2012年10月15日 星期一

Trawling for no-strings sex

I’d never heard of the website Plenty of Fish until this week. I was talking to a girlfriend, Sandra, who was telling me about her experiences on the site.

“I signed up, uploaded some photos and within 10 minutes I had 70 messages in my Inbox,” she said. “It was gross. Nearly all of them were after sex.”

Sounded a bit like Oasis to me, another dating website that another girlfriend, Nadine, had told me was more of a meat market.Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. Wanting to have some fun after splitting up with her ex, Nadine would log onto Oasis whenever she felt like having sex. It was never hard to hook up, she said.

With some of the more established dating websites now charging users to make contact and send each other virtual “kisses”, a lot of online daters are starting to migrate to newer, free dating sites - some of which have better reputations than others.
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None of them promote themselves as hook-up sites – except for the more obvious, location-based Blendr, Grindr or Skout, more commonly used as smartphone apps, where immediacy and convenience is paramount.

Instead, sites like OkCupid!,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Oasis and Plenty of Fish market themselves as matching people based on compatibility. That seemed at odds with my friends’ stories, so I decided to check out Plenty of Fish for myself. In order to access the site, I had to create an account,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. which involved answering a series of questions about my physical appearance, income, education, drinking and smoking habits, and whether I had any kids.

Next, I had to fill out a description of myself.

Being a bogus account, I couldn’t be bothered with all of that, so I just said: "Naonaljq;/lamo" and "qna;ma".

Unlike my friend, I provided hardly any other information about myself – no photos, no interests, no political or religious views, in short, nothing to indicate what sort of person I was.

I did, however, select “intimate encounter” in the “looking for” box – just to see what sort of response I’d get.

I didn’t match Sandra, but within ten minutes I had over 20 responses of my own – ranging from “hi how r u?” to “Hi there wanna chat and have sum fun i live in brunswick to so not that far to cum over.” (Sic, of course).

"I’m 25 and I am clean. I’m a slim build, good body, fairly attractive and over 7 inches cut. Well, if you feel like talking then you know where to find me :) And I have no problem with travel, if that helps ;)".

I quickly changed “looking for” to “dating” – with no real effect on the type of messages I received in the next twenty minutes.

Now, perhaps if I’d uploaded some pictures and filled out my profile properly, I might’ve had an entirely different kind of response, but it got me wondering whether online dating is replacing the bar, not only as a place to meet potential partners, but also as a place to pick up.

Who better to ask than the characters who had messaged me on Plenty of Fish?

One guy had moved here from interstate after splitting from his ex a couple of years ago.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. He told me he spends a lot of time working and can’t really be bothered going to bars in order to meet someone. He’s not ready to get into another relationship and sees online dating as both convenient and social. “I think a lot of people just come home after a day at work, maybe go to the gym, watch some TV, go to bed, and I just find that routine so boring,” he says. “I’d rather jump online, talk to some people, meet some people, flirt, maybe arrange a date.”

“Dates” aren’t always necessary, he says.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. “I was talking to this one girl and it was clear we were both just after sex. We swapped phone numbers and she texted me her address, so I went over, we stood awkwardly in the kitchen for five minutes while she mixed us a drink, then we went upstairs and had amazing sex. We watched some TV for a bit afterwards, I left, and we never spoke again. It was great.”

I wondered what would have happened if the girl he met didn’t quite live up to her profile pics. Judging by the responses to my photo-less, detail-less profile on Plenty of Fish, many people wouldn’t seem to care. And going by the sheer amount of people online at any given time, it wouldn’t be too hard to find someone ready, willing and able.

Which, depending on whether you're a Sandra or a Nadine, is either "gross" or, well, pretty convenient.

Would you use a site like this purely for sex? Has the internet replaced the bar as a place to pick up?

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