Dating agencies. Dating agencies have been on my mind lately. This is not surprising, as on Saturday morning while shopping for a wedding present for Fabian’s impending nuptials at the Galleria (that is I was shopping at the Galleria, he’s actually getting married in a Gazebo) I was bailed up by a pair of rabid dating agency employees, and was only able to escape by filling out one of their forms.
They got me by jumping out of a dark corner and shouting “Are you single?!?” in tones of hideous enthusiasm. The smart thing to do would have been to yelp “No!” and run as fast as possible in the opposite, or indeed any, direction, but my mind was occupied trying to figure out whether to buy the sheets or the dust-buster, and before I could gain control of the situation found myself answering “yes”. Having caught me in edges of their net, they then pulled me further in with “Would you like to meet lots of eligible young women?”. Well, what can you say to that? Actually I could have claimed to be a disciple of Nepalese Buddhism* and walked off leaving them feeling confused and somewhat profane, but as I said, I wasn’t really thinking.
Everything gets a bit hazy after that point but I remember filling out some kind of form, then staggering away wondering what the hell I’d just got myself into.
Supposedly this form is going to be entered into a gigantic computer for “assessment” to see if they have any eligible young women to match me up with. Then they’ll contact me, say how I did, and see if I’m interested in joining the service.
I don’t believe this for a second.
Any day now I’m going to receive a call saying that they’ve found hundreds of attractive girls just dying to meet me, and they can introduce me to them all for only $300 or so. This will not be because my form has been put into the computer. My form will not have been anywhere near the computer. Heck, they may not even have a computer for all I know, they may just throw the forms in the air then staple them together however they land. But anyway, my form will have been resting comfortably with a whole bunch of other forms before being forwarded to a call centre where underpaid phone monkeys (carefully gender matched to their form pile) will phone every single person and tell them that there are hundreds of attractive people waiting to see them. Then sucker them for all the money they can get.
Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I can’t see any other way a dating service can make money. I mean the fundamental problem with a dating agency is the only people you’re going to meet through one are losers desperate enough to join a dating agency. Or, to be blunt, other losers desperate enough to join a dating agency. Certainly the crazed form pushers at the Galleria seemed to be targeting the overweight, ugly, greasy and old* from what I could see on my gift-registry motivated trips back and forth.
So maybe my ideal woman is out there waiting to watch my cheaply made video. But I suspect that, I dunno, Alisen Down for instance, has better things to do with her time. So when that phone monkey calls, I’m going to tell her I’m devoting my life to Nepalese Buddhism, and hang up before she can drag me screaming back in.
(*If indeed there is such a thing as a distinctly Nepalese form of Buddhism, any statement I make about it should not be taken to be indicative of the actual beliefs and practises of the religion, which could probably best be learnt by attending services at your local Nepalese Buddhist temple.)
(* Check, check, check, only a matter of time 🙂
