3rd Times A Scam.

OK, I mentioned I started on match.com, The site will allow me to send a virtual 'wink' or even an email to a potential match. It gives me daily picks that, supposedly, fit what I'm looking for. It's kind of like internet shopping for a date, but without a guaranteed inventory system (just like lowes.com). I view the initial eight matches and pair them down to five I send a few winks and two emails. This dating stuff seems easy again.

Two days later, sure enough I got three emails, two from women who live way too far away and one from a woman I 'winked' at that lives about 25 miles away. I discard the first two and consider the third. She is on the young side of the scale at 30. Her message reads that she is tired of the dating sites and will no longer be on match.com, but I can email her personal email address. Spidey senses started tingling. I emailed back to '25 mile away' woman and sent out emails to three more ladies. I then realize two of the women haven't been on the site in more than 3 weeks, whoops, that was a waste.

'25 mile away' woman sent me back an email saying, in poor English, that she grew up in England, lost her parents and would like to get to know me better. She works for the world health organization and when she is on leave, she would like to visit. She stresses that, 'she has very few money but is not needing for money, yet.'. She also attaches three pictures that do not look like the one on the, now defunct, profile at match.com, in fact they look like they are of an internet pornstar (Not that I'd know that it was Melissa Midwest.). Spidey senses explode! She actually said 'not needing... YET'. Wholly crap, people actual scam people for money on dating sites?

I quickly searched, 'match.com scams' and for the first time in my life got a google of results on Google. Turns out about 40% of all dating site profiles are fakes, set up in London or Nigeria by con artists. I read a bunch of articles, blogs, etc. about people who actually wired money to people overseas in the hopes of a date or getting more money in return. I began to wonder, with that many gullible people, can the human race as a whole, really survive carrying that much dead weight? Yeah, you can say I'm being critical or cruel or cynical, but really, falling for the Nigerian email scam through a dating site? That's a new level of...Duh!

On a lighter note, match.com does not seem so bad.  It takes a while to understand how it really works, but once you figure out how to tell members from non, things do actually seem to move along.