Why I hate EHarmony and their “Culture of Sameness”

I often get asked about my brief experience with eHarmony and why I didn’t keep up with it.  Well, I wrote a review about it and here is an extended excerpt.  You can read the whole thing at http://lunch.com/t/sby

Yes.  I admit it.   I did a short eHarmony “experiment” and the results are in. I am convinced that Dr. Warren has created a ‘culture of sameness’ where individuals are looking for replicas of themselves to date. Repeated exposure to certain ideals creates a “culture” and eHarmony is really great at this. 

1. The 29 Levels of Compatibility – they advertise this, they PATENTED this, they emphasize this to the point where you can’t browse potential matches and pick someone interesting. THEY send you matches based on the 29 Levels stuff and all 29 are a secret that no one gets to know, but compatibility (sameness) is what’s pitched.

2. Guided Communication – this starts with the profile and then the decision to enter into communication. Most people pick the canned questions with multiple choice answers and breeze through the first part.  Then there are lists of things you like and don’t like, they are called “Must Haves and Can’t Stands”.  A little dramatic don’t you think?  Then it’s more questions for a couple of rounds before you enter (cue angels singing) OPEN COMMUNICATION.

The thing with all of the steps is that the whole process encourages looking at a human being like data on a spreadsheet. They ask “what makes you more nervous” and you answer “speaking in front of an audience” – she closes your profile b/c she wants a people-person with confidence. Blah.

Let’s examine three situations where I went through the entire Guided Communication and see how they turned out. The real ironic farce here is that after all of that work online, you finally meet and you STILL know nothing about each other. I digress, I correct myself, I move on…let’s go…

via Why I hate EHarmony and their “Culture of Sameness”.

Please click the link to read my entire review at lunch.com.