtesy “I’m sorry” drink.
The stigma of mental illness
People with physical disabilities aren’t the only ones who face stigma while dating. People with mental health problems, from chronic depression to schizophrenia, have also benefited from specialized sites.
Jim Leftwich, 39, a college librarian from White Plains, New York, has lived with schizoaffective disorder, a condition that combines features of schizophrenia and mood disorders (such as depression), since 1992. In 2004, after years of brushing up against the harsh realities of the dating scene, Leftwich founded No Longer Lonely, a dating site that caters to the mentally ill.
“I thought to myself, ‘There should be something like this out there,’ and I was surprised to find there wasn’t,” says Leftwich. “If you’re mentally ill, it’s kind of a hostile world out there. I thought by taking down that whole bugaboo of having an illness, making it all open with everyone knowing, it would facilitate things. People would be more trusting and relationships might be more successful.”
No Longer Lonely now has 16,000 members and a brand new interface (similar to those of social-networking sites) that allows users to upload poems, art, videos, and blogs. The site has been responsible for more than 20 marriages.
“I find with my clientele, they’re more willing to get to know someone remotely and they’re more open,” he says. “They don’t have the same kind of prejudices that people in general tend to have.”
Even though most mental illnesses can be controlled with medication, therapy, or a combination of the two, some people still view conditions such as bipolar disorder as a mark of weakness or instability.
“Even in today’s enlightened society, where acceptance and diversity are hailed as the right thing to do…mentally ill people tend to be outcasts. It’s terrible,” says Houran, who is also a former instructor of clinical psychiatry at the Southern Illinois School of Medicine.
“The minute someone knows you have a certain mental disorder, they assume it means that you’re not capable of love, or that you’re dangerous or unstable. Those are myths. Given the right care, people with mental illnesses and other medical conditions can lead very normal, functioning lives.”
Some mental illnesses—certain mood or personality disorders, for instance—could cause problems in fledgling relationships, Houran acknowledges. And especially if the relationship progresses to thoughts of marriage and kids, two partners who each have bipolar disorder, for example, could find themselves debating whether it’s safe or wise to have children.
However, says Houran, in most cases these considerations aren’t enough to forestall a relationship. “Even under the best of circumstances, people still have major relationship challenges,” he says.
For Houran, this outgrowth of illness-specific dating sites and services is a boon. “Niche sites are growing in popularity because they allow people with these very specific needs or interests to connect in a way that’s not possible on the big dating sites,” he says.
“The big dating sites are akin to Wal-Mart. You have a lot of quantity, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to find people with a lot quality in the way you define it. That being said, niche sites by their very construction tend to be very small. So I always advocate [that] people use both.”
I’ve been experimenting with Twitter a few months now, and I’d have to say I am semi-hooked. How’s that for ambivalence? It’s fun watching the Tweets of the people I am following scroll down the left side of my screen (I use Twitbin to do it). And I like the quick, immediate way Twitter allows me to communicate with MY followers, which are accumulating every day. That part is fun to watch too, those folks who find me somehow and sign on for the ride.
People get hooked on Twitter. Interesting as well as useless applications turn up every day. But here is one that really floored me: Leave it to the Twitterites to come up with a DATING SITE base on Twitter: http://www.mytweetheart.com/ You’ve got all the standard dating match-up possibilities, men seeking women, women seeking men, men for men and women for women, as well as men seeking men/women and women seeking men/women. I just saw a posting by a man seeking men/women and the picture he had posted was with his wife and kids! Lordy.
But it is free, and it would be a real challenge to write a profile in less than 140 characters.
A segment of the singles population that really suffers in the online dating world are those with disabilities, particularly disabilities that show up in looks. Thank goodness that dating sites have cropped up that cater to the disabled population. Just Google a disability and “Dating site” and I’ll bet you find something somewhere for folks who are similar. But it can be real hell on the mainstream sites if you are less than perfect. Online Dating magazine is starting a column for disabled daters. Here’s the first one:
Dating with Disabilities
by Melissa Blake
What Does it Mean to Love in Today’s World?
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to welcome Melissa Blake to the Online Dating Magazine team where she will be writing about dating with disabilities on a weekly basis.
My good friend, Claire, once dubbed me “a downhome Carrie Bradshaw.’ I’m not quite sure what exactly she meant by this moniker, but she coined it one day after we’d had lunch together at our local diner. She later told me she saw me zooming down the street in my wheelchair, past the lagoon on a bright, sunny day, chatting away on my cell phone. I took the new name as a compliment; I suppose this puts me somewhere in the middle of a fast-talking, fall-in-love-too-fast power girl from Manhattan and a laid-back and hugely awkward girl from a small Midwestern town.
So who am I, really, besides just a girl sitting behind a computer screen and giving you an inside look at my heart and my thoughts?
I’m the girl who can usually be found wearing a chic polo shirt (red is my favorite!). I’m the girl who is a bit awkward, a bit dorky and still a bit innocent. I’m the girl who isn’t afraid to laugh at herself. I’m the girl who still, at 27, celebrates her half birthday. I’m the girl who colors outside the lines. I’m the girl who is bold and confident (though I’m not sure men have picked up on my boldness yet). I’m the girl who likes to leave a little mystery behind her.
I’m the girl who writes about anything and everything in her life, even the boys she falls madly in love with who don’t even know she exists. I’m the girl who is still so shy that she gives said boys code names in said writing (you’ll see….). I’m the girl who’s mastered the art of loving from afar, but ultimately, never having the courage to tell the gorgeous, sweet, funny, charming guy that he is, in fact, gorgeous, sweet, funny and charming. Or when I try, it always ends up not sounding anywhere near as sleek and sophisticated as it did in my head.
I’m the girl who, at 16, wrote a list in my diary of Personality Traits I Want My Future Husband To Possess. I’m also the girl who lets these 20 traits guide her heart still today.
I’m the girl who thinks imperfections are beautiful and sexy.
And I’m also the girl who has overcome great obstacles – 27 surgeries, countless hospitalizations and enough needle pokes to last me two lifetimes – despite being born with a physical disability. I’ve never let it define who I am or my life, but in the last few years, oddly, my disability has seemingly morphed into the defining factor when it comes to my attempts to strut my stuff on the dating scene. I ve often asked myself these questions: How can you get someone (a guy, in my case) to look past your disability – or any other of your insecurities – and see the real you. Not the you with makeup on. Not the you wearing a sparkling dress and heels. Not even the you who smiles even though
she’s sad. The real you – without makeup, metaphorically naked and not ashamed to show people who you are.
I can’t say I have all that much experience in the world of love, romance and the intensity of relationships that drives people to do crazy things in the name of love. In all honesty, when it comes to said relationships (especially those involving the opposite sex), my run-ins have all had three things in common: dorky, awkward and quirky.
But I do know I’ll find The Big L someday.
What’s better than redefining love altogether? Injecting my own brand of quirkiness into it – in heavy doses. The way I see it, love and relationships are like a one-way street always under road construction. You can see your destination, but can’t quite get there, right? And let’s not even get started on all those confusing signs pointing every which way. What do those signs even mean?
But really, what does it mean to love in today’s world? What is it that keeps our blood pumping and our hearts racing? Because let’s face it, love in the modern age, with an inbox full of emails and an overflow of texts messages, isn’t what it was even 10 years ago. The ways we find love and the ways we keep it have all changed, and I, just like you, am trying to keep up.
Come along for the journey; you might learn a thing or two about yourself along the way.
Who knows? Maybe someday I really will be the Midwest’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw. Anyone up for a glass of spiked lemonade on the porch?
~ Melissa
P.S. I realize this all sounds like one big profile on Match.com. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll let you be the judge.
Finally, a good, sarcastic article about one of my least favorite “dating sites” Ashley Madison.com. About all I can say that is good about Ashley is that she just might be helping get the married folks (men mostly) off the mainline dating sites. Good riddance.
Ashley Madison’s secret success The dating service caters to people wanting to have an affair.
Meghan Daum
January 10, 2009
‘Life is short. Have an affair.”
That’s the slogan of the Ashley Madison dating service, a website for people who want to cheat on their partners. That’s right, unlike traditional Internet dating sites—where you’re expected to say you’re unattached no matter what the truth is—Ashley Madison is honest about its duplicity. Unlike match.com, with its married interlopers, Ashley Madison isn’t about to break the hearts of innocent singles who only want to live happily ever after with someone who loves Elvis Costello as much as they do. And although its mission can be perceived as very wrong (for the record: cheating is bad!), the fact that it claims 3.2 million members suggests that it’s also doing something right.
For starters, the commercials are hilarious. One television spot shows a glamorous couple in the throes of passion. A title card reads, “This couple is married ... but not to each other.” In another ad, a man retreats to the sofa to escape his obese, snoring wife while a voice-over declares, “Most of us can recover from a one-night stand with the wrong woman, but not when it’s every night for the rest of our lives.”
The ads, as well as the slogan, were written by the company’s 37-year-old founder and chief executive, Noel Biderman, a former attorney, sports agent and self-described happily married father of two who started the company in 2001.
I met up with Biderman, who is from Toronto, on Monday at KTLA Channel 5, where he was a guest on the morning news. Despite much hand flapping and righteous indignation from the hosts (even the weatherman wanted in on the questioning), Biderman calmly suggested that because many members are in sexless marriages but don’t actually want to leave their spouses, the company “preserves more marriages than we break up.” He added that the most sign-ups occur around New Year’s and that, ahem, Los Angeles is the company’s biggest market.
When I talked to him after the broadcast, Biderman, whose mild-mannered comportment belies the seediness of his enterprise, explained that in hard economic times, a lot of people who’ve been planning a divorce suddenly cannot afford one. The money-saving solution? Seek carnal comfort in others. He also made an analogy between his extramarital dating service and handing out condoms to teens.
“Some people say it promotes promiscuity,” he said. “But if you don’t do it, you get behavior that’s way more harmful to society. Infidelity has been around a lot longer than Ashley Madison.”
He believes that hearing about the service in a commercial is not going to persuade anyone to have an affair. “It’s a decision they’ve come to already. All I’m saying is, don’t do it in the workplace where it could result in someone losing their job, don’t go to a singles dating service and lie about your status, don’t hire a prostitute. Given that affairs are going to happen no matter what, maybe we should see Ashley Madison as a safe alternative.”
And just who is Ashley Madison? Is she the steamy love child of Laura Ashley and a Dolly Madison chocolate Zinger? Is she Heidi Fleiss with a Daughters of the American Revolution name? Alas, she doesn’t exist. In an effort to attract women to the site, Biderman and his colleagues combined two of today’s most popular baby names and invented their fictional proprietor.
By tracking information provided on user profiles, Biderman has been able to learn quite a bit about his clients, even if he doesn’t know their real names. Seventy percent are men, he says; among those who are “active” members (sign-up is free but you must purchase credits to interact with others), the male-to-female ratio is 1-1. The majority of the men, who tend to be in their late 30s to early 40s, are married. The women, who skew a bit younger, fall into three categories: the suburban housewife “who is seeking validation of her desirability”; the “quintessential mistress” who is not interested in a family life but wants things like trips and dinners out; and women who’ve been married only a short time and suddenly wonder what they got themselves into.
The company put me in touch with a “quintessential mistress” named Jackie (at least she wanted to be named Jackie for the purposes of this column) who professes total satisfaction with Ashley Madison. A self-described “very fit and attractive” 43-year-old college graduate who lives in Beverly Hills and works in real estate, she says she values her independence too much to pursue a conventional relationship. Of all the dating sites she’s tried, Ashley Madison has worked out the best for her. (It can’t hurt that the site sometimes offers free points to members who will talk to the media.)
“A few weeks ago, I had a fantastic meeting with someone who’s been married for 15 years and has three children,” Jackie said. “I met him at the Four Seasons on Friday night and we met up again Saturday morning and went to Vegas for two days. I didn’t really care that the guy’s married. He has no desire to leave his family, and I have no desire for a commitment. So it’s ideal.”
What’s that furious clacking sound I hear? Is it the sound of apoplectic readers typing irate e-mails about the subject of this column? Or is it the sound of people signing on to Ashley Madison?
Or is it the sound of divorce lawyers lowering their fees? Maybe some good can come of this after all.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Marks Brooks at OnlinePersonalsWatch recently got permission to publish ChristianCafe.com’s gender ratios, by age groups. You don’t often see these kind of stats, because dating sites don’t want you to know if you may be at a statistical disadvantage on their site. But I suspect that these ratios are typical for religious themed sites. Look at how quickly the stats get skewed, putting women at a distinct disadvantage:
Male/Female
18-20 - 50.7% / 49.3%
21-30 - 42.8% / 57.2%
31-40 - 40.8% / 59.2%
41-50 - 37.5% / 62.5%
51-60 - 33% / 67%
61+ - 31.9% / 68.1%
Avg overall - 39.9% / 60.1%
When you look at the attendance at most churches, women usually predominate. Therefore it would make sense that on Christian themed sites, women would be in the majority. So not only are the stats bad for women, but also, men target these sites to find vulnerable women. Folks assume that a site that welcomes Christians, let’s say, is safer, that all on the site embrace Christian values. But the site can do little if anything to assure that this is so. I have had several clients and others report getting scammed with dates that came from a Christian site or eHarmony, which has evangelical Christian roots. So ladies, beware. Christian or not, you probably would be served better on a site that has better gender ratios and didn’t lull you into thinking you were safe.
Boy oh boy, I’ve never liked the premise of AshelyMadison.com, a site for married folks to look for affair partners. Eee-yick. But at least it gives folks who want to play around a place to go other than the regular dating sites where single people should be free of come-ons from people who already have partners. But now ol’ AshleyM is not content to wait for folks to find her, she’s advertising. See the article below.
Tangled Web
Dating site for adulterers
Kelly Jane Torrance
As online dating has lost the stigma once attached to it and millions of people flood big sites such as Match.com looking for love, niche dating sites have begun to proliferate to help narrow the field.
There are services for all sorts of people looking for something specific: animal lovers, gays, vegetarians, blacks, Christians, black Christians. One of the best known is JDate, the Jewish dating site. Yet its 700,000 members are a mere third of the number attracted to another site that has been under the radar until recently.
AshleyMadison.com has 2.2 million members and just launched a million-dollar advertising campaign - but national networks think America isn’t quite ready for a dating site for the already attached.
AshleyMadison’s new 35-second television commercial features an insomniac man lying next to a slightly zaftig woman. He sneaks out of the room holding his clothes. “Most of us can recover from a one-night stand with the wrong woman,” a narrator intones. Cut to a photograph of the man and woman together - on their wedding day. “But not when it’s every night for the rest of our lives. Isn’t it time for AshleyMadison.com?”
The site specializes in connecting people who are already partnered but seeking no-strings-attached affairs.
The company bought ad time on channels including ESPN, CNN, Fox News Channel and Spike, but the networks seemed to have second thoughts. ESPN, for one, says it has instructed its affiliates to quit airing the ad.
The company’s site went live at the beginning of 2002, but the new ad campaign marks the first time it has sought a mainstream audience. It used to advertise during airings of “The Jerry Springer Show.”
It’s having trouble getting the new ads to stay in place. A billboard in New York’s Times Square showed a couple entering a hotel room and urged, “Life is short. Have an affair in New York City.” It was removed after just three days.
“They got a call from one of the hotel operators across the street,” reports Noel Biderman, president and chief executive of the Toronto-based Ashley Madison Agency. “They said they were going to burn it down if they don’t take it down.”
The CEO can’t see what all the fuss is about when those same networks air ads with tag lines such as “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
“I am not going to convince anyone to have an affair. I don’t have that power of persuasion,” he says. “What I can do is get someone who’s made that decision to try AshleyMadison.” It’s a lot safer than messing around in the workplace or getting a “lady of the night,” the happily married father of two says rather quaintly.
“It’s like dumping raw sewage into the culture,” complains Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who says she has had her own ads turned down by networks. “We live in a Hollywood culture that celebrates infidelity.”
Mr. Biderman agrees on that last point: He seems to think Hollywood already has done the work of making cheating look good. He notes that some recent movies widely considered romantic - including “Titanic” and “The Bridges of Madison County” - focused on cheaters. Of course, literature has had more than its share of sympathetic adulterers - think Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” - for centuries. “It speaks to the human condition,” he says.
His site certainly has struck a chord. In just 6 1/2 years, with very little advertising, it has attracted those couple million members. On a recent afternoon in the District, just before most people are thinking about leaving work, AshleyMadison had close to 50,000 locals online.
“That’s really socially significant,” says University at Buffalo American studies professor Elayne Rapping, a media and gender expert who was shocked to hear how many people are looking for extramarital affairs online.
She’s never surprised to hear that men at the top - such as former presidential candidate John Edwards - cheat. Having a broader section of society - and particularly women - on the prowl is different.
“The divorce rate is down, and people are staying together for any number of reasons. It’s a kind of conservative period. But what this is saying is that a lot of people who are staying in their marriage are doing so not because they’re happy, but for some other reason,” she says. “Maybe for socially acceptable reasons, people are staying in their marriages and going outside of them for satisfaction.”
She thinks the possibilities of the Internet are more likely to have given rise to the phenomenon than the seemingly endless examples of big-name cheaters like Mr. Edwards. Media can play a role, though. “I do think when people see these ads on mainstream TV, those who have always fantasized may be more willing to act on it,” she says. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to advertise it.”
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, applauds ESPN. She says national networks give the site “a sense of legitimacy” by allowing it to advertise.
“Instead of a race to the bottom, maybe we can start climbing our way out of the gutter,” she says. “This [site] could be used by blackmailers, this could be used for prostitution, and just the fact that it’s catering to married people, it’s encouraging the destruction of marriages. It encourages bringing harm to your spouse.”
Miss Wright wonders about those 2.2 million members. “It could be a calculated business move on AshleyMadison’s part to get double fees - first people who are trolling for adulterers and then those who are checking on their spouses,” she speculates.
The fact that AshleyMadison is thriving at the same time it’s finding it hard to let people know that it’s thriving points to a division in American society.
“It’s an interesting irony, because if you look historically at attitudes to adultery and affairs, we’re actually more judgmental and more negative about them than we’ve ever been,” says Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, A History” and professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state. “I’ve taken lots of oral histories from women who were married in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. A surprising number said, ‘I found out my husband visited prostitutes, but what can you do?’”
The Internet and other modern conveniences make it easier for that adulterous minority to cheat, she says.
Jenny Block, author of the recently released book “Open: Love, Sex & Life in an Open Marriage,” thinks a private-versus-public distinction is at work in America today.
“In private, we’ve become very comfortable with adultery. Some people think that’s the cost of doing business: Marriage is hard, it’s work, how can you possibly get through it any other way?” says Ms. Block, who notes she doesn’t promote open relationships, only honesty within whatever relationship a couple chooses. “Publicly, we’re nowhere near accepting it.”
The value of niche sites, but they should only be used in tandem with a big, well-respected site like Match.com or Yahoo! Personals.
Love actually…virtually
Singles are turning to niche dating sites which cater to specific desires. They find they have less legwork to do as the sites have done the homework for them. -ST
By Stephanie Gwee
AFTER trying to find Mr Right on general online dating sites like Match.com for more than a year, designer Michelle Chan decided to go one step further.
The 29-year-old went to niche dating portal AnimalAttraction.com six months ago. There, she met another dog lover, a 33-year-old architect, and they dated for three months.
But long-term love was not to be.
Michelle felt that he was too canine-centric: they kept spending time with the dogs, frequenting mostly dog-friendly places. “Sometimes, all I want to do is go to the movies, instead of taking the dogs to the beach all the time,” said Michelle.
But for 27-year-old Kiersten, a Catholic, love found online at niche site AveMariaSingles.com led to a walk down the aisle.
She said: “When I joined the site, I had a clear picture of the kind of man I was looking for. I was seeking someone who loves God and will make Him the centre of our family.
“A few days later, I received an e-mail from Ross; his strong Catholic values were what I was looking for.”
The couple tied the knot in May this year, after one year of courtship.
Whatever the result, people who have zeroed in on niche sites find that the legwork is much easier because these sites have done the homework for them.
“Niche sites are great when you know precisely what sort of partner you want. Such sites let you zoom in on people with specific interests that you are looking for. It is easier to find a partner that way,” said Michelle.
She has been using dating sites for more than a year, and has gone on five “successful” dates as a result. Out of the five, two were from niche portal, AnimalAttraction.com.
Mark Brooks, a consultant who provides dating advice at OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, said: “Singles are eager to use niche sites. It’s the same reason why Procter & Gamble makes so many detergents. We are drawn to things that cater to our specific desires.”
Online dating a big business
GIVEN the wide number of specific desires, there are currently 400 niche sites, said Mark.
Which means practically all interests are catered for - from the esoteric to the garden variety, literally even.
For instance, if you prefer dating vegetable growers or have a fetish for farmer boys, go to VeggieLove.com or FarmersOnly.com.
Obsessed with looks? DarwinDating.com bans members with acne and fat rolls. BbwCupid.com offers the love potion for plus-sized singles.
While online dating is no longer novel, it is big business.
To be sure, niche dating sites have contributed to the overall growth of the get-hitched-online business. The 400 niche sites make up 44 per cent of the total number of dating portals around - up from 35 per cent in 2006.
Already, Nielsen Global Online Study noted that sites that cater to affairs of the heart are often on the hotlist, with 25 per cent of Internet users looking for love online and 5 per cent checking dating sites daily.
Hitwise, an Internet analysis company noted that there are now 1,378 dating sites - up from 876 three years ago.
Experts estimate that the global online dating market is worth a whopping $1.75 billion , up from $1.25billion in 2006.
Finding love is cheaper online
BRICK-AND-MORTAR matchmaking agencies charge between $50 and $200 monthly.
For general dating sites, most are free-of-charge because they earn from advertisements rather than monthly fees from clients.
Niche sites usually require members to pay anything from $20 to $70 per month, citing high success rates in bringing love birds together.
For one, AveMariaSingles.com claims that it has had a hand in more than 800 marriages since 1998.
At either niche or general dating sites, users simply sign up to be a member, fill up personal details and state the qualities they are looking for in an ideal partner. Anything from their partner’s eye colour to favourite movie can be specified.
Your personal interests will then be published on your profile page and the site will match your interests with those of other members.
There are risks involved
HOWEVER, if love is blind in real life, it may be even more blind online.
Experts caution against fools rushing in. Certainly, there may be more than heart breaks from relationships that don’t work out.
Online dating advisory website RomanceScams.org, for instance, reported that 250 of its members lost a total of US$2.2 million (S$3 million) - or some US$9,000 per person - as a result of their being cheated by online suitors.
Naturally, online dating has its fair share of naysayers.
Said Chia Xi Men, 23, an undergraduate: “My mother thinks that online dating is for middle-aged people who can’t get married.”
The stigma is fading though.
A 2006 study by Pew Internet Project, a research initiative that explores the impact of the Internet on users, shows that only 29 per cent of the interviewees saw online dating website users as desperate, while 61 per cent disagreed with that label.
According to Xi Men: “When I told my friends about my successes, five of them also signed up. So it’s common for young people to use dating sites now.”
Here are some safety tips
IT’S as easy as a mouse click, but experts warn that seeking love on the Web requires caution. Some tips from Match.com.
-Use an anonymous e-mail address
Spammers have been known to use online dating sites to obtain people’s e-mail addresses. So, set up a third-party e-mail address for online dating purposes. If you get spammed, at least your personal inbox won’t be swamped.
-Avoid using a sexy online name
The monicker might get you noticed - but by the wrong types. Such user names might also encourage lewd or unwanted attention.
-Keep a record of your conversations
Should your online suitor turn out to be an online fraudster, having records of your e-mail conversations would be useful if you want to report him to the police.
AshleyMadison.com has been advertising on TV??? A site devoted to helping married folks have extramarital affairs? Eeee-yick. Even more tasteless than the premise of the site. Thank goodness ESPN has had the good sense to yank the ads. Note the article says that ESPN is owned by Disney, the “family” business.
Extramarital Affair Ad Gets Axed ESPN Says It Has Asked Affiliates to Pull an Ad for a Cheaters’ Matchmaking Service
By ALICE GOMSTYN and CLOE SHASHA
Aug. 4, 2008 —
ESPN is yanking a commercial for an infidelity matchmaking service.
Amy Phillips, a spokeswoman for ESPN—which is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News—said that the sports channel has asked its local affiliates to stop running an ad for AshleyMadison.com, a Web site that connects would-be cheaters with potential mates.
Phillips would not say why the channel decided to pull the ad.
Noel Biderman, the president of AshleyMadison.com, who learned of ESPN’s decision from an ABCNews.com reporter, said he felt that “a double standard” had been applied to his company with respect to advertising.
He said ESPN is “inundated” with advertisements for alcohol, a product “responsible for health issues and ultimately death.”
“Somehow I’m immoral and everything else is OK,” he said.
AshleyMadison.com boasts a membership of more than 2.2 million. For $49, members can create profiles and send e-mails and instant messages to each other. A slogan on the company’s homepage reads “Life is Short. Have an Affair.”
The 35-second commercial shows an unhappy-looking man lying in bed alongside a snoring woman. As he gets up and leaves the bedroom, a narrator’s voice declares, “Most of us can recover from a one-night stand with the wrong woman, but not when it’s every night for the rest of our lives. Isn’t it time for AshleyMadison.com?”
Biderman said that his company, which was based in Toronto, was spending more than $1 million this summer to run the ad on several television channels, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Fox News Channel and Spike.
But some of the networks on Friday distanced themselves from the ad.
A spokesman for Spike said he wasn’t sure if the network had ever run an ad for AshleyMadison.com but added that “if it did run, it would never run again.” Representatives for both the Fox network and Fox News also said that the channels would never air the ad.
Robert Marich, the business editor at the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable, said that just because a national network has disavowed an ad, it doesn’t mean its local affiliates or cable providers that carry their programs have done the same.
Marich said that both national television companies and local television stations each sell on-air advertising time. Local stations and cable providers are often run by owners independent of the national networks, he said. While national television companies have control over the commercials they run, he said, they don’t impose restrictions on or review the ads that their local stations air.
“In general, [local] TV stations set their own policies for what’s an acceptable ad or not because they’re responsible for what they put on their air,” he said.
Biderman said that the commercial represented the company’s third television campaign. Previous Ashley Madison commercials—which ran between 2003 and 2007—had usually aired after 11 p.m. at night and on programs with “desensitized” audiences such as the “Jerry Springer Show” and “Cheaters,” a reality show about infidelity. It has also been advertised on Sirius satellite radio.
The new television campaign, he said, was designed to reach more people and would be aired during the day in some markets.
Unlike its last commercial, which showed a man and woman rolling around in bed, the new ad is “a little edgy” and “a lot more humorous,” Biderman said.
“We really wanted something that could sit in a sports property, that could sit in a news property,” he said.
The ad has run on ESPN’s “Sports Center” program and Biderman said there were also plans for it to run during CNN’s “Larry King Live” and “Anderson Cooper 360.”
CNN did not return calls for comment Friday.
While the ad is sure to raise the ire of conservative and family values groups, media watchers disagree about the impact that the commercial may have on consumers and their attitudes toward infidelity.
Bob Garfield, an advertising critic for the magazine Advertising Age, said that a profusion of such ads could “normalize what was previously considered deviant behavior.”
“A 30-second spot for human trafficking is probably just around the corner,” he said.
But Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said that when it comes to perceptions of infidelity, the Ashley Madison ad is “a drop in the bucket.”
“I think that idea is being normalized by our neighbors, what we hear other people doing, its depiction in literature, movies, everything else,” he said. “This little television ad saying that people are in infidelity relationships is a tiny little piece.”
John Chapin, an associate professor of communications at Penn State University, said that the commercial is a reflection of infidelity in society today—albeit a distorted one.
“It’s us but a little bit more exciting, a little bit more promiscuous, a little bit more interesting than what we really are,” he said. “The commercial wouldn’t exist if the culture wasn’t there, but it’s just punched up a notch.”
Biderman said he did not believe the company’s ads would prompt someone to cheat on his or her significant other.
“I maintain that in a 30-second TV spot, I’m not convincing anyone to engage in infidelity,” he said. “I don’t have that power of persuasion.”
I checked out this new niche dating site for cat lovers and was in for a treat, maybe you too. I normally don’t cover or recommend small niche dating sites, but this one caught my eye. If you go to Purrsonals.com and wait just a few seconds, what look like a live avatar comes out of the left margin, a woman holding a cat, and both look real. She talks about the dating site, but I couldn’t help but see that she had hired our very own TJ to work with her to promote the site. You can see him relaxing here.
A site like this will probably have a very low sign-up rate and many more women than men, even though it’s a cute idea.
What do you think of avatar? Do you like them or do they turn you off?
I don’t tend to suggest niche dating sites, green or otherwise. Internet dating is about numbers, and niche sites are, by definition, about small slices of the singles community. This article below struck me as pretty west coast, Seattle in particular, but I went ahead and took a look at the GreenSingles.com site anyway. I did a search on Florida, men looking for women, and a surprising 224 guys came up. And most seem to be the over-40 crowd. However, there were 379 ladies looking for men in Florida too. That’s about 50% more women than men. (Always check the gender ratios and go for the sites that you have an advantage in) I checked Maine, too, and while the numbers were smaller, they were respectable. Though the ladies outnumbered the men 2 to 1.
A niche site that appeals to a part of you might be worth some time and investment, but pick on IN ADDITION to your big name, big membership site.
Single Shot: The eco-dating game Special green services want to help you find a sustainable soul mate
By DIANE MAPES
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as if everybody’s trying to out-green one another these days. A woman I was talking to at a restaurant the other night said she’s even using Seventh Generation diapers for her baby. I don’t know about you, but that seems like one really old diaper.
But such is the pressure to reduce, reuse and recycle.
As an apartment-dwelling single with nary a dependent, I can’t brag about how I use cardboard diapers for my kids. Nor can I point to the energy-efficient appliances I’ve purchased for my solar-powered yurt, or wax sanctimonious about my backyard worm bin (I’d install one in the kitchen but my lease says no pets).
But I can do one thing to keep from being completely left in the eco-dust. It’s called green dating.
Green dating officially got its start about five years ago, around the same time niche sites like LargeFriends.com and EquestrianSingles.com began cropping up faster than recycling ordinances in the city of Seattle.
GreenSingles.com, a personal-connection site for people in the environmental, vegetarian and animal-rights communities, probably has been around the longest, hooking up singles who share a “global consciousness influenced by holistic philosophies, green politics and a willingness to explore the mind, body and spirit” (i.e., tree-huggers looking for love) since 1985.
A quick search through the site - “made with 100 percent recycled electrons!” - yielded me 71 potential dates in the greater Seattle area (I’m thinking global, but dating local), including a marine biologist, a musical gardener and some guy who lives on a permaculture farm in the woods. (Does that mean he grows pot?)
Over at Green-Passions.com, brought to you by the same folks who created StachePassions, MulletPassions and TruckerPassions (what, no TrailerParkPassions?), I didn’t have nearly as much luck. My search netted only four eco-friendly singles in my area, plus the site kept crashing every time I tried to check out the guys’ profiles.
Not that it really mattered. Butted up next to each match was a large ad for a hot pink waterless composting toilet. I’m all for saving water and everything, but talk about a buzz kill (not to mention a not-so-subtle reminder that my love life was in the crapper).
Undaunted, I plowed ahead and soon found a handful of other sites where a green - or even celery-colored - single could find a sustainable soul mate.
DemocraticSingles.net ponied up 86 matches from a pool of more than 25,000 environmentally and politically aware mates, including one guy interested in “trees, mountains, sex, wild birds and conversation” (or was that conservation?). Earth Wise Singles (ewsingles.com) gave me 21 candidates, among them a tall slender sensualist into environmental design and another guy hoping to find someone who likes to garden naked.
Let’s hope he doesn’t keep raspberries.
EthicalSingles.com is a matchmaking portal for people concerned about human rights, animal rights, pollution, global warming, genetic engineering, organic farming, timber sourcing, circus animals and a slew of other topics you’ll never hear discussed on Fox News.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single ethical date in my area. At least not until I widened my search criteria by 60 years, lied about my home state and switched my sexual preference. None of which felt exactly, well, ethical.
Dateless but undampened, I surfed over to GreenSpeedDating.com, which touts itself as a new way for singles to find “carbon neutral love.” Only around for a matter of months, the L.A.-based Web site recently held its first event in Santa Monica in which 16 singles hiked, biked, bused and (gasp!) drove to a bar for complimentary fruits and veggies and a raft of three-minute minidates.
Although there was nothing on the calendar for Seattle, singles across the country are encouraged to set up their own GSD events (just go to the site and click on the appropriate link). Not only will you up your chances of finding the low-impact love of your life, your $25 fee will go into a fund designed to take solar energy to rural Nicaragua.
And there are greener pastures yet.
In June, Portland’s Pedalpalooza sponsored a “bicycle speed dating” event, drawing 40 single cyclists in all their helmet-haired glory. Here at home, there’s SeattleGreenDrinks.org, a big green monster of a gathering held the second Tuesday of each month (for those who don’t like crowds, there’s the more intimate Green Lunches).
Although the group isn’t a singles organization per se, there’s plenty of environmentally savvy eye candy plus lots of opportunity for, if you’ll pardon the expression, icebreakers (“Soooo � are you as concerned about toxic sex toys as I am?”)
As for me, I may decide to join one of the eco-dating sites (many offer free or discounted memberships to those who donate to green causes) or spend some quality time discussing all things organic over a biodegradable cup of green beer.
Then again I may decide to simply stick to the basics: reduce, reuse, recycle.
Surely I have to have at least one old boyfriend I can ease back into the dating picture. Heck, I’ve recycled before; why quibble about doing it now when resources are so tight?
Or maybe I’ll ask around to see if anyone in my circle of friends has discarded some perfectly good soul mate. Instead of letting him just go to waste, I can pick him up, dust him off and see if he wants to get eco-friendly. The two of us can ditch the car (relatively easy for me since I don’t have one), skip the wasteful wining and dining and go for a nice long (trash-collecting) walk on the beach.
Who knows? If we like the cut of each other’s carbon footprint, we might even come back to my place for a quick game of spin the recyclable bottle.
Here’s a piece for the gay community, though as we know, HIV is an issue for gays and straights. It introduced me to terms I hadn’t heard before—do you know what a pozzer is? Well, read and find out. But the sites listed offer a real service to an important and under served population.
HIV+ Dating Sites Offer an Alternative
by Ambrose Aban
EDGE Contributor
Friday Jun 27, 2008
“Poz-only” dating sites have finally arrived online. Their owners are hoping they help people infected with HIV meet others without the fear and exclusion they might encounter on other gay dating sites. Even more, they hope to foster a sense of belonging within a larger HIV-positive community.
The focus is one of being out and proud as an HIV-positive gay man—and away from the stigma of HIV. The sites also give the men a forum to talk about it. The hope is that, when the secrecy and shame of it is removed, HIV will lose some of its power over their lives.
The sites include BeOneCity, launched recently in Los Angeles, PositiveSingles, PozitiveLiving, PozMatch.com, PositivePersonals—all personals web sites for HIV+ people.
Angelenos Peter Brook and David Purdue created BeOneCity. Brooks says his site fills the void he found online when he seroconverted not so long ago. “We intend to expand our online services to provide a global HIV positive ’sister’ site within a year that will serve the heterosexual positive community,” Brook says.
BeOneCity isn’t your typical dating or meet-up site. For one thing, it offers relevant news. It also aims to be a forum for pozzers. But like the others, it is above all a relationship site catering to those living with the virus.
“We bridge the gap between the myriad non-profit and for-profit HIV organizations, all working against HIV,” Brook says. “We put a lot of effort into supporting other groups and partnering with them. This offers us a real-world focus for us and for our members, and gives us a community experience in the real world—something often neglected from our life with HIV.”
Why Self-Serosort?
The policy among many gay men remains “don’t ask, don’t tell” on dating sites. General gay sites like Manhunt also currently offers serosorting for its members as well. “We know being able to serosort is valuable to many of our HIV-positive members,” Manhunt’s new chief marketing officer told EDGE.
Robert Brandon Sandor founded Poz4Poz, a series of parties for pozzers a decade ago and the new HIV-UB2.Net (http://www.hiv-ub2.net). He has been a strong advocate for serosorting among gay men.
“Years ago, those who tested HIV-positive had few places to turn for support,” he says. “Fortunately, much has changed. We know more about HIV now. No one is going to be infected with HIV if they have sex with partners who are sharing the same serostatus.”
Many organizations and HIV experts have not embraced serosorting. Although serosorting is entirely based on the foundation of trust, it is still a good way to reduce (if not stop) the spread of HIV to negative men, Sandor argues.
The men who have developed these sites say they are driven by a strong social mission. They believe that their sites can be unifying places where they can mobilize together to help stop HIV. Part of the reason for such sites now is the movement away from HIV from an eventual death sentence to a far more manageable condition.
This is true for straight men living with HIV as well as gay men. Donald Johnson, who founded PositiveLiving.com in 1997 in Austin, Texas, shortly after he was diagnosed with HIV, created his site at a time when there was no way to meet other pozzers.
Like other most online dating sites, Johnson’s site lets users post statistics from height to education, as well a paragraph describing what they are looking for in a relationship. The site also includes advertisements from people looking for roommates or potential friends. If two people decide they want to meet, it is up to them to exchange phone numbers and addresses through e-mail. So far, the free Web service averages 100,000 unique visitors per month, many of them international users.
For Johnson, the success of the site is especially sweet because he met his new wife after she posted a personal ad.
A Safe Space
Chad Morrett, who created and runs PositivePersonals out of Seattle, said the Internet provides a safe, secure place to meet others living with a disease that can be difficult to discuss in person. “When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know anyone else who was HIV-positive,’’ Morrett told a Florida newspaper, recently. “It was a little frightening.’’
AIDS advocates say many people prefer to use online dating services because they provide a sense of control. Also, those on other dating sites might be scared off by the disease—or tell others, says Terje Anderson, director of the National Association of People With AIDS.
“If you do tell someone you’re HIV-positive and do it face to face in a small town, you don’t know what that person will do with the information,” adds Anderson. On these sites, they can put their HIV status out there with an ad, but still be anonymous.
PositivesDating, founded by best friends, Brandon Koechlin and Paul Graves, both 24, in Columbus, Ohio, in 2005, offers free and paid memberships. Visitors can log in to the site’s chat rooms and search through thousands of available member profiles. Paid memberships allow users to keep in contact via e-mail and see who’s been viewing their profiles.
The founders told Entrepreneur, that during the first four months, PositivesDating operated as a free site to build membership. They also sent out informational postcards to support groups all over the country, such as AIDS Project Los Angeles. PositivesDating has close to 2,500 paid members. Monthly memberships start around $14 a month.
As on dating sites like eHarmony, users can take a personality profile survey, after which they receive an analysis of their personality type and what kind of partner would best suit them. They also receive a list of possible member matches based on their characteristics and personality.
These sites tell you that testing positive is not the end of your life or the end of your chances at love. They certainly tell you that it is not the end of your great sex life. The sites are saying that testing positive is, while a tough thing to hear and a tough challenge to overcome, also offers a new beginning.
In fact, the sites’ growing popularity could lead to a battle against the non-serosorting sites like Manhunt and Adam4Adam.
The sites can make the claim to be fighting AIDS in other ways BeOneCity donates 20 percent of proceeds to charities, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and Keep a Child Alive.
Brooks considers it his mission to help educate people to the fact that HIV is not a death sentence. He became HIV positive fairly recently. Although he was gay, he was fairly naïve about the disease. He thought of HIV as a disease that would never happen to him.
“I was simply too smart and too careful to get it,” he says. “I realized my criteria for understanding HIV and indeed understanding myself, was quite lacking. Very quickly I realized that I was ’blessed’ to have contracted HIV in a new era when it is no longer aligned with death and decay; rather it is now a chronic and fairly manageable disease and thankfully, I can expect to live a long life.”
BeOneCity’s articles and links are selected to help people cope with HIV. “You Are Not Alone”, for example, was recently published for the newly diagnosed. Authors Jim Lewis and Michael Slocum, formerly of BodyPositive (http://www.bodypositive.com), discuss the difference between HIV and AIDS.
All the sites also share a common love of sharing and listening.
Finding out that you are infected can be overwhelming. Testing HIV-positive has led some people to quit their jobs, quickly write out their wills, and say goodbye to their friends and family, only to discover that they aren’t sick and will probably live for many years to come.
But one of the truths of joining these sites after you’ve been infected with HIV is that once you know, you can never not know again. Life will always be different. You may be experiencing great feelings of loss about this. You may feel that certain areas of your life are now in the hands of doctors, insurance companies, or symptoms. This can make you feel as though you have less control over your own life and may cause you incredible anxiety. And you’re far from alone: Today, over 1 million Americans are infected with HIV.
“A lot of people afflicted with HIV become social outcasts,” Brook says. Maybe that’s why BeOneCity and other sites have attracted members from as far away as India and Africa. Membership encompasses men and women gay and straight, aged 25 to 70 and from several ethnic backgrounds.
“There is no need for you to handle your loneliness and fear by yourself, and it is probably a mistake even to try to do it alone,” Brook says. “Just hearing how someone else has adjusted to living with the virus can be enough to help you realize that life is still good, that you can still have love and laughter.”
If there is one complaint, it comes from Sandor. Ever the activist, he believes that these sites should discuss serosorting itself. “There are three forms of serosorting,” he says, “and two involve safe sex—but none of the sites stress the importance of serosorting.”
“BeOneCity is a nice site and I understand its usefulness, but I really wish sites like these weren’t necessary,” says Nir Zilberman, the founder of Just One LA (http://www.justonela.com). “As gay men and women, we are all one community. I don’t understand why we need to divide ourselves into smaller segments”
Brook obviously disagrees: “We offer a safe place to unite together. At BeOneCity we can be ourselves, without the judgment or the stigma we often experience from the outside world because of our HIV status.”
Research shows positive guys want to date, hang out and hook-up with other positive guys. But Brook disagrees with Sandor’s straight-down-the-line position on serosorting.
“It takes the disclosure, the worry and any legal issues out of the equation and it provides us with the assurance that there is no chance for us to spread HIV,” Brook says. “We do not suggest that positive guys should not be with negative guys. I have had negative boyfriends myself, and you cannot stop love or lust with your serostatus—nor should you.”
Internet dating can work great if you are able-bodied and moderately attractive, but disabilities tend to push singles to the bottom of the list. One of my clients who is disabled has done very well on the site described below, after several unsuccessful years on the traditional dating sites. I didn’t know that the site was based in Israel. Good news for my client who is also Jewish!
Israeli dating site brings joy to the disabled
By Rachel Neiman June 04, 2008
Dean is from England and suffers from Spina Bifida. Amber from Montana was handicapped following a car accident. Despite these challenges, the two traveled thousands of miles to be together and are engaged to be married this summer.
Amber and Dean found each other from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean through a website called Dating4Disabled - D4D for short - a free online community and dating service founded in Israel especially for people with disabilities. The popular international website ranks first in Google searches for “disabled dating”, third in Yahoo! for “disabled services” and fourth in Google searches for “disabled” overall.
The growing community has become a global gathering place for the disabled with over 28,000 unique visitors each month. Currently D4D has members throughout the US and Canada, South Africa, England, Australia, South America, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, China, Japan, Bulgaria, Russia, Italy. Through forums, blogs, group chat and instant messaging, over 8,600 members share resources, make friends and create valuable social ties.
Although not specifically for Jews or Israelis, the key to D4D’s success lies as much in the age-old tradition of Jewish matchmaking as with the modern Israeli specialty of search engine optimization (SEO). D4D was developed in January 2006 by Interdate, an Israeli IT company that specializes in website building, online community portals and Internet marketing. In addition to corporate websites and portals, Interdate developed, manages and runs Shedate, the largest dating website for women in Israel.
Interdate’s founders, Yuval Katz and Daniel Brunicki, decided to focus on the disabled community out of both entrepreneurial and social concerns. “D4D was born out of our understanding that, although they surf a great deal on the Internet, the disabled population the world over was under-attended,” Brunicki explains to ISRAEL21c.
“On the other hand, we had advanced Internet capabilities. So we decided to do a good deed. We view the site as a community service, and beyond that, there’s also a business opportunity; there are 30 million disabled persons in the US alone. Our business model is ad-based - the site is free and we don’t intend to ever charge payment - but we do intend to attract ads that are relevant to the community: services, exhibitions, etc., with a special emphasis on the US market,” he adds.
The other key to D4D’s success is Merryl Kaplan, manager of Member Services and D4D’s unofficial matchmaker. “I’m pretty good at pulling people in,” says Kaplan, whose personal involvement is unusual in the cold cruel world of online dating.
“I get very close to people. I have a woman from California who’s an amputee. She met someone a month and a half ago on the site. Now she just met him in person and she called me. She had a wonderful time. Another woman wrote to tell me she just went to Sweden to meet her guy. Who knows what will happen, but it’s exciting!”
The Interdate team is also sensitive to the unique needs of the D4D community and the site was constructed specifically for special needs: it is easily accessible, easy to navigate and its simple format was designed for sight impaired reading software such as Zoom Text.
“A lot of disabled people are so overjoyed to find a site where they feel accepted,” Kaplan notes. “I get mail from people who used regular dating sites, and as soon as they made their disability known, they were dumped. The relief and sense of ease they have from finding a community where people understand is immense.”
She also provides dating dos and don’ts, as in D4D’s most recent newsletter: “I’ve been asked to pass on advice that many men are happy to be ‘courted’ by women; so ladies, e-mail that man you’ve noticed but hesitated to contact.”
On a more serious note, Kaplan is also responsible for the site’s Safety Rules section. “This is a vulnerable population and there are a lot of scammers, so much of my time is spent reviewing IP numbers and blocking suspicious ones. We block both automatically and manually. Part of my job is also teaching users to identify potential scammers - we do that through our newsletter, and write about it in our forums, so they won’t get stung.”
Brunicki adds that the site guarantees anonymity unless a member decides to “go public”. Also, as D4D is free of charge, it requires no credit card information, ID or social security numbers, phone numbers or addresses.
I got a request a few weeks back for comments about AshleyMadison.com and similar sites which are set up to help married folks who want to have extramarital affairs. One would wonder: Do these folks really need help? Well, yes, I think so, but not the kind of help these sites try to give. That said, I do have comments and wrote them back to the article’s author. Don’t know if or when my words will be in print (this has got to be a first for me, being quoted in a man’s mag), but I will let you know when and if the time comes.
Here are the writer’s questions (in red) and my response:
You’ve been critical of Ashley Madison and similar sites in the past. No sane person would “condone” infidelity, so beyond that, what’s your criticism? Do you not like how they do business? Do you find them dishonest? Do you think it allows people in unhappy relationships a too-easy way out?
I’m a Romance Coach now, working with singles to help them find a Sweetheart using online dating sites. So married people who use sites set up for singles to find love are a real problem. But also, I’ve been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, and my specialty as a therapist was helping married couples when one partner had had an affair. So I have seen the devastation that occurs with infidelity, way too many times.
Those prejudices aside, I am actually glad that these sites—like AshleyMadison, IllicitEncounters.com, AdultFriendFinder (not strictly promoting affairs, but certainly providing a venue for all sorts of fringe sexual behaviors), Philanderers.com (not a dating site but full of suggestions on how to successfully have an extramarital affair) – exist.
Married folks looking for sex outside their marriage (mostly men) have been a problem on the mainstream dating sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. Speculation has been that as many as 30% of men listing were married (Jupiter Research reported 12% in 2005), though of course they stated otherwise. Sites springing up like AshleyMadison.com give these people a place to go and act out their fantasies without contaminating the pool of singles who are honestly and straightforwardly looking for a legitimate, above-board monogamous relationship. In the last couple of years, I have not heard as many complaints about married men on mainstream sites. I suspect that they have migrated to AshleyMadison and the like, either because the sites exist, or because of the fear of being found out, a real likelihood when profiles without pictures don’t get looked at. Good riddance.
That said, joining one of these sites is does not signify one of life’s high points. While the titillation of sex and “romance” are strong, just the premise of an affair – lying to and betraying one’s spouse – is the nadir of sleaze. And everyone there is of similar character quality. Yick.
If you find yourself tempted to patronize sites set up to allow you to misbehave, you need to look back at yourself and question how you got here in the first place. What does participating in lying and deceit say about you? Is that what you want, to be a liar and a cheat? Would you like to have people say, after you die, he was an enthusiastic player on infidelity websites? He (she) really screwed over his (her) wife (or husband)? That you were so self-absorbed and self-centered that you could justify all kinds of bad behavior to get what you wanted? Don’t delude yourself: People can and do find out. If this is what you have to do to get sex and a parody of romance, you need to do some character work, pronto.
P. S. Guys, your fantasy of finding a willing woman on one of these websites to have an affair with is probably destined for failure. Men FAR outnumber women on these sites.
While I don’t like OnlineBootyCall.com and their general premise (On their home page: “You have entered the most unique singles site on the net. Let’s face it; chances are you will never find your soul mate online. So don’t promise marriage just to get a date. Join OBC today for FREE!”), they do have a sense of humor and do not take themselves too seriously. What they do take seriously is having fun. See below the humor they get out of eHarmony’s latest booboo:
OnlineBootyCall.com: eHarmony Ends ‘One Night Stand’ With Walk of Shame
Thursday May 15, 8:00 am ET
SAN DIEGO, May 15 /PRNewswire/—Contradicting its marriage-oriented brand, eHarmony ventured into unfamiliar waters last week by releasing a newsletter titled “Navigating the One Night Stand.” The newsletter instructed singles how to engage in appropriate booty call etiquette, reminiscent of OnlineBootyCall.com’s playful advice in the Booty Call Commandments. The ensuing backlash from members forced eHarmony to take the proverbial “walk of shame” back to their community and issue an apology.
eHarmony’s misstep into the casual dating scene was a tacit recognition of the increasing influence of Americans who are opting to remain single and subscribe to non-traditional dating services. Despite eHarmony’s unwillingness to admit, people joining match making sites are not always looking for marriage. OnlineBootyCall.com, recognizing the special needs of this segment of the population, caters to proud singles who “enjoy being single.” “Let’s be honest, there’s a time in people’s life when they actively choose to be single. They want to enjoy that adventurous stage in their lives. Finding the right person isn’t a one shot, one kill process. You have to explore a bit,” added Moses (Mo) Brown, CEO and founder of OnlineBootyCall.com.
The New York Times(1) piece, “To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered,” captured the crux of this issue, noting that “a growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners.” US Census statistics also corroborate Brown’s statement, as major studies(2) show that the majority of households in the US are comprised of single, unmarried individuals.
With its usual tongue-in-cheek humor, OnlineBootyCall pokes more fun at eHarmony’s embarrassment by releasing its spoof of eHarmony’s marriage compatibility advertisements. The video parodies eHarmony’s compatibility speech, exposing the undertones of sexuality implicit in eHarmony’s coverage of the ‘one night stand.’
More humor from OnlineBootyCall:
Booty Call Commandments:
I. Thou shalt get out before the sun rises
II. Thou shouldest never ask “can we see each other from now on?”
III. Thou shalt refrain from referring to our activities as “love making.”
IV. Thou shalt not request advanced plans.
V. Thou shalt kiss anything except my mouth.
VI. Thou shalt scream my name often
VII. If someone cometh over whilst thou art here, thou art my cousin from out of town.
VIII. Thou shalt not ask me to walk thee to thy car. Don’t thou knoweth what it looketh like?
IX. There shall be no “pillow talk.”
X. There shall be no cuddling—ever!
One of the greatest things about Internet dating right from the start has been the inclusion of gays and lesbians on regular mainstream sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. What a step forward to ending discrimination for sexual minorities. And how regressive it seems now when sites like eHarmony refuse to work with gays and lesbians. Now sites are cropping up for gays and lesbians specifically, and the regular sites are marketing to the gay population. Yea! Here’s an article that describes both:
Gay matchmaking sites find a growing market
Anastasia Ustinova, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Dale Bullock, a longtime matchmaker for lesbians and gay ...
Growing up, Bethtina Woodridge heard all kinds of advice about dating, finding a husband and getting married.
“You don’t have those tips about meeting women,” said Woodridge, 31. “How do I approach her, how do I know she is gay?”
For Woodridge, finding that special someone turned out to be easier online. Several months after signing up for dating service Chemistry.com, Woodridge was matched with her partner, who was “incredibly honest and sincere, and she stole my heart.”
After online giant eHarmony made headlines last year by saying its psychological research is based exclusively on heterosexual relationships, a growing number of rival online matchmakers are using their algorithms to find same-sex love as well.
“There are just not enough services for creating healthy relationships, and (it is) a major gap in the gay community,” said matchmaker Patrick Perrine, founder of San Francisco-based Mypartner.com, which caters to “sophisticated, cultured and relationship-oriented gay men” and has more than 50,000 clients across the nation. “There has been a long-held stereotype that gay people are only looking to hook up.”
But there’s disagreement over whether gay people fall in love the same way as straight people. Some matchmakers, including Chemistry.com, say the chemistry of love is the same whether you’re gay or straight. But matchmakers who dedicate their services exclusively to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community disagree, pointing out that little theory is available about gay relationships outside general psychology.
“When you are dealing with a Mars-Venus situation, it is one thing. When you are dealing with Mars-Mars, it’s different,” said Stuart McFaul, marketing director of the newly created Partnerforlife.com, which has created an algorithm based on years of founder Dale Bullock’s private matchmaking experience in the gay community.
Unlike adult hookup sites that allow users to browse profiles, online matchmakers offer lengthy personality tests, designed to match clients with a compatible partner. Though companies keep their algorithms secret and little scientific data is available about the effectiveness of the services, thousands of those looking for a soul mate are willing to pay up to $40 per month to try them out.
Advertised as gay-owned-and-operated businesses, sites such as Partnerforlife.com and Mypartner.com ask their members to answer questions that assess their personalities as well as cover different aspects of a modern gay man’s life, including sexuality, HIV and parenting. Offline services such as relationship counseling and seminars are also available.
“Differences between gays and others have nothing to do with the fundamentals, but with day-to-day living,” said Bullock. “The prime goal is to create a community support structure for our couples to grow closer together and to develop a standard model for their relationship.”
The matchmakers claim “you can actually find people who are compatible, and this is a major advance that is going to keep the industry alive for the upcoming 50 years,” said Mark Brooks, an Internet dating and social networking consultant.
Matchmakers like Chemistry.com, which estimates that about 10 percent of its 3.7 million clients are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, say all love is equal, straight or gay. Last year, the company launched a TV campaign criticizing eHarmony for rejecting applicants it deems undesirable, including those looking for same-sex partners.
Chemistry.com is using a single algorithm created by Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, who has identified four personality types based on chemicals in the brain that tend to be associated with different types: the explorer, the builder, the director and the negotiator.
The explorer, for example, has high levels of dopamine, a chemical that tends to make a person curious, creative, spontaneous and irreverent. The explorer’s perfect match is the serotonin-driven builder, who is calm, cautious and detail-oriented.
People are usually drawn to the partners who complement their type, Fisher said, and that rule of attraction goes beyond their sexual orientation.
“We are not measuring what your appetite is for your sex partner; we are measuring basic human characteristics,” Fisher said. “Who you choose to love is one thing, how you feel when you are in love is another, so I am operating under the assumption that gays are going to fall in love and have absolutely the same experience and choose the partners in the same way straight people do.”
While matchmakers scramble to tap the booming industry, academic researchers say they hope the growing competition pushes companies to post their research for peer review.
“And unlike those (companies), most scientists don’t have good resources to collect data,” said Eli Finkel, a psychology professor who studies dating at Northwestern University’s Relationships Lab. “Until we have actually seen their data, we would not be able to know” how effective the sites are.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to counter the stereotype that gay men are not looking for serious commitment, Partnerforlife.com’s ads feature ordinary-looking couples doing everyday activities with tongue-in-cheek slogans such as “One-nighters are great ... 365 are better.”
“This is what attracts people the most - so gay men and lesbians can look at each and say, ‘We can have ordinary lives just like everybody else,’ ” McFaul said. “Our ads are a celebration that we have arrived.”
Here you go, rich ladies and gorgeous men, a dating site just for you. PocketChange.com hosts a speed dating section: Men 35 and under can apply, based solely on appearance. They must submit 5 photos for judgment. Women must be over 35 can apply,and must qualify (solely based on wealth) in one of four ways: Must make more than $500K, have liquid assets, entrusted assets, or a divorce settlement of $4MM+. (I’ll show my ignorance: How much is $4MM? I guess if I don’t know, I haven’t got it.)
I love it. The Internet has something for everyone, even greenies. Be aware however, that these niche-type sites tend to have very small memberships. Online dating is a numbers game, so the more the merrier.
How To Find Love In A Greener World
Olivia Zaleski
In today’s age of inconvenient truths, unearthing a mindful mate has never been easier. According to such green-living authorities as Treehugger.com, Grist.com and eco-chick.com, the growth of the green movement has spurred a surge in eco-themed dating sites, matchmaking services and networking events. Sustainably-sensitive singles no longer need move to Vermont, Colorado or the nearest hippie commune to find love. Instead, just hit up the following:
Green Drinks:
No doubt treehuggers like to party. You can find them at your average bar, nightclub, rowdy disco or rave. Yet beer goggles and vibrating strobe lights make any hippie tough to spot in the crowd. Add an automatic smoke machine and you might as well be playing “Where’s Waldo?”
Save yourself the reconnaissance mission and opt for a room full of greenies at Green Drinks, a not-for-profit green networking event that meets monthly in over 300 cities ranging from Sri Lanka to Stillwater, Oklahoma. For a Green Drinks near you visit greendrinks.org.
Outdoor Club:
If you prefer avoiding beer goggles all together, opt for a sober search in the great outdoors. Most cities boast hiking, biking or canoeing networks. Join one of your city’s outdoor interest groups and you’re bound to meet a bounty of thrill-seeking eco-holics. Bonding over a tough climb or pristine mountain view will heighten the connection and nothing gets the blood pumping—quite literally—like biking or hiking outside.
Volunteer Project:
Get your hands dirty. Volunteer at your local oil spill, conservation site or community-garden project. It’s fun and you’ll feel good for lifting a finger. Plus you may meet a burly young eco-hunk and nothing breaks the ice like sweaty tree planting.
There are endless volunteer opportunities to choose from. Find a mission that mirrors your level of activism (be it mulching or saving the whales) at volunteermatch.org.
Eco-Dating Site:
Though some may consider it taboo, internet dating is a fully acceptable form of meeting like-minded members of the opposite (or same) sex—several eco-dating sites to choose from and many feature gay and lesbian options. If you’re eager to find love consider hitting up some eco-singles networks such as GreenSingles.com, earthwisesingles.com, Greenfriends.com or greenpassions.com.
After filling out a profile and answering a few simple questions (favorite food, color and Sade song), you’ll get matched with a single you won’t have to debate on the validity of climate change.
Eeeyuck, is the following creepy or what? I’ve written about Ashley Madison before, and about the only value I can see of a bottom dragging site like this is that it stands a chance of the married folks (mostly men) wanting to fool around going here rather than the legit sites for singles. And if you doubt the numbers of men on these sites, take a look at this piece I wrote.
Adultery gets a woman’s touch this Valentine’s Day…
Infidelity Dating Site AshleyMadison.com Names Spokeswoman
TORONTO, Feb. 7 /CNW/ - Avid Dating Life Inc., operators of
http://www.AshleyMadison.com, the world’s largest dating service of its kind,
servicing over 1.8 million registered members in a social networking community
catering to like-minded adults in committed relationships, today announced
Sarah Symonds as their new spokesperson and relationship expert. Notorious
“other woman” and “affair expert” Symonds’ first duty as spokeswoman for the
infidelity dating site AshleyMadison.com, is to invite attached but lovelorn
Canadians to celebrate Valentine’s Day by re-kindling their intimacies with
other attached adults in search of romance.
Symonds shot to fame last year with the release of her book Having an
Affair: A Handbook for the Other Woman, which details her own highly
publicized indiscretions, including an affair with best-selling author and
politician Jeffrey Archer. Symonds book has become the gold-standard manifesto
on how to be a “successful” mistress.
“Sarah’s mix of personal experience and practical advice for all those
involved in or considering forbidden love affairs make her the perfect choice
to be the voice of Ashley Madison,” said Noel Biderman, Avid Dating Life Inc.
President and Chief Operating Officer. “Our site provides a safe and
non-judgemental avenue for the attached-but-lovelorn to revitalize their
intimacies. Sarah’s honest and powerful views on adultery will bring insight
and understanding not only to our subscribers, but to society in general. We
are excited to have the Queen of Infidelity join the King of Infidelity and
company Founder, Darren Morgenstern, in representing our global brand.”
The announcement of Symonds’ union with Ashley Madison comes just in time
for Valentine’s Day. Now, husbands, wives and partners across the country who
are craving romance and emotional connectivity, or just hankering for some
extra-curricular excitement, are invited to enjoy Ashley Madison’s special
brand of “dating.”
“I’m thrilled to be joining the Ashley Madison team and my Valentine’s
gift to Canada is to help break the shell of hypocrisy that surrounds the
whole topic of adultery,” said Symonds. “People need to wake up and realize
that adultery has been going on for as long as the institution of marriage has
been around, and that services like Ashley Madison did not create the behavior
of infidelity. Instead, http://www.AshleyMadison.com provides a safe and successful
platform for those individuals who have decided to proceed down this path. The
work place and singles dating services are avenues fraught with problems that
I would strongly recommend avoiding in favor of AshleyMadison.com.”
Recently expanding its services to the UK, Ashley Madison has enjoyed
great success in North America. They have appeared as pundits and guests on
major news outlets such as CNN, FOX News, Montel Williams, 20/20, CBS Sunday
Morning, Dr. Phil, The NY Post and TMZ.com. The company has launched a series
of provocative TV commercials entitled “This Couple is Married - But Not To
Each Other” and have embarked on a billboard advertising campaign bearing the
company’s slogan, “Life is Short ... Have an Affair.”
Since its inception on February 14, 2002, the Ashley Madison Agency
Limited has been providing an online service helping attached people who are
seeking a romantic relationship connect safely and anonymously with other
like-minded adults.
Here’s an article about Jewish dating sites, particularly JDate, which gets some bad press here. I’ve put in bold a paragraph that is also true of many other dating sites, the problem with paid vs. unpaid members. Here’s a blurb about my article that addresses it, and how to order:
Internet Dating’s Dirty Little Secret: The Single Biggest Reason They Don’t Answer Your Emails
If you are like most of my single clients looking for love, one of your very first questions to me will be “Why don’t they answer my emails?” Much as the dating sites may try to convince you that it’s because of something you are doing – or not doing – at least 90% of unanswered emails don’t have anything to do with you at all. I figured it out, and now you can know too. Get the answer to “Why don’t they answer my emails?” right here, right now.
Sex, Romance Fades At JDate As World Of Jewish Fine Tunes Dating
Reported revenue for Jdate in the second quarter of 2007 was
$7 million. But how many members can actually make contact?
By Carole Rubinstein
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem——August 17 ....... Talk about sex appeal, then talk about the World of Jewish. Talk about boredom and tired formulas, then talk JDate.
There was a time when Jewish singles looking for a match through the Internet went straight to JDate, the largest Internet based Jewish dating service. The idea was simple, fill in a short questionnaire based on your dating preferences and the JDate search engine would return a listing of all those of the opposite sex that answer to your criteria. If you saw someone in the listing, you paid JDate a good sum of money to be in touch by email with your potential match.
For a yearly fee approaching a couple of hundred dollars, you could search JDate’s listings and be in touch with whomever you desired. Now, when you think of it, a couple of hundred of dollars a year may not sound like so much, especially with this virtual smorgasbord of potential Jewish dating mates at your fingertips. It is a lot cheaper than going on a string of blind dates. So, people paid; well, not all people – only those that could afford it. Still, business was good – JDate has made millions of dollars every year from Jewish singles encompassing the Internet Jewish dating scene.
In seducing the Jewish dating market, Jdate is not honest. JDate featured ads of porn models from Europe posing as Jdate members. According to an article in the Israel daily Haaretz newspaper, JDate banner ads featured photos of porn models. For example, the Jdate Jewish dating ad banner showed a girl who was supposedly 22 and single and Jewish, but she is actually Kari Gold, an 18 year old porn model. The ad shows blonde-haired, 22-year-old Hila from Tel Aviv who’s “looking for a single Jewish guy.” Another shows 26-year-old Sharon who’s looking for a Jewish husband.
But as it turns out, there is no Hila from Tel Aviv. The woman in the Jewish dating picture is actually Hungarian porn star Kari Gold. She has told the media that she has a boyfriend and is not in fact looking for “a Jewish husband from a good family.” And Sharon? She’s really Devon Sweet, a bisexual model from the United States. Neither Kari Gold nor Devon Sweet are affiliated in any way with JDate. Their pictures were just randomly collected on the Internet. I guess this is another shocking reminder that advertisers sometimes bend (or completely disregard) the truth. Talk about deceptive advertising!
Is Kari Gold a Jdate member looking for a nice Jewish boy or in reality an European porn star looking for ...
We cropped the above photo of Kari, you can imagine the rest of the photograph or perform a Google Image search for Kari.
But the story thickens. Try performing a search now on Google for “Jdate Ads Haaretz”. What you will find is that Haaretz has partly removed the story from the Net and replaced it with Jdate ads and Jdate advertising revenue. Can money now buy censorship at Haaretz?
Current JDate rules that only allow paying members to reply to messages, if you buy a membership on JDate, only 3.5% of the people you send messages to will be able to reply or acknowledge your message in any way. See, JDate gives you no indication whether or not a profile you are interested in belongs to a paying member capable of replying. That kind of sucks. Imagine sending out 100 messages to 100 “active” members and only 3 (and a half) of them are capable of replying, let alone willing to reply!
Then, like mushrooms after a forest rain, all kind of JDate Jewish dating wannabes sprouted up – many of them also becoming quite lucrative. Jewish singles from Israel, the United States and Canada all know Blind-Date, Frumster, JMatch, Jewish Cafe’ and a host of other sites that offer basically the exact same thing as JDate, a monolithic wish list that costs money a good amount of money. Frumster, 2become1 and DosiDate offer their services to the more religiously inclined rather than to the general Jewish populace, but in none of these services is there really a significant difference between what they offer and what JDate offers, which is the opportunity for sex and maybe partnership – all for those that pay their dues.
The model that these Jewish dating services offer is quite problematic. First of all, not every Jewish single can afford full membership in these sites. But beyond the economic constraints, there exist moral problems as well. Many people tend to lie about the particulars they list on their personal profiles. Perhaps they are not really 38, but rather 44. Maybe they do not really have a six figure income currently, although they hope they some day will; further, if they do not send in their pictures for others to see, can it really be believed that they have such an outstandingly athletic figure as they say they do?
And even if they do send in their pictures, are these the Jewish guys you will meet in real life on that hoped for date?
Perhaps most disturbing, are they really single and looking to get married, or just married guys looking out for an evening of, well, whatever.
“For us, Jewish dating is important as is Jewish sex, something which can be openly discussed at the World of Jewish, but the stress here is to find companionship that does not lead to hurt”
- Social networking professional David Trombka
Numerous Internet blogs, such as JDaters anonymous, have sprung up over time with thousands of negative stories about the JDate experience. It is a kind of cultural joke, part of the Jewish singles ritual; but in reality the great majority of the Jewish dating site users remain, with or without the hilarious anecdotes or even the frequent horror story, decidedly single and fully departed from hundreds of dollars in registration fees.
Enter the fearless Davids that, with time, will eliminate the Goliaths.
JDate, JMatch, Jkarma and the whole host of univalent Jewish dating sites, while not yet being a thing of the past, are on their way out. There is a new generation of Jewish sites out there in virtual land for Jewish singles, consisting of lean and serious players like Shmooze, Koolanoo and perhaps the most interesting of them all, the World of Jewish.
These Jewish social networking sites have sex appeal, depth, purpose and punch, something lacking in the older but still mighty Goliaths of the earlier generation. Jewish dating will never be the same and can never go back to the JDate paradigm. It is simply a thing of the boring and expensive past.
What makes these new sites ‘sexier’ than the traditional dating sites? There are many features, especially the fact that they are free Jewish dating sites; these new players understand well the changing face of the Internet and they know that today the users rule, not like the time a little over a decade ago when start ups like Cupid and JDate pretty much held the user in their custody.
Most importantly, these new guys on the Jewish dating block are networking sites, multivalent offspring of the single minded dating sites. These sites offer their users the ability to find friends, not just partners, according to interest. Their search engines take into account the intricacies of Jewish life in a way that JDate or the other dating sites are just not equipped to deal with.
The World of Jewish leads the pack of newcomers with its almost total, creative coverage of the Jewish experience. It is for sure sexier, but in the sense of being kosher and sexier. Beyond the real time news and Kabala broadcasts, the World of Jewish offers its users employment jobs opportunity searches, a Jewish Yellow Pages, real estate ads, a Jewish travel section and a host of other innovative features that leave JDate and their other Jewish dating cronies light years behind.
“On Jdate only 3.5% of the people you send messages to will be able to reply or acknowledge your message in any way.”
While newcomer Koolanoo has made quite a splash with its expensive, creative and humorous viral marketing video advertisements on YouTube, it has many critics that see these broadcasts as cheapening Judaism and the Jewish experience. And now that Koolanoo is about to spend millions in the China social networking market, many believe that the Jewish site was nothing more than a turn key project for investors in China. The World of Jewish, on the other hand, aims at the highest common denominator and regards bagel and lox Judaism as a trend that is on its way out.
World of Jewish creator and founder, David Trombka, states: “People are looking for substance, not only in dating, but in their entire world outlook. Our site allows people to find others interested in Jewish education, or Jewish politics or philosophy, or a host of other interests, according to specific issues.
A woman may find a guy on the site that is interested not only in dating, but also in Jewish cuisine or Jewish mysticism and their relationship may start by exchanging recipes or thoughts about Kabala. It is really a far safer place than the single issue dating sites. In those sites, people can lie about their personal status, but it is much harder to lie about common interests as well, such as American Jewish literature or what they think about the role of Jewish tradition in their relationships.”
Trombka adds: “Our site and the other Jewish networking dating sites explore the fuller person and allow for a more truthful presentation to the other users. Jewish singles now have a home for expressing themselves in ways that never existed before – and all for free. Our site even has a women only section for women to discuss between themselves issues that affect their daily lives. With all due respect to JDate, it is passe’. The trend in the Internet industry in general is to restore to the users their rights without shaking down their wallets. The World of Jewish allows the users to be exactly who they really are, without putting a hole in their bank accounts and without the sometimes awkward sexual tensions that are practically automatic on JDate or the other sites because of their single issue orientation. This gives the users a far greater chance of finding true companionship, or even just like minded friends in a more relaxed and honest atmosphere.”
“For us, Jewish dating is important as is Jewish sex, something which can be openly discussed at the World of Jewish, but the stress here is to find companionship that does not lead to hurt,” says Trombka.
“I have it on inside information that the other sites know fully well that they are about selling sex and little more. They may put on a Jewish fac,ade, but that is not really their strong point. We are not against sex, not in the least. After all, our tradition considers sex a holy thing. We just don’t want that to be the sole focus. We believe that proper sensuality means not jumping straight to the bottom line, but rather taking a little more time to get to know the potential partner. I remember my roommate at college told me that the only way really to enjoy life is to make sure you do not hurt others. Sex and companionship are great litmus tests for that theory. We hope to push things in the proper direction.”
Of course, it will take some time before the entire Jewish singles dating reality switches in mass from the pay for use single dimensionally of JDate to the free for use multiple uses of such sites as World of Jewish. But word is getting out that Goliath does not stand a chance; at least, not if people are looking for honest and kosher sex.
Isn’t the Internet wonderful? I love being able to go to Google, type in just about any shred of data, and find pertinent information. What did we do before Google? It wasn’t even that long ago that we had to do without it, and we didn’t even know what we were missing.
Likewise with dating sites: There are the biggies, Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and eHarmony, but more and more, these sites are for “normal” folks with few if any flaws. What if you have a big flaw, as far as dating goes, not just a few extra pounds or too few little inches in height, but lots of pounds or very few inches? Or a sexually transmitted disease, or surgically altered genitals, or a genuine disability like deafness or paraplegia? Presto! The Internet is coming up with sites just for you.
Here’s an article below listing lots of sites for the out of the ordinary. Some may be understandable and welcome, like DateaLittle.com for very short-statured people, but you may wonder about others like DailyDiapers.com. Then again, it’s like sites for married folks looking for affairs: It’s just as well that these folks have their own place to go so that they aren’t lurking around the mainstream sites looking for unsuspecting victims.
If you are “out of the mainstream” and looking for a date, you may find a resource in the article below. Or if not, go to Google and type in your defining term (Like dwarf or transgendered) and then +“dating site”. And see what you get. Good luck!
Deaf and single? There’s a dating Web site for you
By MEGAN SCOTT
Associated Press
Paraplegics need love too. So do cross-dressers, dwarfs, addicts and burn victims.
Oh, and we can’t forget the impotent, diabetic and irritable-bowel sufferers.
How do they find true love on Match.com, eHarmony and Yahoo! Personals?
Dating went digital a long time ago, but the options these days are dizzying. Web sites cater to people with HIV and herpes, people who are tall or short, who are “married but looking,” who love pets, wine, tennis, scuba diving and golf.
There are niche dating sites for every political affiliation, religion and ethnic group. There are ones for Trekkies (TrekPassions.com) and lonely Ayn Rand fans (atlasphere.com).
Of course, none of these niche dating sites can boast the huge memberships of a Match.com.
But some people find them more appealing than sifting through thousands of profiles. If a quadriplegic wants to date another quadriplegic, why waste time on eHarmony?
“You have a few gigantic general dating sites that have so many members. Most people are going with them,” said Lisa Daily, a relationships expert and author of Stop Getting Dumped! “But what’s happening is a lot of people don’t want to date in the general public. Relationships are based on shared experiences. If you come into it already with something like herpes, that can be a help.”
What are some of the most specialized sites?
• 18wheelsingles.com: “Where single truckers meet significant others.” SWF looking for a truck driver for companionship and to ride the open road. Also check: truckerpassions.com.
• Airtroductions.com: Who hasn’t dreamed of meeting someone on a plane? Create a profile, enter your flight information (flight number, airports, date and time) and select a match.
• Cisforcupid.com: Breast cancer survivor searching for prostate cancer survivor for companionship and emotional support? Cancer survivors founded this site earlier this year.
• DailyDiapers.com: Wear Depends? Or Pampers? This site is described as a community for adult babies, diaper lovers, big kids, mommies and daddies.
• DateALittle.com: This dating site caters to people with dwarfism and others of short stature; men under 5 feet 6 inches tall and women under 5 feet tall. Also check out LittlePeopleMeet.com.
• Datingpro.com: For those with no luck finding a perfect match. Design your own professional dating site.
• Deafs.com: “Where deaf friends and singles feel at home!” Partially deaf man seeks woman for intimate conversation. Must not mind speaking up. Sign language knowledge a plus. Also check out: deafpassions.com, deafsinglesconnection.com and soulmatesource.com/deafpeoplemeet.html.
• Disabledpassions.com: For the quadriplegic searching for that special someone. This site caters to people with disabilities, ranging from visual impairment and deafness to people who use wheelchairs. Some others: disabled-world.com, whispers4u.com.
• Hairfetishpersonals.com: Men, get rid of that toupee. Women stop hiding that bald head under a wig. The singles on this site love the bald look, whether it’s on a man or a woman.
• IrritatedBeingSingle.com: This site is for sufferers of irritable-bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease because, “there is no better feeling than being with someone who understands exactly what you are going through.”
• Kizmeet.com: Helps you find those missed connections. (You danced with a hottie at the club last night but never got his name.) Search postings within specific locations, such as bar, club, coffee shop, in 17 cities.
• Marry-an-ugly-millionaire-online-dating-agency.com: Beautiful woman searching for ugly millionaire to shower her with diamonds. This dating site matches the poor with the filthy rich.
• MeetAnOstoMate.com: Wearing a colostomy bag? A dating site designed for ostomates.
• NoLongerLonely.com: A dating site for people with mental illess. Also check out: bipolarparty.com.
• Poormatch.com: Bills itself as the worst dating site in the world.
“Over one million people have had lukewarm romantic encounters since joining Poormatch.com.”
Prescription4Love.com: P4L is for singles who suffer from an array of health conditions, including burn victims, arthritis, infertility or impotence, deafness, HIV and lupus.
Recoveringmates.com: For people recovering from an addiction, such as alcohol or drugs. This dating site boasts the largest database of sober singles.
Sugardaddie.com: Boasts that it has the “most attractive, wealthy and desirable people in online dating.”
Talldates.com: M4M (men for men) dating site because “ordinary gay sites seem to exclude guys who get off on height differences.” Also check out: Tallmentogether.com.
Transpassions.com: MTF pre-op searching for FTM pre-op for a real relationship. NO GAMES. A dating Web site for cross dressers, transgenders and transsexual singles. Some others: tgconnect.com and tg.matchopolis.com.
I guess this is news, but I’m not sure if it is good news for anybody. But at least these sites are siphoning off the business of people who are just looking for sex from the mainline sites like Match and Yahoo! Personals.
Brothels take spanking from dating sites
THE sex industry is taking a spanking from online dating websites providing “adult” contacts with minimal costs to customers, according to business analysts.
Adult dating sites such as adultmatchmaker.com.au allow people to find sexual partners without the “moral difficulties” of visiting a brothel, said analysts IBISWorld.
“Internet sites promoting sexual rendezvous between strangers with no exchange of funds have seen strong growth in recent years,” said IBISWorld general manager Jason Baker.
“These negate the need to pay for sexual gratification and sidestep many of the moral difficulties posed by soliciting prostitutes, making them a popular alternative.”
But while the industry’s traditional customers – young men – were spending more time hooking up online, Mr Baker said the number of female clients was set to grow.
“Given the increasingly sexual liberalisation of society, and particularly the sexual freedom of women, we anticipate the female customer segment will grow,” he said.
“We predict an increase in the number of women not only paying for sexual services, but visiting strip clubs and accessing sexual material via the telephone, internet, pay TV and DVD.”
High-end escort agencies were expected to be buffered from the impact of online dating, as they offered a more glamourous alternative than internet sites.
Dr Houran’s Interview With Patrick Perrine Of myPartnerPerfect
ONLINE DATING MAGAZINE—Aug 8—Patrick Perrine is the President of the newly-launched gay site myPartnerPerfect.
Dr. Jim: Congratulations on your launch, Patrick. Tell us, why did it take so long for someone to establish a site that catered to gays?
Patrick: Thank you. I don’t know why it has taken so long for the industry to identify this tremendous opportunity. It was partially because of the eHarmony policy and other relationship sites’ lack of service to the gay segment that I founded myPartnerPerfect. For far too long the industry has neglected the gay community and their pursuit of life-partners. Instead, the dating service industry has been flooded with gay sites that only promote hook-ups and short-term encounters. I don’t object to sites with that goal, but a very large segment of the gay community is looking for something deeper, that can last a lifetime. That’s exactly what the myPartnerPerfect system was designed to do.
Dr. Jim: Do you think all of the recent, negative press around eHarmony is fair, or are these just cheap shots from competitors and a few dissatisfied customers?
Patrick: I think the larger issue being drawn out in the press isn’t with the focus of eHarmony’s services, but the underlying premise of that focus. Sites like eHarmony will always have a place in the world of online dating and relationships, but it is my hope that myPartnerPerfect can help fill the void in the market and foster many happy and healthy relationships for gay men.
Dr. Jim: What’s the difference between a niche site that caters to a specific audience versus a site that is accused of being discriminatory?
Patrick: Wikipedia describes a niche market as “a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector. By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.” eHarmony, in my opinion, essentially started out as a niche site for marriage-oriented heterosexual Christians. Dr. Warren himself attributes much of eHarmony’s success to its ties to Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian community. It was only recently that Dr. Warren and eHarmony began distancing themselves from that “niche” market as the site began growing rapidly and they began positioning themselves for the masses. myPartnerPerfect is completely forthwith about the segmented “niche” market we cater to due to the demand in the market that is not being met.
Dr. Jim: In what ways does the culture of your service and site differ significantly from large sites, like Match or Yahoo! Personals, which try to address the dating needs of everyone?
Patrick: myPartnerPerfect is an exclusively gay site that has been designed to cater to gay men. Much like any other niche site, myPartnerPerfect addresses the areas of partner selection that are not only important to our community, but unique to our community. Although there are many similarities between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, there are also many differences in partner selection. Our Partner Perfect Compatibility™ matching system was designed because of the many differences of gay partner selection in the areas of relationship styling, characteristics of partner selection, partner qualities and personalities, and above all else, cultural and sexual lifestyle considerations.
Dr. Jim: From your experience and research, are gays more interested in compatibility testing (and perhaps long-term relationships) than other groups? If so, why might this be?
Patrick: I wouldn’t say that gay men are more interested or less interested in compatibility testing than the general population. I think that gay men are a very discerning population of consumers and demand the very “best of breed” of anything they patron and that’s why myPartnerPerfect has developed the Partner Perfect Compatibility™ matching system.
Dr. Jim: What does a customer really get for his money at your site—what are the compelling features that can’t be found elsewhere?
Patrick: In addition to the unique Partner Perfect matches presented to the user by our matching system, members can search the database with 5 different customized browsing tools (including our Deal Breaker Search, our Partner Perfect Search, and our Custom Search). We also have unique profile customization tools, a monthly gay-relationship eNewsletter, private matchmaking services, anonymous phone calling, our myProfilePartner™ personal profile advice and review services, monthly socials and singles mixers, weDate!™ group dinners, and our a la carte menu to select the features that are most important to the user who is not yet ready to commit to a full Premium Membership.
FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE DATING MAGAZINE
Articles like the one below about how Internet dating is “in” have been popping up all over everywhere lately. While they are similar in tone and get repetitious, I find them so welcoming after what I have seen over the years. Five years ago when I was just getting started as a Romance Coach, searches yielded practically nothing, and what did show up tended to be scary. Not so with articles like this. Yea!
The Many Faces of Online Dating
By Erika Morphy
“Match.com is not for everybody,” says Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence or some combination of these qualities.”
Shoshanna Berman, an intern in New York City, is happily dating her ideal future husband: a nice, young—and tall—Orthodox Jewish man who is also outgoing and easygoing.
On date two, they bonded while scalping tickets at a Knicks game. Date ten, she remembers, was an all-night drive to Philadelphia.
“I would have married him if he asked me after the first date,” Berman tells TechNewsWorld, “but it took him a few months to realize the truth.” Now they are unofficially engaged.
Take away a few details here and there, and this could be anyone’s “how we met” story—including the fact that Berman met her beau at SawYouAtSinai.com, a dating Web site.
“My friend met her husband there, so I thought I would give it a try,” Berman says.
These days, anyone who scoffs at online dating is either married or in the priesthood. The U.S. online dating market—typified by such Web sites as Match.com and Yahoo Personals—will reach US$932 million in 2011, according to figures from JupiterResearch.
Soul Mate Search
More than 20 million Internet users visited such a site last December, reported comScore. The top destinations were Yahoo Personals, Match.com, True.com, Spark Networks and Singlesnet.com. In short, from 18-year-olds in college (where there should be no dearth of potential suitors) to senior citizens, multitudes are logging on in search of love or companionship.
To be sure, not everyone who goes online finds a happy ending. Horror stories abound from the horrifying—stalking incidents and worse have befallen many online daters—to the annoying. (Hint: Using photos more than a year or so old always backfires.)
Sometimes it just takes a little patience to find your soul mate, says Robert Schwartz, author of Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth? Schwartz met his partner at JDate, another popular Jewish dating site. Several years ago, he posted a profile there but nothing came of it. Recently, though, in the most serendipitous manner possible, he connected with a woman, and they’re about to move in together.
“I had been living in Oregon but thinking about moving home to Cleveland to look after my father, who was needing assistance,” he tells TechNewsWorld. Idly, he perused the profiles in Cleveland and immediately gravitated toward the woman who would become his partner. “What I loved about her profile is that I could tell immediately she is spiritually aware. That is very important to me.”
Fast-forward over several months of phone calls and visits. Schwartz is now moving to Cleveland.
Specialized Sites
It may be no accident that both Schwartz and Berman met partners on specialized dating sites. Mainstream dating site memberships are stagnating—or, in some cases, shrinking. The proportion of paying customers has stayed the same—5 percent—over the last five years, according to Jupiter.
Another Jupiter metric that suggests interest is beginning to decline: Only 10 percent of Internet users visited an online dating site in 2006—a decrease from 16 percent in 2005 and 21 percent in 2002.
One way the online dating industry is counteracting these trends is by introducing specialized Web sites that focus on commonalities that would-be daters hope to find. Many focus on religion; some focus on hobbies or professions.
Sparks Network, currently one of the top online destinations, operates over 30 online personals—all but one of which is targeted toward a specific religious, ethnic or special interest group. JDate, launched in 1997, was its first site.
It makes sense, some say.
“Match.com is not for everybody,” Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions, tells TechNewsWorld. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence, or some combination of these qualities.”
Singles who do not make great first impressions end up feeling frustrated, he continues. “On a specialized dating site, one attraction may be the similarity of interests, vocation, religion, life challenges and so on.”
Next Evolutionary Step
Specialized sites are the way to go for today’s daters, says Steve Monas, author of several books about online dating and social networking, including Chemistry and Numbers: The Online Dating Guide.
“When I used JDate, there was already a feeling of comfortability, knowing that there will be some commonality moving forward,” he tells TechNewsWorld.
However, the specialized sites may follow the path of the generic dating Web sites, he cautioned—unless they evolve once again.
“Dating Web sites are now trying to get appealing features that will compete with free social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Plentyoffish.com,” Monas notes. These sites, after all, are de facto meeting places and have come to compete with some of the larger, specialized dating sites.
Revenue from major sites will have to come from more personalized services—such as selecting and contacting potential matches on behalf of members, he suggests.
Indeed, some of the newer specialized sites are focusing on what happens once you get past the third or so date and become a couple. eHarmony, a dating Web site known for its hour-long application—and, more controversially, for not matching gay people—has launched a Web site aimed at married couples who want to strengthen their relationship.
On the other end of the spectrum—the far end—is HoochyMail, a service that “brings couples closer together by safely and securely allowing them to create and share their mutual fantasies,” according to site spokesperson Rob Frankle.
Basically, HoochyMail allows each couple to compose and e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo fantasies customized with their own details. There are about 35 different occasions—from Christmas to Thanksgiving to basketball playoffs—in the system Manage remotely with one interface—the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server..
Thus far, the site has been very successful, judging by almost every metric, Frankle says, including opt-in numbers and click-through advertising rates. “Plus, we have never received even one hate mail.”
In the online dating world, that’s as good as it gets.
Here’s an interesting “massaging of the stats” I found by dating coaches Dan and Jennifer. I can’t say whether or not their conclusions about the patrons and matrons of the way sexy site AdultFriendFinder.com are true, but there is some interesting speculation to be done for sure.
Sinners in the Bible Belt? Sex, Swingers, and Religion…
Dan and Jennifer
August 2, 2007
Who would have thought that Texas, the conservative Republican state, is 2nd In the Nation on Sex Seeking Enthusiasts?
While Texas may be perceived as a highly religious and conservative stronghold, deep in the heart of the Bible Belt, it’s beat out only by California, and Florida is a close 3rd in the number of adults actively looking for sex on the internet.
Are we making this up? Now way!
These revealing numbers are reported by one of the largest adult web sites on the internet. The numbers will really surprise you…
If you don’t already know, Adult Friend Finder is the largest sex and swinger personals web site on the internet today with 22,319,717 members. That’s almost identical to the population of Texas which is 23,507,783. Hmmm… That’s a lot of people on just this one website.
What is a sex and swinger personals web site? Well, it’s basically a dating site for singles and couples looking for sex. What many people don’t realize is that Adult Friend Finder gets more visitors every day than Match.com and eHarmony put together!
That’s no big surprise. But what IS a surprise is that Texas is ranked #2 in the number of subscribers to this web site.
Here is the state by state breakdown of the top sex enthusiasts in the U.S., according to Adult Friend Finder:
* California - 1.2 million (That’s 3.3% of the state population)
* Texas - 800,000 (That’s 3.4% of the state population)
* Florida - 743,000 (That’s 4.1% of the state population)
* New York - 660,000 (That’s 3.4% of the state population)
* Illinois - 429,000 (That’s 3.3% of the state population)
Wow, what’s truly amazing here is that Texas - the heart of the Bible Belt - is #2 in all of the U.S. with a larger percentage of the population subscribing than California!
Is Texas shedding it’s ultra conservative facade? Or will the truth remain buried behind closed doors with faceless pictures on the top sex personals sites like Adult Friend Finder?
Here are some more interesting facts about sex on the internet
While it’s difficult to identify the exact number of internet users, ComScore Media Metrix reports 4% of all Web traffic and 2% of all time spent Web surfing involved an adult site.
* According to a recent study by Google, adult content is the most sought after content by users with cellphones. Google’s team found that 20 percent of searches on cellphones were for adult content, while only 5 percent of searches on PDAs were for it. The researchers sifted through 1 million searches by users of their mobile search software to come up with these numbers.
* The AVN Annual Survey of the Adult Industry 2006 asserts that the adult entertainment industry is nearly a $13 billion business in 2006, mostly in the form of adult videos. But the delivery mechanism is changing… Internet sales of adult content, which includes images, live-chat and live-streaming video, has now become the second largest adult entertainment segment, with 22 percent of the market or $2.8 billion in sales.
So, are more than 23 million people wrong? Or are the rules and social stigmas against sex and enjoying our sexuality outdated remnants of the Victorian age?
Obviously the demand is there, but so are the ultra conservative religious extremists and the lawmakers that they keep in their pockets. Which explains why prostitution is still illegal in most states and certain sexual acts between consenting adults are illegal in the privacy of their own homes. The fact that consenting adults cannot do whatever they choose in the privacy of their own homes, without causing harm to anyone, is outrageous!
This is also why Janet Jackson was persecuted for her wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl a few years back (the most replayed moment in TiVo history) and Chicago TV reporter, Amy Jacobson, was persecuted for doing an interview in her swimsuit. Exactly what is wrong with a breast and a belly button anyway? Really… Stop and think about that for just a moment.
When will we say enough is enough?
Wait. Visit http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com today.
Dating, Relationships, and Sex. Tips, Advice, Articles, and Videos.
Copyright 2007, http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com. All rights reserved.
This just further convinces me that there is someone out there for everyone. You just have to know where to look. Go Geeks!
Geeks take back online dating
Website aims to help those lonely Han Solos find their own Princess Leias
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | July 11, 2007
Joyce Dales went through 30 guys on Match.com before she found her Jedi Knight in shining armor.
“I was either too strange or they weren’t strange enough,” she said.
Eventually, she found and married Jeff Dales, a “recovering lawyer” from Nottingham, N.H., who was geek enough to sprinkle Star Wars references into his first flirtatious e-mails.
But the long list of rejections, from teachers and lawyers and other professionals scattered among the millions of profiles she encountered on popular dating sites, showed Dales that people like her had a problem: Online dating—once the domain of geeks—had gone completely mainstream.
“It’s like the playground all over again. We’re not the cool kids,” said Joyce, 35, who last summer launched SweetOnGeeks.com, a safe haven where the socially awkward can find that special someone who shares their dream of building a Hobbit Hole or love of jousting.
The Dales cofounded Sweet on Geeks with James Crosby, Joyce’s 37-year-old brother—a self-identified history geek who said he was rejected when he tried to fill out a profile for eHarmony.com.
“I think if you get a little extreme in your answers, they deny you,” said Crosby, who compares the big dating websites to walking into a nightclub with The Killers playing—a nightmare for a guy whose idea of a good time involves vinyl records and a Renaissance Faire.
Sweet on Geeks is a place where throwing out a reference to a person’s “midichlorian count”—a way of measuring how strong the Force is in Star Wars—wouldn’t end a conversation the way it did when Joyce was seeking a mate on Match.com.
Users choose names such as “AlphaGeek,” or “entropy73.” For first impressions, they offer descriptions such as “Nintendo fanboy” or “shy and soft-spoken” and mention Nikola Tesla and Leonardo Da Vinci as their heroes.
There are other geek dating websites out there, ranging from gk2gk.com to Trek Passions, but the geeks behind Sweet on Geeks hope their website, which incorporates some of the features people have come to expect on other social-networking websites and now has 4,000 users, will become a go-to spot for Trekkies, gamers, and others.
“We’re trying to escape that one-geek stereotype of a guy sitting in a lab coat or playing games,” said Crosby.
Every aspect of the site is vetted by the three founders—“two out of three geeks must approve,” Joyce says. New features are developed in a collaborative process in which the team experiments with new ideas—on their Macs, of course—thinking of things that make them laugh.
For the first two weeks, membership is free for users; after that, it costs $5 a month. But eventually the founders would like to make the whole website ad-supported, sponsored by geek-friendly banner ads like the Dungeons & Dragons banner that already appears on the site.
“You have to market to your audience, and we have a pretty good demographic,” said Jeff Dales, 41, with a user base that likes gadgets, games, and spends a lot of time online.
But the geekiness isn’t just part of the profiles; it’s built into the very base of interactions on Sweet on Geeks.
When a user “winks” at another person to get the banter going, for instance, they have the option of sending any number of virtual objects—the greek letter Pi, a unicorn, a floppy disk, a crop circle, or a dilithium crystal used to power the warp drive on Star Trek. And they can choose to inform the recipient of the reason for their wink; whether it’s courtly love (“as a token of my esteem”) or the nerdish version of making a move (“as a spontaneous display of reckless flirtation”).
“Our site is very thoughtfully created so a person can be who they are. It’s OK to be smart. There’s a lot of pressure in online dating to come off as something in your profile picture,” Joyce said. “We created a comfortable place to geek out a conversation, a bully-free zone.”
That’s something the users seem to appreciate. Alex Riviere, a 21-year-old theater geek from Atlanta, joined the site last year and posted a picture of himself with a solved Rubik’s cube. He took the screen name Fimion—that’s elvish for slim man.
Riviere, who dresses as a pirate “as often as I possibly can,” said the website offers something a bit more genuine than what he found browsing more conventional dating sites.
“It’s for people who know that society wants to shun them. But we’re really proud of the fact that we’re geeks so it just takes itself very lightly,” Riviere said. “Anything I put on Sweet on Geeks is going to be true and honest; on, like, a normal dating website I’d give it a little more consideration.”
That is just the reaction the founders are hoping for as their site grows into a place where geeks meet, mingle, and maybe even marry.
But behind the bigger dream, there’s a smaller one.
Crosby, wearing glasses with blue octagonal lenses and a shirt saying “I’m not dead yet,” is still single.
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Married folks lurking around on dating sites and trying to snag the unexpected has been a concern for online dating singles. I haven’t heard so much aobut this being a problem lately, and maybe it’s because of sites like this one and AshleyMadison.com Yeesh. Talk about yucky—sites that enable extramarital affairs. Well, at least they may be doing a service and giving these folks a place to go rather that the mainline dating sites. We should be thankful.
Best, Kathryn
100,000th member looks for an extra marital affair….
IllicitEncounters.com, the world’s biggest extra marital dating website, has signed up its 100,000th UK member . A site spokesman told us “With membership soaring by a couple of thousand a week, IllicitEncounters.com is a clear indication that the 34% of married people having an affair - now choose to look for one online”. There are now more than 10,000 members in Scotland, 6,000 in Wales, 2,500 in Northern Ireland, 500 in Southern Ireland, 2,500 non-UK and the remaining 78,500 are in England.
One of the negatives about Internet dating is that because there seems to be so many singles out there, poeple can get into the endless search for perfection. Anyone who has a “defect” has a more diffidult time of the search. Sites for disabled people provide a huge service. I’ve had several clients who have used similar sites with good luck.
Hello stranger, are you sick enough for me?
Sun-Herald | Monday, 25 June 2007
Lonely hearts with health conditions such as cancer, herpes, irritable bowel syndrome and allergies are turning to a specialised online dating service in their quest to find love.
The website Prescription4Love (http://www.prescription4love.com) is the brainchild of American Ricky Durham, 46, who was inspired by his late brother Keith’s struggle to meet new people while he suffered from Crohn’s disease. Keith died in 2004.
“It was hard for him to disclose his disease to anyone, but it was really hard for him to tell someone he had a colostomy bag,” Mr Durham said.
“When do you tell someone that you have a colostomy bag? The first time you meet? The first date? The second? So I thought if he met someone at a website where everyone had the same condition, there would be nothing to disclose.”
The free site is one of a growing number of dating and friendship services specialising in health conditions, with sexually transmitted infections now leading the way.
US-based websites such as Positive Singles (http://www.positivesingles.com) and Antopia, a herpes group (http://www.mpwh.net) claim to have tens of thousands of infected members and boast hundreds of “success stories”.
Mr Durham, from Atlanta, Georgia, said he began Prescription4Love for sufferers of 11 conditions, including cancer, obesity, deafness, herpes, HIV, diabetes, Crohn’s disease and allergies. At the request of clients, he has recently expanded the site to include those with less common conditions such as epilepsy, paraplegia and human papillomavirus, which causes genital warts and cervical cancer, as well as transplant patients and burns victims.
The site has about 1000 members mostly in the US, but Mr Durham said people from Australia, Canada, Britain and Israel had also joined up.
Clients include “Sweet Lady”, 24, from Oklahoma, who’s deaf and “looking for a date or making friends” and Kelvin, 45, from Pennsylvania, a recovering alcoholic with diabetes “looking for love”.
Mr Durham, who had no previous experience in IT said honesty was important in a relationship, but finding an opportune time and situation to raise such subjects as medical conditions, particularly embarrassing ones, could be difficult.
“By using Prescription4Love.com, you can be honest in advance,” he said.
Lija Jarvis from mainstream Australian online dating website RSVP said that, while it doesn’t have any services catering for disabled people, this has been identified as a potential need.
She said the feature might be built into sub sites in the future.
RSVP is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher of smh.com.au and theage.com.au.
Is it about love or money? Well, at least sites like SeekingArrangement.com make it absolutely clear, that on this site at least, it’s about money. Here’s what the site says about itself: “SeekingArrangement is the premier Sugar Daddy Dating site. We are a matchmaking website for wealthy benefactors, and attractive guys & gals.” And “An Arrangement is short for “Mutually Beneficial Relationship” between two people. Such a relationship is usually between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship, intimacy or sex.”
This site is certainly a step or so beyond the already obnoxious millionaire matching sites I have already written about.
Okay, in some ways I can see how this can be good. Another route to get those who are not serious about looking for a long term, faithful, equal and honest relationship can go. And it is surely capitalistic: if you’ve got the money, flaunt it and buy what you want.
One of the most popular postings on my blog comment-wise is a short one about sugar mamas I have one guy after another (and at least one woman) who would love to find a woman to support them.
It is hard to believe. But look at the evidence.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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