Theonion.com Personal ads........Paying NOT to talk to someone, WTF?

I have a personal ad on the Onion Personal ads website.

For every person one wishes to talk to, one has to pay money.

For the second time in 6 months, some gal writes to me and says, “I liked your profile.” And that is it. They don’t write back. Um…guh?

What twisted person writes messages like that? You spend money to say “Your ad was good, but I don’t find you appealing sexually or personality-wise.”?

Just because my Yahoo name is the same as my SD name and Onion Personals name shouldn’t be a problem, should it? I demand satisfaction. Who are these apathetic dames?

For awhile now, despairing of romantic prospects, I have considered taking out a personal ad of my very own, or at least responding to those already posted.

Your post does not fill me with optimisim.

Don’t give up. I met my husband (11 years married) via the personals.

And we’re not the only ones I know, either…

Maybe it an underhanded way of getting you to pay to find out who the other person is?

Maybe they do it like “AmericanSingles.com”. In which a member can use a “tease”, which is free. Someone teased me before and I was all excited, but it was really nothing. It basically said, “I liked your profile, do you like mine?” They want you to pay basically.

I dunno. There’s plenty of people I would pay good money not to have to talk to. heh. :smiley:

Wellll, I just went and looked at your ad. Even though I don’t have much in common with you (you seem to have some unconventional interests - which isn’t a bad thing of course), I can appreciate the humor and creativity of your ad. Maybe some other women also thought it was interesting enough to be worthy of comment, even if they didn’t feel they were compatible with you.
There is also a possibility that the joking kind of backfired and they wrongly thought you weren’t seriously looking for someone.
Just some ideas.

Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner here, folks!

I know of at least three dating sites that either I or friends have been involved with that do this. Keep in mind there’s no guarantee that the person who “liked your profile” will actually write back, if you do pay the subscription rate and write to him/her.

Now, who am I to suggest that sites like that on The Onion (most likely, run by some other company and merely linked there) would send out generic messages saying “I liked your profile” to people who’ve posted a profile but not paid them any money. Oh, I wouldn’t say that, no!

Those personals are run by SpringStreet Networks, FYI.

I’ve had great experiences with them, sneaking an email address into the profile. Of course, when people are in my age range (usually 20-25), they’re well suited to looking for cheap loopholes.

If someone sends you a message, reply to the message and leave an email address. If they never email or reply again, fuck them! (I mean, fuck THEM, not FUCK them).

But I know what you mean, OP. It’s annoying having someone you’re interested in half-assedly try to make contact. They collect call me, then I CC them back, as though to say, “look at my profile, dumbass! My email address is cleverly hidden away!” and they never catch on.

I got busted by springstreet for being too obvious about my email address. So then I looked up the word for the code where you spell out a message with the first letter of each word, put my email addy like that, and added a note at the bottom that people should have an interest in that particular code.

Nada, zip, zilch. I’d think anyone I want to talk to should at least be able to figure that out!

Mr. Sarcasticus, how YOU doin?? :wink:

That’s not how this particular site works. If someone sends you a message, it’s free to reply.

Check again. They call it a “collect call.”

Clarification:

If someone sends you a collect call, and you respond, you have to pay.

If someone sends you a regular ol’ message, they paid for it and if is free for you to reply.

Aargh. If someone sends you a regular ol’ message, they paid for it and IT is free for you to reply.

Exactly, Snoooopy. THAT’S what’s so vexing. I guess my respondees could have already met someone and are just using up the rest of their credits, but damn! Who am I, Job?

What did you say when you replied to their puzzlingly brief messages?

I guess I misunderstood what went on. It’s possible you wrote something in your reply that turned them off. More likely, they suddenly realized that had more potential suitors than they had time to write and meet them. Aren’t unexplained disappearances pretty common in this cyber-dating realm?

Give me some credit. It usually takes a few dates before my piggishness becomes apparent.

It was just a few lines saying how I think you’re cute and that I’d like to know more about yourself.

But, if truth be told, this theonion.com personals scene sucks ass. I bought 50 credits and used them all over the course of a few months. I actually managed to exchange emails with about 5. Briefly. Had two dates with ONE. Fizzled soon thereafter. This is especially distressing, since I used my ugly handicap. I only picked the ones who I thought were cute but not hot. Even there I failed. Oh, shame of shames.

I hope that first line was intended with a smiley face at the end. I was teasing when I suggested you might be such a brute.

I’m not an expert at internet dating, but I’ve looked at a lot of profiles. I think your average returns on your money are not atypical. It sounds like you’re just here to rant, but I’m going to offer my unsolicited advice on your profile. First of all, I would never consider going out with a guy who said he was looking for a “bitch.” I might be especially senstive about using that word as a generic term for any woman, but right there you’ve turned off a certain percentage of the female population. Second, I don’t understand guys who put a whole bunch of quirky interests in the section describing who they’re looking for. If you expecting you’re going to find someone who shares all your obscure tastes, you’ll be disappointed. Realistically, you should be looking for someone who tolerates your unusual tastes but doesn’t necessarily share all of them. One or two references are OK to show your personality, but too many make you seem rigid and set in your ways to me. I mean, do you really want to rule out an otherwise perfect woman who likes Moulin Rouge? I’m sure there’s more to you than that, but you can’t really tell from your profile.

My 2 cents anyway.

Sorry, I just can’t respect anyone who liked that bloated, hypercut piece of PURE PRETENTIOUS FECES. And we ARE talking about respect, no?

MOULIN ROUGE hating is my lynchpin.

Chula, will you buy me dinner? I’ll only eat salad.