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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
A handful of new Web sites are making it harder for people to fudge the truth in their online personal ads. But isn't a little deception in matters of love almost a necessity?
Jun 25, 2005 | When Los Angeles resident Jessica Walters turned 21, her mother gave her a wad of cash and a mission: "You need to get on JDate," she said, of the online Jewish singles site.
Meeting people on the Internet was nothing new to Walters, who had spent her high-school years talking to people all over the world in chat rooms. "I remember feeling like people were pretty straightforward about themselves when we'd chat," she said. "They didn't seem to be pretending they were something they weren't."
So when the first guy who contacted her through JDate revealed on his profile that he was only 5-foot-3, Walters assumed he was telling the truth.
"I'm 5-foot-5 so I thought it wasn't that big a difference," said Walters. "I thought I could deal with it."
The pair made a date to hang out at his house. But when Walters arrived, the 30-year-old who came to the door resembled an Oompa Loompa. "He was maybe 4-foot-11," Walters said. To be polite, she spent hours with him playing Trivial Pursuit -- a friend was supposed to give her a "rescue call" but then forgot. When Walters finally wrangled her way out of his place, her date presented her with a sweatband he had made out of a tube sock and a teddy-bear decal. "It's awful," said Walters, now 24. "But I haven't thrown it out. I keep it as a reminder of how bad online dating can be."
Fortunately for Walters, earlier this year she found a way to stave off future dating dramas. She started using TrueDater.com, one of a handful of new Web sites that promise to make it easier to get an honest assessment of a potential paramour -- before you waste an afternoon playing board games with him or her.
With the explosive growth of Internet dating -- last year 21.8 million people browsed online dating sites, and one out of every 10 Americans who use the Internet posted a personal ad online -- it's not surprising that sites are emerging that help people vet their dates and do more sophisticated probing than a simple Google or Friendster search. Yet for all its potential benefits, rating sites can feel a little like an idea hatched over a bong. "Dude, what if after you go on a date with a girl that's a real dog, you could warn everyone else in the world who might eventually want to go out with her!"
At TrueDater.com, those who have met the three-dimensional person behind an online profile review him or her, not unlike seller evaluations on eBay or customer reviews on Amazon. "She claims to be 44, actually is 51. Uses people, then discards them. Thinks she's smarter than God," read one recent post on the site. Another read: "If he doesn't get his way, he'll throw a tantrum, complete with mundane name calling and finger pointing." All that's missing is a few stars and a tally of total satisfied customers.
"We're fostering a movement in truth in online dating," said Mark Geller, 36, who co-founded Los Angeles-based TrueDater in January. (TrueDater allows users to read reviews of people with personal profiles on Nerve.com, which is hosted by Salon, Match.com, JDate.com, American Singles and Yahoo Personals, and doesn't charge for the service.) "It's not about reviewing someone as a human being, it's about reviewing the truthfulness of the profile. It's basically answering the question: Is what you see what you get?"
Dishonesty, it seems, is a quiet thwarter of online love. According to a poll conducted on TrueDater, 34 percent of the site's users said that the biggest problem with online dating was people lying about their weight; 13 percent said it was lying about marital status. Fibs about income and height were also top offenders.
Geller's goal is to get these numbers down; he estimates 100,000 people have used the site in hopes of minimizing their chances of meeting a dud. "You spend a few weeks talking to someone or e-mailing, and then you meet him at a Starbucks and maybe he's nothing like what he said he was," he said. "And it makes you feel like you've just wasted time."
After a lot of wasted time -- with men who posted fake pictures and one who said he was single but was really married -- Natanya Levioff, a 32-year-old who works at an education consulting firm in Washington, D.C., has become a TrueDater devotee. "There's a lot of temptation to lie or exaggerate with online dating," she said. "I've had people tell me they're 35, but they're actually 50. 'But I look 35!' they'll tell me. One guy I contacted was really good-looking with black hair and light eyes. Kind of rugged guy-next-door look. I was like, 'Wow, he's cute!' Well, it turns out the guy was using a stock image and I saw another guy a few weeks later using the same one."
On a similar site, LemonDate.com, users are charged $9.95 a month to browse dater "reviews," but they have to know what site a person is registered on as well as their precise screen name and state of residence. They can also sign up for LemonDate personals, a dating forum that stresses truthfulness.
"I'd completely stopped using online dating for a while because I felt like people were so dishonest," says LemonDater Denise Wagoner, a bookkeeper in Irvine, Calif. Wagoner had good reasons for abstaining. Five years ago, she uprooted her life in Albuquerque, N.M., and moved to Colorado Springs, Colo., to be closer to a man she'd met on American Singles and had been dating for two years. Weeks after the move, she learned he was engaged to someone else, and had five other girlfriends, to boot.
"But then I found LemonDate," she said. "I'm an honest person and have nothing to hide -- what I've described myself to be is exactly who men have met. If I'd had something like this, maybe some other woman could have warned me not to fall for the man I fell for."
