Tasked with the challenge of designing a fake online dating site for a TV show, I registered with a few dating sites to gain access to their page layout.
Now before any of you cranks jump down my throat, I signed up (a) as a man (the fake site was supposed to be a chick's profile) and (b) with full disclosure to The BF, who was the one who commissioned the work in the first place.
I'm sorry to report that things have changed, and not for the better. I've already reported about the decline of the deliciously quirky Spring Street Network, but it's far, far worse now. Now, there is Chemistry.com.
An offshoot of its ho-clearinghouse cousin, Match.com, Chemistry is clearly born of Tickle's heavy 'psychological' profiling and the eHarmony pestilence that Dr. Neil Clark Warren has rained down upon us. Sign up for Chemistry and you will be led through a half-hour battery of personality tests. Tests designed to unearth the true you, so deep and probing and mysterious, you will marvel at the truths they reveal. Deep, probing, tests like this:
In hindsight, it's a miracle The BF and I have lasted as long as we have, what with our reckless disregard for digit compatibility. Neither did we have the benefit of prescreened testing for real-life assessment skills:
Again, it's a good thing I gave The BF some extra-strong non-verbal cues on our second date, like inviting him in for a drink and having sex with him on the floor. Because I just quizzed him on the above picture and he was dead sure they were a sleeper anarcho-communist cell plotting the overthrow of the Mall of America.
To be fair, the fine scientists at Chemistry aren't leaving all the chemistry up to their psychological profiling. After running the test gauntlet, I had to fill out the extensive questionnaire so that my prospective matches could feel me via my charm and wit, and vet me for height, weight and eye color deficiencies. As I do not look much like a man in any of my current photos and am understandably reluctant to use certain others (I want my prospective dates to love me for me, not my proximity to celebrity), I elected not to upload a photo. But the magical matching computers at Chemistry did their thing and provided me with upwards of 50 matches, any of whom I could email right now if I forked over a membership fee.
I pulled up the first profile, the cleverly named "Mary" (remember, for our purposes here, I'm a man, albeit a very short, very slight one). Based on the extensive tests we'd both taken, here was one of my soul mate matches:
Well, as anyone who is even a semi-habitual reader of communicatrix-dot-com knows, it was like reading a mirror! Or maybe, reading something I held up in a mirror, only like maybe in a dream, so everything wasn't backwards. I injoy cildern a lot! I'm more a fan of dinning in than out, but hey, for someone who can turn me on to wica (pagan) and midevil reinactments, I need to make a few compromises! The chemistry is profound!
Alas, my profile was ultimately rejected. Apparently, they didn't think "Colleen" was a suitable name for a gentleman on the rarified rolls of Chemistry. Ah, well.
I'm sorry, "Mary." Sorrier than I can say...
xxx
c