February 10, 2006

Meet Real Members

Like any other day, I started my morning by sifting through a cascade of e-mail spam, trying to get to the good stuff. And just when I had achieved a steady DELETE DELETE DELETE clip, the following e-mail, with Subject "Explicit satisfaction for your-person?" caught my eye:


Nothing too unusual about this solicitation for "18 MILLION ACTIVE MEMBERS REAL SEX NO COMMITMENT", I thought. Except for the photo of Girl #3, buttercore, age 22.

She looked familiar, like someone I'd like to meet. In fact, she looked like a girl I had tried to contact on JDate. So I blew the dust off my stagnant account, pulled up my Favorites Hot List, and lo and behold, there she was, VPCuteJew!


Going back to December, when I had written a brief lamentation about how the girls on JDate never reply to my corny one-liners, one of my lines was for this girl:
To the "Vice President with Looks"
I typically only date Presidents but I would be willing to lower the bar and make an exception here.

Apparently some folks were familiar with this gal's profile. One anonymous bloke commented:
I am not Jdating (yet), but I did take a look and saw the "VP with looks" you mentioned... I think I am in love. She deserves a better line than the one you sent her.

Well, does she deserve better? I think someone is up to some funny business here, and I suspect it is a non-paying member having a little fun with us lonely Jewish boys.

Years ago my buddy Jason became absorbed in a conspiracy theory, believing that JDate posted fake photos of non-existent members, just to lure people into signing up for an account. After several angry e-mails to JDate, he quit the service. And ended up meeting his wife-to-be the old fashioned way: at a party.

I used to think he was wrong, but now I'm curious. Take a look at the photo above of VPCuteJew in red. Notice the Copyright © Picture This Photography watermark on bottom. Makes me wonder if her photos were all ripped from a stock photography set. Or is it TheBestGirlsForYou.com who are to blame? (Go to http://bianco.thebestgirlsforyou.com/donna/ ... see if the ad is still there)

Either way, I think the only way we'll get to the bottom of this is if VPCuteJew contacts me immediately.

8 comments:

Jeremy said...

Excellent detective work, as always. I also like your soap article from last year. You should definately consider investigative reporting for MacWorld, or better yet, MacAddict.

I had a customer earlier today named Bruce Levin from IL, and I accidentally called him William. Oops.

Esther Kustanowitz said...

Interesting. This kind of thing was actually covered on Jewlicious a while ago, I think...will try to find the URL somewhere. But seriously, never believe anyone anytime, that's a mantra that would serve us all well. Also, trust no one. And the truth is out there. Fight the future.

Um, and Shabbat shalom from San Francisco.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Crazy find! Congrats but at the same time Beware! Scary!

Anonymous said...

i once for an experiment put up two profile one with my photo and various witty a sides in the profile and one with a picture i saw in a magazine to prove [if it needed proving] that it didn't matter how witty and great sounding you were that you would get replies based on the photo rather than what you said about yourself. it was interesting.

Anonymous said...

actually some of those services just pull pictures from the web wherever they can get them. a friend reported such a company because her picture was put up with her being 18 and barely legal.
thing is she's 16.

Anonymous said...

Of course, it's always possible that VPCuteJew has hit some very, very desperate times : - )

Anonymous said...

"Of course, it's always possible that VPCuteJew has hit some very, very desperate times : - )"

It's more likely that she has an "interesting past". :) While she is 29 on jdate, she's 22 in the ad. :)

Anonymous said...

It is true many people are just playing the games using somebody else's photos or posting the multiple profiles.While I was writing research paper about the Internet dating, I have read a lot about this. Personally, I never had success using the on-line dating. Many people are there just for games. On the other hand, some members are posting their high income figures (possibly fake) and huge list of completed degrees including Ph.D. No wonder, they will not even bother to look on former automotive repair tech, who is grinding into the bachelor's degree while working as industrial engineer. To be objective, the women who were watching my profile were mostly single mothers with teenage kids.