I'm Not Single, I Have a Dog

Once upon a time in America, marriage was the norm. But now, for the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking these numbers in 1976, there are more single Americans than married — a total of about 50.2%, or 124.6 million American adults are single.

Just as the single life overtakes marriage in the United States, a new book from McFarland Publishers hits the market. I'm Not Single, I Have a Dog: Dating Tales From The Bark Side is the perfect holiday gift for singles, anyone who ever dated the wrong person (and who hasn’t?), and the 63.4 million Americans who love their dogs. Celebrating the human/canine bond, this thoughtful and funny memoir is about acceptance, love, and finding your own happily ever after.

The Plenty of Fish Conspiracy

Maybe Conspiracy is a strong word, but you'd think the people behind this popular free dating website would give their members a break and find some other companies to advertise. Who takes up the bulk of it now? PAY DATING SITES!! I could be wrong and they are just porn sites, as you might think by the look of the images they choose for their lead ins.

So you are a man looking for a woman on Plenty of Fish. You click on your inbox and above your messages are two lines of thumbnails for the pretty ladies in your area, completely chosen at random. Enticing, yes? Next to them...two adds for pay dating/porn sites featuring gargantuanly boobed women with tiny little waist lines AKA the "ideal woman" or so modern media would have you think. Here's a perfect example...

So my Friday moan is this. Plenty of Fish, you aren't doing your members any favors with these adverts right next to the REAL women. If your goal is to make them look less appealing in comparison, then good job. Lord knows what the guy pics look like when someone searches for men. 12 pack abs and a bulge in tight jeans that looks like he's captured a glow worm? I'm in trouble.

The Plenty of Fish Experiment

I am very single right now, so friends recommended I join a free site called Plentyoffish.com. The layout is pretty straight forward with you listing likes and items about yourself, then writing your little soliloquy designed to lure the womens to the rocks like male sirens trying to get hot girls to go to Philly Wizard World. The added dynamic purports to take all the data and make a "chemistry analysis", much like that pay site whose commercial features the united colors of Benetton models making lovey faces at each other. When you are all done and have loaded up all your pictures, you can either sit and wait (like I used to do on Myspace...oh how I miss myspace) or go on the hunt...but if you sit around long enough, you can use more fun features on the site. One link brings you to a page with "Girls who think you are super hot!" The page starts with the following text...

Our system predicts that the following users are the most attracted to you. These users are Women who have not yet contacted you and maybe not even viewed your profile.

I don't understand their fancy scientific jargon, so I decide to click around and see what's out there.

Girl 1 - Pretty..sweet looking..wearing something odd on her head. Next.
Girl 2 - Spent the entire profile insisting you not proposition her for sex. THE WHOLE PROFILE. Next
Girl 3 - Says her first profile was rejected by a notice that asked "are you joking?" so she goes on to paint herself as the orange tinted, neon clawed woman of your dreams before she gets real and declares "If you watch Jersey Shore, jump off a bridge." I like her and send an email asking if she is Tank Girl and how, exactly, she would pronounce the word Behemoth. This could be love.