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I surfed my way to the newest trend in online dating, the matchmaker. With the traditional online dating sites all but dead in the water (the pool so diluted with outdated and unlikely profiles and the costs of memberships disturbingly out of sync with the features being offered) the new movement afoot is to produce personalized matchmaking services. It used to be the perception that such things for the rich (the so-called millionaires clubs) and maybe that hasn’t changed that much. But at least these “concierge” services are being offered to the general public at a price.

I’ve never been a big fan of online dating. Online has become a realm for people to engage in fantasy, to indulge in idealized personas and doctored photographs. If you can dream it, it can be a reality online. Call it the world-of-warcraft syndrome. You create a fiction, breath life into it, and live vicariously through the fantasy by logging on every evening. Your creation can earn a virtual degree, lock horns with a dragon, or finally be rid of that pesky incurable STD.

It’s a scary world we have embraced. Think of it as an extension of the American dream. Anyone can be famous, wealthy, successful. Well, now you can, at least virtually.

The problem is this kind of environment creates impossible situations to foster a relationship of honesty and integrity. Sure, if you’re only looking to get laid, then craigslist offers endless choice, and if you can fulfill a fantasy or be fulfilled so much the better. But conventional dating cannot exist in a world where the terms are changed at the whim of a Save button. If you find someone who portrays themselves honestly, they are largely undesirable. And thus the dating pool has become one where every guy is ripped, every girl is busty and the entire world is created in the visionary perfection of A Shot of Love.

What then to do with the new breed of matchmaking services for the average person (which, it’s worth noting, are still costly, starting upwards of $5000 for decent personalized attention and rocketing to $25,000 memberships for the chalupa of concierge service)? Because on the one hand, personalized matching purports to remove the fantasy from the equation. People are stripped down to their mortal skins, sure still presented in the best light, but backed by honesty agreements that the matchmaking company says you are what you claim to be. On the other hand, these kind of services are all about marketing; transforming you into a top shelf vodka. Doesn’t that play into the fantasy element as richly as creating a dating profile of yourself that is patently dishonest?

Maybe I’m being cynical, but this doesn’t have to be a rhetorical question. If you want to know the caliber of any dating site, with personalized matching or just traditional pile of profiles, just browse through them. If the guys are all shirtless, ripped, describing themselves as “average” when they are clearly “athletic” you know you are being taken. Let me tell you something, maybe fabulously handsome guys do need online dating to make a relationship, but they aren’t looking to date you.

My lack of success with online dating is directly tied to the fact that I don’t play to the fantasy very well. I was never very good at dressing myself up in a profile. Honestly, I’m not totally comfortable with the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with falling in love with my profile first before meeting me. It seems to me that the expectations will skyrocket to levels that cannot possibly be fulfilled (assuming I do a good enough job of selling myself.) And if I’m not honest in how I portray myself, I can hardly expect anything different from my match on the other end.

It’s a horrible cycle. If I’m honest, I’m too doughy, too cynical, too intellectual, too anything to land a date. And if I pretend I’m not any of those things, then I’m alone, unmatched. I have my integrity but at a cost.

For people like me, guys to whom an “average” build isn’t modesty, guys who are without aspirations for fame or fantasy, personalized matchmaking services are no better than just posting my profile on some random dating site. I don’t need a dating concierge to tell me to lay off the chocolate cake. Maybe in the end my failure with the online dating scene boils down to the fact that never in my wildest fantasy do I imagine myself meeting someone through internet. Online is a realm where anything we can imagine is possible, but that’s one step that’s beyond my imagination.

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