Review: Staffer reels in trouble on PlentyofFish

Feisty and vivacious 21-year-old blonde seeks tall, dark, and handsome man to watch bad movies with. Must love “Star Wars,” offensive jokes, pets and classical Russian literature. Guys who like to cry or watch The Notebook need not apply.

With the US Census Bureau counting over 102 million single Americans over the age of 18, it seems like finding a man with the devil-may-care swagger of a young Harrison Ford wouldn’t be difficult, but unfortunately millions of eligible bachelorettes like myself have found the task daunting.

Typically content to walk around with a heart two sizes too small, any other time of the year I would ask you to never tell me the odds when it comes to finding a man that can make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. Christmas, however, is not simply any time of the year. It is the most romantic time of the year, which also means that desperate times call for desperate measures.

And as it turns out, desperate measures for me happen to be Internet dating this year. But is Internet dating really a desperate measure anymore.

According to the Pew Research Center one out of 10 Americans have tried using an online dating site or app, and 66 percent of people who have tried it have gone out on real, live dates with their online matches.

Thus, with the over-confidence of someone ethnically Caucasian from a comfortably middle-class background in a First-World industrialized nation, I found myself signed up for Plentyof-Fish.com.

For those that aren’t aware, PlentyofFish (POF), like the cantina in Mos Eisley, is the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy. It also has a lot of short guys on there.

Many of my close friends, who also must apparently hate me, heartily encouraged me to create an account while simultaneously neglecting to mention that the majority of people that locally use POF are solely looking for other people interested in rubbing unmentionable body parts together.

Unfortunately for me, many of those same people were happy to message me within my first hour on the site.
Signing up for POF is a several-step process that involves answering more personal questions than the average terrorism interrogation. Upon completion, the automated system feeds you an in-depth personality analysis you’ll only look at once and will in no way influence your potential matches on the site in any kind of meaningful way.

Although it touts matching users based off the results of its chemistry test, the real way people meet one another is with POF’s Quick Match application.
Generating a mix of locals, the most recently online and premium members, Quick Match is a rapid-fire photo gallery. With no information given other than age, city and profile picture, the object is to quickly decide whether or not you find someone attractive enough to “want to meet.” If the match is mutual, POF sends you an automated message linking you together.

While I initially engaged in actively searching through local profiles, the more I logged in, the more messages I received until I was averaging too many to care.

Despite there being no official template or form to use, basically all POF messages almost come in one of several standard formats.

First, you have the guys that call you beautiful so many times in a message you begin to wonder if it’s not so much a compliment as a Tourette’s tic.

These guys usually have profile descriptions that are too long and use too many fully capitalized words, because hey, they are LOOKING FOR “LOVE” AND THEY JUST WANT TO SHOUT ABOUT IT. Reply at your own risk because a single exchange of social pleasantries will result in weeks of harassment.

The second type of messages frequently received are generic hookup messages. Not unlike the above-mentioned Caps Lock Romeo, these guys also tend to have extremely detailed profile description The hook-up seekers tend to have a strong sense of entitlement tempered by a complete confusion over what they’re actually looking for. Although they say they want a physical fling, many of the same guys will actively disparage the women they’ve spoken to or met on POF as being too “slutty.”

The third type of frequently received message is the short form novel. The short form novelist often sends extremely long opening messages that try to cram as many fun facts they can glean from your profile as physically possible. These guys will be the only people that actually read your profile. Savor it.

During my two-month journey on POF, it rapidly became apparent that messaging had become an armored dance.

The men would send me variations of the same messages they sent other women, probably because originality runs too high a risk for rejection, and in return I would adopt various false poses and personas in an attempt to highlight the absurdity of the exchange.

Nothing was accomplished, nobody would take a risk, and then of course I met someone.

The first few messages I exchanged with Remy were magic.

We traded Lord of the Rings quips and made fun of Batman. We argued about the art of filmmaking and discovered a mutual love of the band KISS. It didn’t take long for him to ask me out, and it took less time for me to say yes. We traded Snapchat handles and video chatted every day, all day. We joked about being soul mates and scheduled our first date. Everything was perfect.

Until he didn’t show up, of course.

He didn’t get a hold of me for several days, he said his car broke down and he’d lost his phone. I’d seen enough episodes of MTV’s Catfish to be nervous, but I decided to give him a second chance.

One second chance turned into a third chance, and then it turned into a fourth chance, until I decided to issue my own Order 66 and execute the relationship.
In the end, I never met anyone else worthwhile, probably because there’s simply too many people to swim through.

Ultimately, it proves to be POF’s downfall—-there really are plenty of fish in the sea, but they all have re

ally high mercury levels and have been adversely affected by Japanese nuclear radiation.

Christina Villagomez is an editor for The Sentinel. Her opinions are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Sentinel. Respond to this column online at nicsentinel.com.