Part 1 continued – The Power Of PersuasionRemember; online dating sites are not in business to help you find your soul-mate. They exist to take your money. With that in mind, consider the following anecdote…
I registered with one site for free and started browsing some profiles. There was a handy function you could use called ‘Wink’, which basically allows users to declare interest in another member without actually e-mailing them. This function is free to use, but has its limitations. Even if two people ‘wink’ at each other to declare mutual interest, you aren’t going to get anywhere unless you sign up for a full account that allows you to e-mail somebody.
I winked at a few people, just to try it out. Then I logged out, had a sandwich, did some housework. Later that day, I logged back on and was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the girls I had ‘winked’ had winked back, and furthermore, there were two e-mails in my inbox! “This is fantastic,” I thought, “These girls have seen that I’m interested and obviously feel the same. I’m already on to a winner.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t read the e-mails until I became a paying member of the site. But with two prospective dates already lined up in my inbox, surely it would be worth signing up now?
Whoa, alarm bells, buddy!!
This is a classic hooking strategy. Make the potential customer feel as though they are attractive by dangling the incentive of interested members in front of them. Two people are interested in me? Hell yes! Let’s sign up so I can contact them and get myself a date.
It was around about this time that I remembered that online dating sites are only concerned with making money, and I hesitated. I thought it would be interesting to test my hypothesis of ‘the hook’. It was time, therefore, to introduce Pepe the Dwarf.
Pepe the Dwarf is a short, bald, bearded creature who is incredibly ugly. His profile is crude, unintelligent, insulting to women and written in incoherent English. He is, by my own design, the least attractive male ever conceived. Oh, and he’s also my alter-ego for the purposes of this experiment.
‘Pepe’ registered with the same dating site that I mentioned in my last anecdote. He searched out the most stunning, attractive girls he could find and winked at them. Then he logged off… and waited. Next time Pepe logged in, would you believe it? Two of the girls had winked back, and had even sent him an e-mail! Pepe the Dwarf, it seems, is just as attractive as me.
Of course, this illustrates that the interest was all an elaborate sham. The dating site was trying to ‘hook’ me into signing up by making me think that I would be guaranteed success. But just remember: They’re only after your money, and will pull every trick they can to hook you into parting with it.
As an aside, however, this raises some alarming issues with privacy. I have no doubts that the e-mails were fake. But equally, I have few doubts that the profiles were real. These were genuine girls, who allegedly ‘contacted’ me as part of an elaborate hooking technique. Were they aware that their profiles were being used in this way? I’m also registered on that site; is my profile also being used to ‘hook’ potential new customers? There are some big issues to look into here, and they will form the basis of one of my future articles.
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