Virtual dating assistants let men 'outsource' online dating

"I'm going to need those letters to 'prep' for our date!" Laura-Beth/Flickr

As if men weren’t lazy enough, now they’ve not only got someone to write their online profiles but they’ve got people screening their dates and corresponding with women too! In fact, that hot “guy” could, in essence, be the girl-next-door; literally.

VirtualDatingAssistants.com, a new online company, takes Cyrano de Bergerac to a whole new letter writing level (for a hefty price tag of $480 per month). That’s enough to pay for several chaste dates, with a twenty-something from the Austen Jane dating service!

So far, Virtual Dating Assistants is the first and only company designed to allow busy male professionals to fully outsource their online dating. The service swings into action on June 10th.

The company's virtual dating assistants will use "advanced internet dating techniques and strategies to create online dating profiles, interact with women and set up dates with them" on behalf of cash-rich, time-poor men worldwide that don't have time to do it themselves, according to a press release announcing the launch. 

Assistants will spend 40-hours a month per client combing personal ads looking for love. The site guarantees each guy a minimum of two dates or his money back. Who knew love had a refund?

So what’s a single gal to do to not fall in love with an imposter? You could turn to the genie, the Gender Genie.

Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. You can copy and paste your love-emails into the Gender Genie and it will guesstimate the gender of the writer.

Theory has it female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself) whereas male writers use words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more).

Some of the other female keywords include: with, if, not, where, be, should. Some of the other male keywords include: around, what, are, as, it, said.

Still, the Gender Genie may not be right-on-the-money. And even if it is a male writer, that doesn’t mean it’s the same male e-whispering sweet nothings as it is on the other side of that coffee shop table.

I suppose you can’t blame a guy for needing a little nudge or wanting to make a great impression.

If you’re gun-ho on catching a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you could always bring up portions of the email in person and see if he’s up-to-speed. You could also drop a fact or two you didn’t mention in one of your in-person chats and see if he pretends to follow suit. Remember, he may also not remember if he’s emailed (or paid someone to email) various women. I guess you could ultimately be flattered… at $480 a month per two-date guarantee, meeting you already cost him a whopping $240.

Is it just me or is it too much? Not the price tag, the concept. What happened to putting a little effort? I thought men liked to hunt. Can’t he just, you know, pay for dinner and let the buck stop there?