>>> The News: JAY KAY!
By staff writer Amir Blumenfeld
March 17, 2004
The real news (for boring people)
The breakdown (for college people)
Demand for Advice to Online Lovelorn Is Booming
By Lisa Baertlein
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Evan Marc Katz, a Los Angeles-based television and film writer, personifies the $400 million-plus cottage industry blossoming around Internet dating.
GASP! NOT MARC KATZ!! COME ON!! ANYBODY BUT MARC FUCKING KATZ!!! Also, who's “Marc Katz?”
The 31-year-old author of “I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book: A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating” founded E-Cyrano (http://www.e-cyrano.com), which for $49 to $149 sells “profile makeovers” to cyberdaters who need help trumpeting their strong points.
Profile makeovers = finding hot pics of other people to put on your Friendster page. Because frankly, you're not that hot. And I like the price range, is that based on how ugly you currently are?
Some 40 million people in the United States are looking for love on the Web. Last year they spent an estimated $425 million on their urge to merge—which would make personals the Web's biggest content category except for pornography, according to research by the Online Publishers Association and comScore Networks.
Why is it that when it comes to the Internet everything is always second to pornography?? Oh right, it's the naked chicks.
An online dater himself, Katz founded E-Cyrano about a year ago after working as a customer care consultant for MatchNet, the European operator of Americansingles (http://www.americansingles.com) and JDate (http://www.jdate.com). He links his Web site to professional photo services provider LookBetterOnline.com (http://lookbetteronline.com) and also offers Internet date coaching as a service to clients.
Look Better Online? And what happens when you have to meet the person and Look Better In Person? Better to just print out your online mug and paste it on your face!
“It's parallel to job hunting,” Katz said. “Most people don't think about spending $300 on a resume that's going to get them a job.”
“And this way they're looking for ANOTHER type of job,” Katz continued, as reporters rolled their eyes at the obvious innuendo: A BLOW JOB!
Bookstores' self-help shelves are bulging with online dating titles. Besides Katz's, there are various twists on familiar themes: “Online Dating for Dummies,” “The Rules for Online Dating: Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right in CyberSpace,” and the “Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Dating and Relating.”
A complete idiots guide to online dating and relating? Isn't that a tad bit redundant? Come to think of it, the phrase “tad bit” is a tad bit redundant.
Not to be left out, online dating services are rolling out their own books and services like profile assistance and dating help hotlines.
Finally I cease to wonder wonder wonder wonder who. WHO! Who wrote the book of love!
Courtney Johnson, director of research for online dating site Tickle (http://web.tickle.com)—which is known for its scientific but often light-hearted personality and matchmaking tests—has published a workbook called “Date with Your Head, Mate with Your Heart: Five Steps for Finding Love Through Science.”
Ahahaha…head.
InterActiveCorp's Match.com unit (http://www.match.com), the world's largest Internet dating and personals site, offers profile-writing help as well as online counselors.
Tip One: For accuracy, type with with your fingers, not with your face, it's just more logical.
CHECK THEM OUT
Most online services can get a person's age, criminal records and sex offender status, but finding out if an Internet love interest is already married is another story.
DAMNIT! Because when I find out that the person I talk to is 70 years old and a sex offender, I'm still not ready to throw in that towel until I'm COMPLETELY CERTAIN HE'S NOT MARRIED!
“I can tell you a million things about somebody … but one thing that's hard to get is marriage information,” said Geoffrey Lee, president of Entersect (http://www.entersect.net) of Santa Ana, California.
Yeah, we know, the paragraph RIGHT before your quote just said that. Is ANYBODY reading this article?
The problem, he said, is that marriage records are often still in paper form and controlled by county governments.
Sheesh enough with the marriage problem, we get it. It's hard. Move the fuck on.
Lee plans to soon roll out a service called TrustMeID, whose users can pay to have their personal information verified by Entersect.
And I plan to soon roll out a service called NoSeriouslyTrustME! where we verify different types of verification companies to make sure they're verified.
Free advanced searches on Google (http://www.google.com) also can turn up home addresses and phone numbers that may show whether a potential mate is already shacking up with someone else.
Whoa whoa whoa, lemme write this website down. Gooo Gull? Am I pronouncing that correctly! Oh man I feel like a real CYBER SLEUTH!