You and I Are Too Old To Pay a Dating App to Hide Our Age

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Brett Meliti on Unsplash

We’re a little long in the tooth to be hiding fake teeth

I won’t pay for a fake paint job just to snag company. By that I mean I’m not going to pay premium rates to an online dating service to withhold certain information until some poor bastard- bachelor- shows up for dinner.

I’d rather he doesn’t sucks his dentures down his throat to suddenly find out that I’m not thirty. For that matter I’d rather not suck my own dentures down my throat to find out he’s ninety instead of seventy.

Amiright or amiright?

Are we in the Tarnished Age of Dating, especially given the success of The Golden Cad? I mean Bachelor?

After the pseudo-success of that show, it will be back. Don’t know if you happened to follow up, but after the Hollywood Reporter unearthed a good deal of rather important dishonesty in our tarnished tallboy’s history, his catch was wary.

She’s a competitive gal, all right, she won. And she’s also smart enough to demand a pre-nup, which apparently led to some off-camera bickering. Don’t know if she got it. Their wedding was, to all accounts, a disappointing flop for viewers. Whether they last, who knows.

But arguing over a pre-nup? Really? If a divorce wipes her out she’s got to start all over at 70+. I’d want a pre-nup myself. From what I’ve read, he’s already shown himself to be dishonest in ways that made my skin crawl.

Still, I suspect that the widespread interest in the show will flow through the online dating industry. Give it a few months. I’ll bet the show has given renewed vigor, if not Viagra to online dating. Lots of women out there in search of the aging Chippendales star. Plenty of us oldies-but-goodies who are short on time, long in the tooth and in need of hope.

Let’s talk about those dating apps, shall we?

Many dating apps which, given the industry’s awful showing in the last several years, have moved towards premium memberships. I guess it wasn’t enough to charge you a hundred plus a year; now those sites want a great deal more just like the super-premium sites had all along.

A LOT more, in some cases, and the pricing has, in some cases, dunned older folks like me.

The Guardian reported that a while back, Tinder got in trouble for charging more based on age. In other words, those of us who are older, like much older, have to pay more, right about the time many are already struggling.

Tinder lost that argument:

Tinder’s stance is that it is giving younger members a better deal, rather than older members a worse one. To Allan Candelore, a Tinder user in California, this age-based pricing seemed unfair, and he launched a class action lawsuit.

Tinder argued that younger users have less money. But the judge stated at appeal: “No matter what Tinder’s market research may have shown about the younger users’ relative income and willingness to pay for the service, as a group, as compared to the older cohort, some individuals will not fit the mould. Some older consumers will be ‘more budget-constrained’. And less willing to pay than some in the younger group.”

Tinder settled the lawsuit for $17.3m (£12.4m) and agreed to stop pricing based on age, but only in California.

So if you’re being charged more because you’re grey, consider suing the bastards. They deserve it, the way I see it. I’m tired of being expected to pay more because some fool in marketing assumes that all us Boomer women got bequeathed estates in the Hamptons.

Also from that article, dating coach Kate Mansfield nails it here:

“You might think that paying for an elite or premier service is the answer but throwing money at this is the absolute worst thing that you can do because while you might expect to be buying access to premier quality dates, it is in fact the opposite – you are now paying to be in a pool of people who are also struggling to make dating and relationships work.” (author bolded)

Which is why one huge site is called Plenty of Fish. Like house guests, after three days, a great many of those fish stink. I was on there briefly. Out of pure curiosity I would check back a few months or years later, I’d see exactly the same people.

That was true on Match.com as well. Years later, the same folks, same photos, no updates.

You might argue that I also must stink, if I wasn’t able to find a match after decades on that site. I dated, even fell in love a few times. Life happened. Happened hard, in fact. But I did try.

Maybe I do stink. I aged, right? That seems to be the biggest offense of all.

I updated my photos each time I found myself single again. Not surprisingly, the moment I passed fifty you can guess what happened. After sixty, bwahahahahahaha!

I made the mistake of putting updated, accurate photos out there and I did not fudge my age. Kiss of death, apparently for most online looky-loos. Fit guys my age and older only wanted girls 18-35.

That alone is just one reason why The Golden Bachelor appealed. We weren’t watching the Hollywood version of love, putting a 60 yo man with a 20 yo ingenue and calling it a reasonable pairing. This was age meets age, albeit not without considerable plastic surgery for the girls.

The Guardian article is from 2021 but gives you a clue where things were starting to head (south, frankly). People - this author included - were already leaving the platforms in droves due to the widespread lying, scams, and horror stories.

Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash

Some 80% of folks lie on their profiles about everything from money to job to marital status to hair. All of it. From a way to meet-cute to a way to go-puke, online dating went sour. Millions of us soured on the process.

Now here’s an outright shocker, from this CBS story:

According to a survey on college students' dating views from Axios and The Generation Lab, nearly 80% of respondents said they do not using (sic) dating apps regularly. Over half said they met their partners in person, compared to 15% who said they met on a dating app. 

Imagine that. Meeting in person. Shocking, actually. What on earth is the world coming to?

There was a time when it appeared that all future matches were going to happen online, until hoaxers, predators, scammers and just plain really horrible people flooded those sites.

The worst is that so many older people, folks in my age bracket, got scammed over and over until it became a real problem.

The elderly are a prime target for scams, and they are a prime target for dating sites because my cohort is lonely. That is a perfect match made in hell for one hell of a lot of aging folks and it’s getting worse, not better.

Lest you think this only applies to the elderly, please see this article from The New York Times which outlines that younger people are more susceptible to scams in general, not just dating.

From that Times article:

…scammers succeed more often with the stressed and the lonely. If you are either, stay wary. (author bolded)

So these online dating companies now think it’s a good idea to start charging us MORE, when these outfits are just chock-full of predators and parasites?

FOR WHAT? Where are the guardrails and protections? If we’re going to pay for premium services, then the way I see it, we deserve serious protection.

Like a super-thick, impermeable online condom.

One of the pieces from CBS reports:

"Users are often looking for additional support and efficiency with getting out on dates, and subscriptions empower them with additional tools on their dating journey," the company said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

Another dating app called The League costs $400 for three months. For that price, members are shown five prospects daily, can hide their age on their profiles, scout prospects from two cities at once and receive other perks. 

Does anyone else get the willies when you read those bolded points, when it comes to scammers, serial cheaters and worse?

Photo by Alberto Sharif Ali Soleiman on Unsplash

I do. Not for myself, but for millions of vulnerable, lonely people, which describes a great many widows and widowers. People who can’t afford to be fleeced.

Even for those who aren’t vulnerable in that regard, the sites provide too many opportunities to be dishonest and disappointed.

As for hiding age, look. People are eventually going to find out. One friend lied about her age for a good long time, used Botox and dyed her hair religiously.

Every single time the guy found out, she got dumped. She refused to get the message. She wanted what she wanted (young, handsome, rich) and she had aged out of that market.

There’s always that, when we overprice ourselves for the market we want to play in. We have a terrible time understanding how we are seen, and how we’re valued, which is a cause for real pain in the online world. Had she met any one of those people in everyday life, without the flimflammery of the dating company setups (which cost her ten grand, mind you), things might have turned out differently.

I understand the discomfort we all have with our ages. I also understand the judgment which comes with it, which

Dr. Carey Yazeed

wrote about in her own after-fifty dating experiences. It just seems to me that if we meet in real life from the beginning, those rules favor honesty.

The older we are, the more we have a right to know what we’re getting into. I’d like fair warning about bubonic plague, a history of disappearing spouses, a long string of court judgments against them, you know. Small stuff.

Still.

Some people sound like they want the dating apps to do all the hard work and just hand over the finished product, along with wedding planner recommendations.

This is like Siri for dating.

Siri already does everything shy of wiping our butts for us- give her time- why not do ALL the work of relationship-building, trust and intimacy as well?

Hey, give me a Stepford Wife/Husband/Partner and I’ll take fries with that.

Photo by Sam Pearce-Warrilow on Unsplash

But wait, there’s more. There’s plenty to mock when it comes to the highest-end apps. The Washington City Paper did a piece on the top thirteen “luxury” dating apps which of course intends to weed out all the wannabes who don’t have enough yachts.

I’m sure the billionaires will need to weed out all those cheap millionaire hangers-on, so there will be new apps just for them.

Eventually the trillionaires will need to weed out all those cheap billionaire pretenders, so there will be new apps just for them.

At some point we will end up with just a few uber uber UBER rich who have inbred to the point where they have horrifying faces, bad teeth, and bleed if you look at them the wrong way (hemophilia is another by-product of keeping it in the family) and maybe include a few sexual deviants.

Okay, a lot of sexual deviants.

Wait. We already had that. It’s called royalty.

For my dating dollar, and I’m cheap these days, I’ll settle for that cute guy at the YMCA who does handstands.

I don’t know anyone in his family. He’s got good teeth.

Okay, maybe they’re dentures. Like mine.

I’ll tell him if it comes to that. If not, I’ll just enjoy the scenery.

Let’s play.

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

I hope you got a seriously good chuckle about a seriously ridiculous situation which has some important implications for aging alone. If so, please consider

If you know someone who is desperate about dating and this might make them think twice about investing their life’s savings in finding The One, please also consider

Either way, if you’re happily connected, be happy. If not, be careful. No, really. Be careful. Oh, and tell that someone to check out the local dog rescue. It might be cheaper in the long run and they don’t leave the seat up.