The Struggle to Find Love Online
Lately, users of Internet dating sites, like E-Harmony, BlackPeopleMeet, and Christian Mingle, have been complaining that the sites are ineffective. They claim that the sites don’t match them with compatible partners because the criteria for creating a profile aren’t narrow enough. Some may say that these people should actually go out and try to form a relationship on their own, maybe go to a bar with a couple buddies, but that’s far too hard of work and much too time-consuming. Some users of Internet dating sites turned their anger and disappointment into actions.
One religious user of Internet dating sites got so fed up with not being to find love that he decided to create his own site. Dexter Pepperdine, a mixed-raced stockbroker from Buffalo created the dating site HalfBlackHalfWhiteStockbrokersfromBuffaloMeet.com. Pepperdine was optimistic that he would find a beautiful female partner that he had a lot in common with. Pepperdine launched the website on November 15 of last year, but he eventually became disappointed with the results. Only 12 people created profiles on his site over a period of three months, and of those dozen people, five were his male co-workers, and the other seven were 50 something-year-old white guys looking for a successful woman “with some color in her.”
Other users of Internet dating sites weren’t so willing to give up on the traditional websites.
Mary Watkins, a user of E-Harmony, still believed she could find love online until a traumatic experience led her to determine it could not be done. Watkins, an attractive 45-year-old from Salt Lake City, thought she found a man she could start a new life with when she came across Wesley Slater’s profile. The two began to flirt back and forth on the website, developing a relationship in the process, and they soon set up a date at a local restaurant. An eager Watkins walked into the restaurant only to find that the man was actually a 10-year-old kid who made a fake E-Harmony account with a couple friends to see how many people they could dupe.