Qianjiang Evening News·Hourly News Reporter Zhang Rong

With the emergence of various dating websites and social software, blind date has already taken advantage of the "Internet +" trend to create many new forms. tricks. However, in the colorful Internet ecosystem, it is inevitable that there will be a mixture of good and bad.

Xiaoli (pseudonym), a 31-year-old Wenzhou girl, was cheated out of 400,000 yuan in two days during an online blind date. Our reporter's investigation found that Xiaoli's experience is not an isolated case. The routines that breed illegal activities on the Internet around dating sites are hard to guard against. (Click here for details)

Modern youth are well aware of the risks of online dating, but why do they still rely on online blind dates? Does online dating have more romance or more pitfalls?

After trying various dating websites, two women in their 30s told reporters from the Qianjiang Evening News·Hour News about their experiences and feelings.

"Online dating is better than waiting at home, but I have always been vigilant"

Narrator: A Xuan, a 30-year-old freelance illustrator, has been using dating websites for two years

After graduate school, I became a freelance illustrator. As you can imagine, the number of people I can come into contact with every day is very narrow.

For a while, I often saw an overwhelming amount of advertisements for dating websites on the Internet. Sometimes, I can't help but go in and take a look.

That was three years ago. I was 27 years old and had been single for 27 years. During college and graduate school, I missed the most suitable times for falling in love, but what girl doesn't long for love?

I am actually an extrovert. If I meet a boy I like, I am willing to boldly take the first step towards him. But the life circle is so small, you can't expect that if you stay at home every day, a suitable partner will appear, right?

Perhaps because of the traces left behind when visiting the dating website, in 2017, a dating website called me. The caller said that a male member browsed my information online and was very interested in it and wanted to get to know me. I think it would be good to meet more friends of the opposite sex. I went to their offline physical store as scheduled, only to find out that this was just a cover, and the other party was just trying to recommend me to become a paid member. The cost was tens of thousands of yuan, which I thought was a bit expensive. At that time, I thought it would be better to socialize through the website.

Later, I registered accounts on Huatian.com, Jiayuan.com, Tantan and other social networking sites. For more than a year, I met twenty or thirty men of the right age.

The website did lead to the first love in my life, although it was only for a short three months.

The other person is the same age as me and is also in Hangzhou. He has always been very positive towards me. A week or two after we met, he asked for a relationship, and I hastily agreed. But in the later interactions, I found that he was a bit strong, and eventually we broke up due to personality incompatibility.

When choosing a mate, I don’t pay much attention to men’s qualifications. Compatibility is more important than annual salary and height. This first love may not be very beautiful, but it also made me grow.

Of course, on social networking sites, there are not only people who are sincere in choosing a spouse, I have also met some people with bad intentions. After chatting for a few words, some people started sending me links to gambling websites, and some people offered me "Amway" various beauty and skin care products. I will directly block these people and report them.

Online dating is a way for me to expand my social circle, but I have always been vigilant. Usually, after becoming a friend on WeChat, I will browse the other person's circle of friends to increase my understanding of the other person. But later I discovered that some people can even package their circle of friends.

In 2018, when I started to become disappointed with online social networking, MarryU.com called me. The routine was exactly the same as Zhenai.com a year ago. This time, compared with the low efficiency and lack of security of online social networking, I chose to trust the dating websites with professional matchmakers.

I purchased the most basic membership package of MarryU dating website - the fee is 9988 yuan, which provides personalized matching of 12 blind dates, and the matchmaker will provide real-time love guidance until receiving the marriage certificate.

A year later, I got married—but it had nothing to do with MarryU. There, I only met three blind dates. Either I didn't like each other, or they didn't like me. Then, my now-husband showed up and he was a friend of a friend.

Looking back, most of the people I met on the dating website were indeed sincere friends. Just like dating is just a way to get to know people, dating websites are just a tool to get to know others. As for what the future will bring, it is up to the individual to decide.

I think there are many ways to meet true love. However, it is impossible to expect the person in your mind to knock on the door every day at home.

"Most of them are fictitious love affairs and weird objects, and the dating websites are too unreliable"

Narrator: Xiaoning Media operator, 33 years old, has been using the dating website for four years

Dating websites are so unreliable that I have given up completely.

About four or five years ago, I registered an account on Huatian.com and embarked on the road of online dating. I met twenty or thirty people one after another, but most of them "died".

A blind date once asked me to have dinner. Every restaurant I proposed seemed expensive to him. In the end, he drove 20 kilometers to a Japanese restaurant that cost 50 yuan per person. In order to park in a free parking lot, he even took me for a spin several times. In fact, I don't mind paying for my date with AA, but it's so unbearable to meet someone so stingy.

There was another person who fell asleep directly in the cinema when we were watching the movie "Downton Abbey". For two hours, he slept soundly and snored, and everyone around him looked at us in surprise. At that time, I really wanted to tell them that I was not familiar with this person at all. As a result, this person woke up and asked me what the movie was about.

One blind date also left a deep impression on me. In order to ease the awkwardness, he said that he liked Deng Ziqi. After that, he sang me a song of Deng Ziqi's "Iron Lung Divine Comedy", while singing and slapping himself. He was counting the beats with his thighs. I was in his car at the time, and I was so embarrassed that I almost wanted to jump out of the car.

Last year, I also met a "lottery trustee". He built himself into a tall, rich and handsome man, and his life was full of emotions. Once, we chatted about his assets. He said that he was good at investing and made a lot of money on the lottery website, mainly because he cracked the password of the lottery board, and asked me to try it too. When it came to money, I subconsciously became wary, but since it was only a small investment of one or two thousand yuan, I started to try with a sense of luck.

At first, I did win some money, but soon after I started losing money, and I became suspicious of this person. Later, I accidentally discovered that a photo in his WeChat account actually had a watermark. I searched again and found that the photo was not his own, but that of other netizens on Weibo.

After being exposed by me, the other party not only showed no regrets, but told me a story about "catching a horse": the princess was trapped by a monster in the castle, and one day, there was a prince He said he wanted to rescue her, but the monster shed tears. In fact, the prince exchanged identities with the monster in order to save the princess. I was really speechless.

On a dating website, I also met a man who seemed pretty good. He drove a BMW and said he had a villa in Beijing. We dated a few times offline and it felt good, so we established a relationship. But since then, he has become a "non-existent boyfriend."

I am in Guangzhou and he is in Dongguan. The two cities are less than two hours' drive apart. But he always said that he was busy and could only see me once a month or two. When we didn't meet, he almost didn't contact me. This kind of inseparability made me intolerable, and finally, I broke up with him on WeChat. But it wasn't until a week or two later that I got the reply from the other party, "You can do whatever you want."

This is the "emptiness" that the dating website made me experience.

From beginning to end, we only had online understanding, but lacked real offline contact. I still don’t know whether the property he claimed he actually owned.

On the blind date website, there are even some people who deliberately look for a sense of superiority. Some people will sarcastically say when they see me, "You are a liar (you don't look as good as in the photo)", or "You don't look as good as you say."

There is a person who is very active on the Internet. A blind date man suddenly asked me via private message one day, "Who are you?" We had obviously dated, and I replied angrily, "Are you a bit disrespectful when you ask that?" His rhetorical question actually made me reflect, "Why are you so featureless and hard to remember?"

These strange things are indeed impressive, but I am looking for subjects, not story material. After meeting more of these people, my desire for blind dates has faded a lot.

Now, I have given up hope of relying on dating sites to find my partner. It is indeed unreliable, but for me, who is homely and slow-tempered, I can’t seem to find any other way to broaden my narrow social circle.

Eight years ago, I also had a relationship, but later because he moved to a different place, we naturally broke up. Now, he is married and has children.

In the past four or five years, I have seen more and more people getting married around me and fewer and fewer high-quality men of the right age. Sometimes I feel anxious about how I will live my life and whether I will be lonely. forever.

However, now that I am busy with work, I decided to put aside the matter of choosing a mate for the time being and wait and see whether my fate will come.

Do you think online dating is reliable? Welcome to talk in the comment area~