Ugh, Match.com has such a brilliant marketing scheme. I am home alone the other night (my family has just left town and someway or another all my staples have managed to be out of town or occupied with their significant others) so I put on some music, turn on my computer, and break out that case of Tecate leftover from the Café’s Cinco De Mayo picnic.

The evening starts out simple enough, I make this:

and a little blue tank, check my email and catch up on some of my Livejournal readings. Then I run into this:

And perhaps it is because the music has drifted to Bright Eyes, or because I am sitting all by my lonesome in my two bedroom apartment, or because I am drunk sitting alone in my two bedroom apartment, but I think to myself “Yeah, it is ok to look.” So I look. Or I try to look because there is a catch, in order to look at profiles you have to set up one of your own. At a lesser drunk I would have given up, but at this point I am determined to prove that I can overcome the social taboo and freely and shamelessly browse the modern day brothel. Tonight I will prove that IT IS OK TO LOOK. I sign up for an account.

In my new profile there are places where I am supposed to fill in short blurbs: “what my job is,” “what I do for fun,” “where are my favorite hot spots,” and a much longer “about me and who I am looking for” section. This is what I type:

“I live in Tucson and enjoy the artistic side of the community. I like experimental and documentary films, writing, and coffee. I am very good at darts and risk. I like people with strong political opinions.”

Now, this can be read two ways. I am an asshole and pretentious to boot, or I am drunk and struggling make the 200 word minimum. Naturally, my new Match.com friends are not privy to the latter interpretation, but I don’t care because now I have suddenly and powerfully lost interest. I toss up a picture and sign out. I manage not to look at a single profile.

The next morning I wake up and discover fifteen new emails. “Dav4u has winked at you!” “Photographynerd has winked at you!” “Itsjustme23 has winked at you!” I am starting to wish I had come up with a better alias than my standard Amycarina (sorry Amy). I’m excited anyway. I am convinced that my Match.com profile must be unusually good and popular because it got fifteen hits in one night. I am suddenly interested again.

Back at the site I try to figure out how it actually works. Alright, so winking is free, but to email you need to subscribe ($$) and that’s very fine by me. I love Match.com.

I check my account again the next day. There is only one new wink. I am shocked and disappointed. I do, however, have two emails. Somebody actually PAID to send me an email. Two people, actually. I click to read.

“The email feature is for subscribers only.”

Goddamn you Match.com.

So this is where I am now. I have my free Match.com profile which allows me to look at other people’s profiles which I have discovered I really don’t care about. Hovering in the expensive Match.com vaults are two emails certainly containing lots and lots of compliments for me and other means of giving me attention so I will immediately like and want to date the sender. Naturally, these two emails are everything I want in the world right now.

Goddamn you Match.com.