October 7, 2009

Off the heels of a break-up and with a helpful, if strong nudge from the mostly female Miniguide editorial staff, I decided to give online dating a shot.

No one seems to admit a love for online matchmaking, yet everyone appears to have a friend who’s found love or sex – hopefully both– online. There’s the well endowed cousin of a friend who met his equally – albeit artificially – well-endowed girlfriend in a chat room and another friend of a friend – no really – who met a 30

years her senior catedrático (professor) from Madrid who was up for anything, and apparently quite freaky.

So, I cast my net hoping to find an indie site where I would meet creative types. What I came up with was a confusing and pricey kind of dating maze complete with its own cryptic lingo, rules and obstacles

to overcome.

First up, Meetic.es, a sort of Match.com for Spain—popular, mainstream, and boring. I found the initial interview tedious, however for those looking to settle down immediately, knowing things like if a future partner

wants five kids may make or break the deal. Nonetheless I was drawn in by the free registration. Once I

had a profile set up though, I found myself forking over €29.99 for a month’s access in order to actually communicate with the women—this was before a more experienced friend told me to put my email address in the Meetic message subject lines to bypass extra fees.

So how does Meetic work? Not bad actually. I was put off at first by the sheer popularity of some of the women. After firing off my first flechazo (wink in the English version) I was startled to see she had received five thousand in her three-year Meetic lifetime.

At the same time I dabbled in online love on Badoo.com. An ostensibly free service, it requires Loquo like SMSing to get ‘super powers’ or bumped up in the listings, lest you fall behind 10,000 others in terms of showing your photo. Badoo is also scam central with women and enterprising web-entrepreneurs posting attractive photos, giving you their chat handle, and then asking you to SMS them with the promise of delivering pornographic photos— no, I didn’t bite.

I got a few comments on Badoo but no one that appealed to me. On the other hand, I only forked out a sporadic €1.20 to move my profile up to the first position.

But no online sampling would be complete without Sexyono.com, a blatant rip-off and Spanish equivalent of the now ancient US site hotornot.com. All you need is a photo and a brief text profile to meet people … clicking yes to “want to meet me?” when you see an attractive profile. Basically, it’s a site that attracts lots of men looking for hot photos, and few women.

So is online dating worth it? Depends. I might leave my Badoo and SexyoNo profile, they’re free and hey no one can deny the thrill of getting a message from someone who thinks you’re neat. Still, if you’re serious about getting serious, Meetic – or some other pay site – is the best bet of the three, just watch the small print and charges. And aquariusgirl, if you read this, just know you were my only Meetic one.