Match.com Hates Happy Relationships
Dalrock has recently clued me into to the Match.com online magazine, “happen“. There’s even a clever tagline: because love doesn’t come with instructions. The good folks at Match.com produce articles on dating and relationships. It’s conventional wisdom, blue pill stuff. It should also be noted that most of the writers and editorial staff are women or gay men and that the articles are aimed at a female readership.
These articles are written by dating and relationship “experts”. One article, “Overcoming the jinx: How to stop attracting losers” is quite typical of the articles in Match.com’s. Here is the link but perhaps membership is required to view it. I won’t republish the whole piece so as not to violate intellectual property laws.
Like most of the articles in Happen, this one presented seemingly reasonable advice for women to avoid losers. Of course, through the Manosphere lens, “loser” in this context is a code word for Alpha BadBoy.
Overall, this particular article is standard pabulum for the perpetually single woman. There isn’t much new from a blue pill perspective. From a Red Pill perspective, this article – and many on “happens” – are quite destructive to dating and potential relationships. To wit:
…you are a woman who deserves a genuine connection with an all-grown-up partner who treats you great.
There is that awful word “deserve”. That word represents a constant drenching of women with bad advice. I’ve covered it before. Want more? Let’s go…
Crank up your standards and set your sights on landing your dream match; someone who inspires you, brings out the best in you, and makes you feel like the smart, funny, and beautiful woman that you truly are.
Nowhere in the article does the author recommend that a woman honestly assess what she brings to the table in the context of dating and relationships. This is the litmus test of valid dating and relationship advice. If the advice-giver is not recommending that a woman honestly reflect on her own value in the sexual marketplace (SMP) or the marriage marketplace (MMP), it’s shitty advice.
Of course, Match.com is a capitalistic endeavor and makes its money from singles. It’s good for business if everyone is single and looking to date and/or form healthy relationships. This is why Match.com dispenses bad advice. All paid online dating websites have an incentive to dispense bad advice because it’s fundamentally good for the bottom line. My prediction is that Match.com and their ilk will soon start seriously pushing the divorce fantasy.
The Private Man 
I’ve had awful results on Match.com. I really wish I hadn’t bought a membership. The only good thing was I only got six months. Most messages don’t even get read, and you can’t pick your targets because they hide how long it’s been since the woman was last online.
In short: complete waste of time.
Agreed. Match.com was a terribly disappointing waste of time and money. PM nails it when he writes: “All paid online dating websites have an incentive to dispense bad advice because it’s fundamentally good for the bottom line.”
Maybe the site need to be renamed Matchless.com. And perhaps a class action lawsuit is in the works from dissatisfied members damaged by their bad advice.
There’s nothing wrong with telling women how to AVOID bad boys; many of those are true losers. But if the advice they give only tells women to look for submissive men, well..
This line at the jinx link sounds like they’re trying to get women to ward off severe betas and omegas too: “Do your friends secretly wonder WHAT you’re doing hanging around with the likes of yet another mama’s boy who just can’t get his life off the ground?”
Good advice, but it’s all saturated with the female-pedestalizing, “Are you lonely for a good man really worthy of you, you sweet pamper-worthy cupcake? We KNOW you are, you vivacious land-nymph you.” Blecch.
At least they told women to improve themselves, but it was all in the name of the “Honey, you’re not a demi-goddess, you’re a REAL goddess, act like it!” type thing. Ew.
Not surprisingly, they are not going to tell women the correct way to improve themselves: stop being a bitch and do some barbell squats to lose that irrepressible lardass.
Reading your quotes, it seems that Match is inflating the already massive entitlement complexes many women have to utterly ludicrous levels. That’s my advice for such women as well…”As a strong, independent modern woman, hold our for the best person you can get. Don’t settle for any ordinary man, you need an alpha male…” Enjoy riding the carousel well into your forties, ladies. Nobody’s fault but yours.
Interesting post.
I think its one of those cases of a “market failure” leading to a “market opportunity”.
While mainstream dating sites notice a short-term gain from giving their customers unrealistic expectations of dating and relationships they are poisoning the well for the long-term.
How about a boot-camp dating site where customers aren’t told how freaking wonderful and special they are all the time?
Where they are made to jump through various hoops to score points a bit like a dating version of this fitness-oriented site:
http://www.fitocracy.com/
Pabulum, or Pablum?
Either could work.
I was lucky enough, after meeting about 25 women on Match over three years, to meet the one I have right now in an LTR. She is far from perfect, but she is by far better than any of the other women I met there. Its not so much I met that “special snowflake” of a woman for me, its more that the other women had a low sexual market value (certainly lower than they thought their value was) and I had to lower my standards to the lowest acceptable level to make it work, in light of my real SMV.
If one sex has to do this, why shouldn’t the other? Oh, that’s right….
Great post Private Man, and thanks for the linkage.
The premise these women have (and are encouraged to have) is that they deserve an entirely better class of men than they have been able to attract, but that cosmic forces are conspiring against them to prevent these men from showing up. My wife talks to women like this, and the stories she shares no one would believe if I wrote about them. One divorcée my wife knows has scraped along the absolute bottom of the barrel for men for years (homeless guys, down and out alcoholics, her latest is in his late 30s but has never worked, is extremely beta, and who is completely dependent and responsive to his mother, etc.). Yet she still truly believes that some wealthy doctor or lawyer will snap her up and marry her at any moment. She won’t even loose her extra weight, because a man should love her for who she is. Meanwhile after 3-5 years of circling the drain, her ex husband finally pulled himself back together and married a younger much prettier woman.
It really is baffling for men, because we just don’t think this way. If anything, truckloads of betas are convinced that they need to put up with the worst possible behavior from women because that is just how it is.
Great point. What is interesting is they only seem to perceive the incentive to give women bad advice. My guess is it does double duty of encouraging women to sign up, and it keeps the marketplace dysfunctional so that men and women both stay single. If men wanted to be sold a load of BS, I can’t imagine that Match.com would refuse to pander to them.
It’s quite clear that “happen” magazine is aimed at women. And with so many men providing online attention, rationalization hamsters are kept well fed and in great shape. The articles in “happen” is like a hamster coach shouting at the rodent to run faster.
Or hamsters being fed ad libitum, meaning they can gorge themselves silly.
Everyone’s experiences on Match.com pretty much mirror my own. A couple years during which I sent out maybe four dozen emails led to meeting eight women and of those eight only one led into a relationship that lasted a couple months. And I feel like I was lucky to even get the one. Some of the women I asked out when I first went on a couple years ago are still sitting around out there today. I don’t want to do it because it would be mean, but I’m a little tempted to email them and ask them if they are as wonderful as they think they are, then why hasn’t Mr. Rich, Handsome and Charming come along and snapped them up? Why are they still sitting around out there after all this time? I think they would just rather live in their fantasy bubble that he’s going to come along soon. The question is, as a guy, how do you deal with that? By continuing to fill their inboxes with emails, are we just giving them a little ego boost while not getting anything in return? I don’t see the point of that. And if all the women think they are a couple levels higher than the guys on there, then to get one as a girlfriend I have to accept one way below me who thinks she’s at the same level as me. There are so many enjoyable ways to spend my time that I just can’t see spending it reading boring female profiles on Match and then meeting the boring and unattractive females who wrote the profiles for a half hour at some local Starbucks just to have them decide that if they wait a little longer they’ll get someone better than me.
I can accept a woman somewhat below me because it is her evolutionary imperative to date up to satisfy her instinctual hypergamy, but there is only so low I can go.
To have the best shot at a relationship that lasts, it pays a guy to work hard to maximize his value as a partner, then date down to make her hypergamy work in his favor, but not so far he isn’t attracted to her. It’s worked for me.
As for the women spending years on the sites despite the overload of responses they get … I’ve made the point before, but I’ll say it again because it so elegantly and completely explains it to me. It’s all explained by Ricky Raw’s means-end paradox. These women on the sites for years, are not using them to find their true love. The site is their short term coping mechanism, keeping them convinced that plenty of commitment ready betas are there for the taking. Thus freeing them up to keep chasing the guys (that they meet offline) that they are most attracted to, in hopes that one will eventually commit and not just use her for sex. For men online, these sites are a means to an end, an eventual relationship. For the women, the sites are an end in themselves, they enjoy the game in its own right without it ever going past a couple of dates. Men on dating sites are the single hypergamist’s useful idiots.
This is brilliant stuff and worthy of a post at some point.
I like the cut of your jib, sir.
Wait… I’m a guy on the online dating websites! Fie, a pox on you, knave.
“…single hypergamist’s useful idiots.”
Most memorable phrase I have read all year. Unfortunately, if you think about this too much, it will make you hate women. Or, at least, recognize that women, on average, are as superficial as men are.
“Or, at least, recognize that women, on average, are as superficial as men are.”
They are. The truth only hurts those who are heavily invested in lies.
The first thing I see when I open the “Happen” site is a fruity guy doing the duck face. This photo immediately tells me there is absolutely no content worth reading.
That male model hasn’t even mastered “Blue Steel” or “Le Tigre”
Wow – check the pointers in this article from a “ladies” panel on how to impress her on the first date. So much in there proving game works. Things the ladies asked for:
1. Confidence.
2. Cockiness.
3. Kino
4. Social Proof
6. Demonstrate financial value.
7. Desire by woman to be pedestalized.
8. Man must pay.
Too easy. Lol.
http://www.match.com/magazine/article/11305/Best-First-date-Moves-For-Men/
I read the article about half way until I started to get nauseated. For me, when reading of these female requests in a man, it is difficult to draw the line between a woman’s evolutionary imperative to meet an alpha (which I can accept) and entitlement (which I cannot accept). Perhaps our gracious host can determine where the line can be drawn.
And all a guy wants is a woman who (1) isn’t fat and (2) is pleasent to be around. If she has any sort of sex appeal then you are plain lucky.
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Match.com hates happy relationships, because people who aren’t looking …
won’t be using their service. Those who succeed at getting a relationship they want to stay in exclusively, from using Match.com, will cease to be paying subscribers.
I have yet to see a business whose stated goal is to go out of business.
Remember that smallpox still exists in the world … it’s a good biological weapon to hold in reserve.
It was “eradicated” but not “eliminated” … seems healthcare professionals don’t want to go out of the business of treating smallpox.
Ugh … the ‘self esteem’ movement meets the Golden Vagina Syndrome. If they’re under 35, they’ve been fed a diet of “you’re wonderful just the way you are!” since grade school. Anything that presents some kind of bar has been removed – spelling bees, honor roll, heck, even spelling and grades. They are fed a diet of Princess/Goddess messages from all directions. Thus, they keep holding out the sex prize, as if breaching that moat (over and over again) has the same value as a young woman holding onto her virginity. I don’t mean to denigrate the young woman at all, but the ones who continue to act like they have some magical gift between their legs, however many have passed through.
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