Joe S.

This writing is for the few intelligent souls who actually do their due diligence before joining dating sites. There are many free dating sites out there: OkCupid, PlentyofFish, and Mingle2 to name a few. At one time I was a member of all of them. My last venture into the free world of dating sites was OkCupid. Now I was not actually the site moderator; I was invited to moderate as many members often are who post a complaint or spot spam or
A scam. I received a message from the OKC admin inviting me to take part in the moderating of the site. I guess the sheer number of fake profiles, scammers, escorts, and other site offending users was too much for the site and so they decided to tap into the membership for help. A button was added to my drop down menu: Moderation.
The OKC moderation adventure. I really didnt want to get sucked into this but I was hoping that maybe my paid membership might get stretched out for a month or two simply by the number of profiles I was reviewing. The rules for marking a profile are vague and ambiguous. For example: It clearly states face pic not required then on the same page says that artwork or photos that are not the member are not allowed. The marking codes are not inclusive enough or defined enough for all of the alleged offensives that appear in profiles. Other offensives include:: Nudity photos, photos of genitalia, children, or other offensive pics.
Pay attention this is how you find scammers, liars, cheaters, and hmmmm escorts. Moderators are encouraged to use Google image search and Tineye to search ferret out photo piracy. This generally gets a violation of: GIS- Google image search, TE- Tineye, NTU- Not the user, OS- Overtly sexual, to name a few. What I found is that of the profile I reviewed 70% of the male profiles were pirated photos (actors, professionals, ad models) that usually pulled up scammer page links in GIS. 20% were non-user pics in inactive accounts and 10% were cool guys who just needed to move a photo or two into an album.
Of the womens profiles most of the things I discovered were: 50% escort language or links to sex sites, 20% were pirated photos (pornstars, actors, ad models) with scammer language, 10% were non-user pics in inactive accounts, and 20% cool ladies who again just needed to move a photo or two into an album. Links to sex sites are a dead give-away.
What began to happen was because I often looked at the actual page of the user it kicks up a notification to that user. So I would get endless visits to my page and sometimes snarky and offensive messages such as: Who the F**<k are you?. So.to notify the use of why I was there Id leave a little message: moderator view or something similar. This reduced the number of visits and the language of the messages was better: Ok, no problem, etc.
Then one female user sent me a message: Are you and actual moderator or just using a line to score dates?. Rut-roh Shaggy. I answered her query simply by telling her to read my profile which is obvious to any reader that it would be nearly impossible to score dates by posing as a moderator. Wellwhat happened next is what I figured would happened. She snarkly replied ooooookkkaayyyy and then more than likely complained to the website. I couldnt log in to my account for about eight hours and received an email telling me my account was deleted blah, blah, blah.
My suggestions to anyone on or considering joining a dating site.
First: If you get an invitation to moderate tell them to get lost. This is simply an attempt to put someone out in front of the brand as a scapegoat to decrease liability to the company. Youre expendable, right? After all youre considered a loser who cant find anyone in the real world. Second: Dont bother wasting your time or money on dating sites. Look around you when youre out of the house: Ive found more persons to have activities with than on dating sites that way. Out of the persons Ive met from dating sites most have been looking for free stuff, extremely demanding, expensive gifts, paying their bills, or escorts. Third if you join a site use the tools they use to separate the real deal from the scammers: Google image search or Tineye.
Fourth: photo pirating is a big problem. Your pic could end up being used
For illegal purposes or identity theft. I hope everyone finds someone to end
The loneliness. Good luck.