Contributed by: kellyseal on Saturday, June 05 2010 @ 08:26 am
Last modified on
According to a recent article in the Washington Post[*1] , more online daters are turning to "ghostwriters" or virtual dating assistants to help with their search for love.
Online dating can be time-consuming. Between answering questionnaires, searching through profiles, and emailing back and forth, the process can seem overwhelming. Some daters can't stomach the pain of rejection, where emails are ignored or rebuffed. Enter the dating assistants.
For $600 a month, Atlanta-based company Virtual Dating Assistants will comb through profiles and send flirtatious yet generic messages to dozens of potential matches on your behalf. The steep price however only guarantees 2 dates per month. In addition, their ghostwriters are paid only for "positive responses" received from potential dates.
And how do the ghostwriters elicit positive responses? After interviewing the client for basic personality guidelines, they write messages using a "charming and flirtatious" persona. According to one ghost writer, "he's witty, a bit aloof and not over-complimentary. He includes a question or subtle challenge." Apparently, this persona gets the most responses from women.
Some daters have found the service helpful, in that they aren't dealing with continual rejection and have found more women responding to their profiles. Others claim that it's helped them streamline the dating process so their time could be spent in other ways besides examining dozens of profiles and sending out mass emails.
While virtual dating assistants do provide benefits to their clientele of online daters, I have to consider the women and men on the other side of the scenario. What about the people these clients date? Personally, if I found out that my date wasn't really emailing me or even choosing me out of the online line-up, I would be a little insulted.
Online dating sites provide us with more options than ever for meeting new people, which means we spend more time searching, as well as enduring more rejection. But dating in person involves a lot of time and rejection until you meet the right one. No amount of outsourcing is going to change that.