So I've joined two popular black dating websites in hopes of recharging my dating life. I figure if I'm a member of more than one site I'll increase my odds. Smart right?
So what's the difference between a black dating website and mainstream ones? Well, for one the black sites seem to be more affordable than Match, E-Harmony and other more popular sites. The black sites may not have a lot of the same cool features but there's a larger pool of black singles in my area to choose from than a mainstream site.
I've been doing the online thing for about a month now and so far I have two half-potentials. I haven't met either yet but I have been talking on the phone with both and have made plans to meet one already. I'm a little disappointed by the lack of variety of men there are online. Yes, I have about 10 times more to choose from than other sites but lets do the math.
- While using the ever so handy search tool, by the time I filter out black men between the ages of 25-37 within a 100 mile radius with no children that pool quickly narrowed down to about half of it's size.
- Then after you've skipped over profiles with usernames like PNastee, WETUMUP, just4thenite, Mr.Perfect or "Knight in shining armor" (as if!), gnasty, datoecurler, Pussikilla or any name that includes part of or all of the name of a hip hop artist or song.
- Excluding folks who don't even bother to fill out their profiles only offering you "I'll tell u later" in the "About me" section.
- Profiles that are written in complete slang, all caps, broken English (uses "c," "u," "da," "4," and other characters to replace words instead of writing complete sentences like a grown man should) are automatically excluded.
- Men who are posed half naked, in front of their cars, showing off their chains, wears fronts, throwing up hands signs that are other than "Peace" or thinks Dipset is the greatest hip hop group of all time.
- Men who are looking for "casual relationships" which is man code for booty call. Those take up about half of the search results to start with.
After all of this your pool of men has turned into a pitiful puddle. About the same size you would get standard on mainstream sites.
Now I'm not saying that the females on these sites are much better. Talking to my two "half-potentials" they too run into a lot of women that turn them off from the gate. Where there are brothas who have kids there's just as many sistas who have kids. One of my "potentials", who is single with no children and kids being where he draws the line with women, says most of the black women on the site have one or more kids. He also complained that a lot are really out of shape because he states that he takes pride in his body running three miles a day and wants someone who does the same. He too was just as frustrated with the lack of proper grammar and the ability to even "string a sentence" together properly followed by the limited interests black women seem to have on the site.
So because I was curious (and wanted to check out my competition) I decided to check out the women's profiles. If anything just to prove this dude wrong. The common thread among these profiles:
One or more kids, lazy grammar, bitterness with "no games," "real man," "imma real woman" (a whole lot of "real"), "strong black woman who needs a strong black man," "wifey material" (I hate that one the most) and other cliches invented by single black women throughout their profiles.
Geez.
Where are all the dateable black folks at?
