Just Another Day for You and Me in Paradise
Anyone with a television, and some extra hours to actually use it, has seen the commercials. Loving couples give their testimonials, to the song “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love),” on how the online service eHarmony brought them together. They speak of the wonderful compatibility system eHarmony uses to match their clients up, and gloat about the excellent communication process that allows each user to be honest and truthful. These couples boast about eHarmony’s methods that guides its members into being absolutely 100% themselves, saving these souls from that awful and awkward stage of having to get to know each other through masks……..Cue screeching brake noises****
Wait…..what?..........No.
Okay, let’s get the obvious arguments out of the way first……
I’ve seen and taken the eHarmony personality assessment test several times over the years (it’s fun…at first I was a depressed loser, now I’m a pretty killer guy. Give it a shot if you haven’t already. It is free.), and there is just no way in the world that the questions are bullshit proof. While I see how they try to lead you to honesty, I also don’t see how people aren’t going to exaggerate or understate any aspect of their lives that they aren’t all that comfortable with. It’s a joke really. People are liars. No set of questions, no matter how well thought out and manipulative they are, will lead people to be completely truthful.
The communication process eHarmony prides itself on is flawed as well. It involves several steps, the first made up of eHarmony pre-made questions each member gets to choose for one of their matches to answer, questions members get to make up, and eventually fire-at-will back and forth email correspondences between the matches. The implied, or outright declared, benefit of this process is that a person can be completely honest while in this guided step-by-step communication, because he or she doesn’t have to put on an act in front of their match. The hole in that theory is that there is probably no better stage for the hiding-your-true-self actors than the internet. Look no further than the dirty mid-life male perverts who scour the internet preying on 14 year old boys and girls. Of course, that’s a major extreme. For more common examples, just browse Myspace and its vast amount of kids not coming close to portraying who they really are. The internet is full of fake, because it’s just so damn easy to be fake in front of a computer, using the keyboard and time as a tool to think out every single action before making them. No guided system on the internet is going to be able to filter out the bullshit.
But none of this is really even the point. I don’t really blame eHarmony for claiming that their methods lead to honesty. What does bother me is how they want to turn probably one of the best stages of any relationship into a horrible miserable stage that should be bypassed. “By the time we had our first date it was as if we already knew each other,” says the guy on the eHarmony commercial as he lovingly embraces the girl next to him (I’m totally paraphrasing but it does go something like that). He continues, “I felt like I could just be me.” This is awful. It’s enough to make a person want to swear off eHarmony and similar services. That whole stage of a budding relationship, when you are constantly on the edge trying to impress this other person and never actually being completely yourself is one of the more fun stages. It’s fun because you know that the other person is doing the exact same thing. It’s fun because you get to unwrap this person and get to know the real her/him and she/he gets to do unwrap you. Not to mention, this mask that we put up to hide our real selves turns out to be one of the more telling aspects about ourselves. This is not a stage that should be bypassed; rather, it needs to be embraced. Wearing the mask and cracking it off is fantastic. We all love it too. Even those of us who think we don’t…
I have nothing against online dating services, though they aren’t for me. So long as these companies don’t try to accomplish more than pairing up people who might work well together. eHarmony claims to do more. Its saving grace is that even their so-called excellent system can’t stop people from portraying a false self. Those couples in the commercials are liars. They are still wearing their masks.
Wait…..what?..........No.
Okay, let’s get the obvious arguments out of the way first……
I’ve seen and taken the eHarmony personality assessment test several times over the years (it’s fun…at first I was a depressed loser, now I’m a pretty killer guy. Give it a shot if you haven’t already. It is free.), and there is just no way in the world that the questions are bullshit proof. While I see how they try to lead you to honesty, I also don’t see how people aren’t going to exaggerate or understate any aspect of their lives that they aren’t all that comfortable with. It’s a joke really. People are liars. No set of questions, no matter how well thought out and manipulative they are, will lead people to be completely truthful.
The communication process eHarmony prides itself on is flawed as well. It involves several steps, the first made up of eHarmony pre-made questions each member gets to choose for one of their matches to answer, questions members get to make up, and eventually fire-at-will back and forth email correspondences between the matches. The implied, or outright declared, benefit of this process is that a person can be completely honest while in this guided step-by-step communication, because he or she doesn’t have to put on an act in front of their match. The hole in that theory is that there is probably no better stage for the hiding-your-true-self actors than the internet. Look no further than the dirty mid-life male perverts who scour the internet preying on 14 year old boys and girls. Of course, that’s a major extreme. For more common examples, just browse Myspace and its vast amount of kids not coming close to portraying who they really are. The internet is full of fake, because it’s just so damn easy to be fake in front of a computer, using the keyboard and time as a tool to think out every single action before making them. No guided system on the internet is going to be able to filter out the bullshit.
But none of this is really even the point. I don’t really blame eHarmony for claiming that their methods lead to honesty. What does bother me is how they want to turn probably one of the best stages of any relationship into a horrible miserable stage that should be bypassed. “By the time we had our first date it was as if we already knew each other,” says the guy on the eHarmony commercial as he lovingly embraces the girl next to him (I’m totally paraphrasing but it does go something like that). He continues, “I felt like I could just be me.” This is awful. It’s enough to make a person want to swear off eHarmony and similar services. That whole stage of a budding relationship, when you are constantly on the edge trying to impress this other person and never actually being completely yourself is one of the more fun stages. It’s fun because you know that the other person is doing the exact same thing. It’s fun because you get to unwrap this person and get to know the real her/him and she/he gets to do unwrap you. Not to mention, this mask that we put up to hide our real selves turns out to be one of the more telling aspects about ourselves. This is not a stage that should be bypassed; rather, it needs to be embraced. Wearing the mask and cracking it off is fantastic. We all love it too. Even those of us who think we don’t…
I have nothing against online dating services, though they aren’t for me. So long as these companies don’t try to accomplish more than pairing up people who might work well together. eHarmony claims to do more. Its saving grace is that even their so-called excellent system can’t stop people from portraying a false self. Those couples in the commercials are liars. They are still wearing their masks.
posted by Angelo at 7/27/2006 05:17:00 PM
3 comments
