Saturday 11 September 2010

Beer & Burger Venture Into Online Dating

It had all started a few weeks ago when I came up with another of my ingenious ideas.
"I have an experiment we should do." I said as Angus inspected a particularly large curly fry.
"Yeah?" he responded, as the chip met its fate. Attractive.
"Well I was watching telly last night, and that eHarmony advert came on. Where they claim that they match perfect couples by their personalities?" He looks skeptical - I'd better get to my point before he suspects me of swinging. "Well, I think we're a pretty perfect match. Would you agree?"

I nodded.
“Well how good do you think those sites really are at matching people?”
I thought about it, “Well they’re probably quite good at matching lonely people,” I said as I picked up another curly fry and absent-mindedly dipped it in my cider.
“Well yes, but what I’m getting at is this,” Ellen continued, “You should sign up.”
The fry was becoming quite soggy now as I sat open mouthed. I’ve never been dumped by being told I should join an online dating forum before, usually it’s a terse text message or a roundhouse to the temple.
“Then I will” Ellen said beaming, why was she so happy about this awful state of affairs?

I took a big celebratory sip from my pint, only to realise that all I had done was confuse the poor boy, who was looking more flabbergasted with every passing second. I forget that some of my ideas require explanation.
“No, ‘cos you know – I bet they get it wrong.” I blurted out. “We sign up using fake names but fill in everything else totally truthfully, and totally separate from each other. Then we see if they match us.” At this point his curly fry finally gave up the fight and broke off, sinking slowly to the bottom of his cider. My explanation didn’t seem to have done the job. Better give it one last shot. “The point is that we prove that these things don’t work, ‘cos we know we’re a good match but I bet they won’t pair us.”

I rubbed the tear from my eye and gulped, “I see, well in that case yes!” With that we clinked pints and drank to our masterful plan, well Ellen drank I spat my cider fry cocktail back out.
If you’ve ever started an account on a dating site you will know of the reams of psychological questions they ask to either judge your compatibility to your matches or to assess whether you’re complete psychopath or just monstrously lonely. They also ask a number of questions which I would argue do not require much vanity to be completely misconstrued. ‘How attractive do you find yourself?’ Well my mum always said I was handsome, so very. ‘Do you make your friends laugh?’ Well yes, mainly when I’m embarrassing myself but still yes. ‘Would you consider watching the opposite sex from afar inappropriate?’ Not if you pretend to read a newspaper with two eye-holes cut in it.’

“What name are you using? So I’ll know if I’m matched to you.” I ask Angus over Skype, who is about 15 minutes ahead of me as I type in my pseudonym ‘Paige’. A slightly cringy reference to a show I loved when I was about 13.
“…Angus” he responds. What a twat.
As time dragged on, and I pondered whether the word ‘affectionate’ described me very well, slightly or not at all, my better half was waiting patiently, ready to uncover the trickery of eHarmony and the greater online dating community. Then it was done.
“Ok,” I typed, “I’m checking my matches.” Darren, Martin, Adam. I wasn’t short of matches, but my boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly this seemed like less of a victory than it should have been. I started to worry about my plan. The questionnaire really had been very in depth, was it really them that looked the fool?

Sarah, Rachel, Mia. Nope, no Ellen. I sighed. Although this should have been a victory over eHarmony, I began to question our devious plan. Maybe eHarmony was the best measure of compatibility. Maybe Ellen and I weren’t well suited. Maybe how we saw ourselves and a match were different to the front we were apparently giving to each other. Maybe, maybe, maybe. There was so much uncertainty banging about I had to have a lie down, a walk in the rain, a soul search to find the real me. Who were Sarah, Rachel and Mia, why were they so perfect? I was happy wasn’t I? A few G & Ts and a lot of poetry later I slumped back in front of my computer. An email was bobbing about from eHarmony, I half-heartedly clicked it. ‘A new match has been found.’ I read through the email, this match was highly compatible. Highly compatible? The rest were merely compatible, they were just foul temptresses trying to distract me from this highly compatible marvel. Who was this girl? I had to find out, I clicked the link to eHarmony, my heart was in my mouth I had to know who this person was. Maybe we could make a life together, Ellen wouldn’t mind. This disastrous plan was her idea anyway, it wasn’t my fault that her brainwave had led me to a highly compatible match. No, I had to find out who this girl was. I messaged Ellen on Skype, I owed her that much at least, an explanation.
“Ellen” I wrote, “I’ve got a highly compatible match with a girl called Paige”
As I tried to sum up my feelings, my doubts, my curiosity, Ellen replied.
“No friggin’ way!”

“THAT’S AMAZING!” I couldn’t believe it. Angus didn’t seem to be so ecstatic – maybe he was sad that we hadn’t gotten the ‘scoop’ we had set out for. “I can’t believe they actually matched us!!”

“WHAT?!” I shouted across Skype (this is done by using capital letters and exclamation marks and is very clever), “You’re Paige?”
“YES!!!” Ellen shouted back.
I started smiling, then grinning, and then laughing. We were a highly compatible match, I couldn’t believe it. All that doubt and worry then this. This miracle, this confirmation.
“That is absolutely incredible” I wrote, with the amount of questions they asked I thought the chance of us getting matched was slim nigh impossible. This was brilliant.

And that is how it came to be that we sat here, tucking into the most expensive burgers on the menu with a jug of Pimms to toast our success at being a highly compatible couple. After all our glee at the thought of exposing the liars behind this dating phenomenon, we were happy to swallow our pride and make a toast.
“To being wrong.”



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