Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
PAYING BIG BUCKS JUST TO GET A DATE
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Jaimee joins Ross to discuss "high-end" matchmakers, including Ross' first hand experience with one (a low-end one). Tangents include: the danger of single people "work-arounds"; sofa analogies; Brooke Shields; pig analogies; kleptomania; Applebees; unwieldy coffee tables; fabric benches; rude bill collectors.
Notes:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/style/what-its-like-to-work-with-a-matchmaker.html?searchResultPosition=1
- https://www.vidaselect.com/high-end-matchmaker/
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
My conclusion at the end of all of this, and I've been leaning this way for some time, because I've been out there now like four years. That's a long time to be in the dating pool and not find somebody. And my conclusion is that no one can love this sack of salt. Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today my guest is so rare. If she were a coin, she would be a 1787 Brasher Gold Dubloon. It's Jamie. Yeah, of course you would. Welcome, Jamie. Welcome everyone. Friend, help us grow our little community. We need you to help us by sharing the show. If you like what we're doing and you want us to keep doing it, then let's grow this thing. Let's share the love with the world. Now, Jamie, I want to talk about today's show, but I need to tell you that I dropped a table on my arm yesterday.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know how it is when you live by yourself and you're doing you need something done in your house. You have to have you come up with these workarounds. Yep. Yes, you could call somebody. Yes, maybe you have a neighbor, yes, yes, yeah, all the things. But a lot of times you're just like, I just want to get this.
SPEAKER_04Sure, you can do it by yourself.
SPEAKER_02I think I got a way.
SPEAKER_04Surely I got this.
SPEAKER_02I've got a series of pulleys and winches, and this thing's gonna work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02How can it go wrong?
SPEAKER_04What could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER_02And you find yourself like on two high ladders, reaching too far over, doing all kinds of weird stuff that you wouldn't do if you had someone there to help you out. So I have this really heavy glass coffee table, but it's not so much that it's heavy, it's weirdly shaped. It's like unusual, it's like an amoeba shape, and you can't just pick it up. It's too wide, it's weird, it's ungainly, unwieldy, if you will.
SPEAKER_05I like that.
SPEAKER_02So I came up with a system. So I'm trying to put down a rug pad under this rug because you gotta have a rug pad, otherwise it's slip and slide. Yeah, and that's no good. No, that's another thing you don't want to do when you live by yourself. You don't want to crack up in your own joint because no one will find you. I mean, they'll find you eventually. Like when you owe money to somebody, they'll come and find your bones.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you know, that'll happen, but not when you need it. So I put I'm putting down a rug pad, so I gotta move this ungainly, unwieldy coffee table, glass, solid glass. So I came up with a system where I have this fabric bench.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01Do you love the sound of that?
SPEAKER_04A fabric bench.
SPEAKER_01I have a fabric bench.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01Are you liking it?
SPEAKER_04Oh, digging it.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So it's just about the right height, so I figure I can slide that over. I can uh slide this solid glass piece up on top of the fabric bench where it will balance. Then I slide the whole thing away, take the rug up, put the new rug pad down, put the rug back, slide everything back, and the glass tape, the glass top sits on this little wooden frame. So I do it. So I do the work around. I'm so proud of myself because normally to move this table, I have to have the help of somebody else. Sure. And even then, it's kind of hard because the thing is heavy, and like people are like, oh yeah, no problem. And the thing, I don't know how much it weighs, but it weighs a lot more than you think glass should ever weigh. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, but it's unwieldy. So I get it off, everything's done. I'm slide it back on to the wood frame. It's all good. You did it, but it's wobbling, it looks a little wobbly, and I look down, and there's a place where the wood frame joins together that's become un, it's like it's not quite seated. It's wonked, it's wonked, and I and it just needs to seat itself. So I think probably in my brain, probably the right thing to do is just move the glass piece back onto the fabric bench.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I mentioned that to you.
SPEAKER_02So if I move it back, I can fix the base, the wooden base, and then slide the glass back. And I think this in my head, but this is the person living alone mindset. You think, yeah, but I can probably just wiggle it. I can jimmy it. Uh-huh. So I start wiggling the base, and immediately the table comes crashing down on the top of my wrist. And it hurts a lot. Yeah. But not only that, two other things happen. One, now this glass table's on the ground. It's not broken, but it's not on the ground, and so now there's no chance of I can never lift it again.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna have to get like three or four movers in there now. But not only that, the humiliation of that gone wrong, my wrist is like puffing up like a mofo. Like the Michelin man. Yeah, like immediately. It's like, come on, give me like at least 30 seconds of of fantasy that maybe I'm not hurting. Right. And it's like poof. So anyway, is that you have ever done the workaround? I have definitely the one person workaround.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Uh when when me and my ex broke up, uh, I was hanging up um uh, you know, like those sliding barn doors. Oh yeah, those sliding doors like rail and yeah, so they slide back and forth.
SPEAKER_03Those are cool.
SPEAKER_04They're really cool and very heavy, turns out.
SPEAKER_03So they look heavy, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I was trying to hang it up by myself, like lift this whole ass barn door up. You know, I just had to lift it like four inches to get the wheel on top of the rail, right? And so I came up with this brilliant plan. Brilliant, where I had like four wooden planks, right? And so I like lifted it up a couple inches and stuck one plank under, and then I lifted it up a you know, so the one end was lifted high enough that I could get the the left side wheel up above the rail. So I got that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Great. And now I just have to lift up the other end to get the other wheel onto the sliding railway. What could go what could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER_02Sounds like a solid workaround to me.
SPEAKER_04It worked pretty good, except for I definitely dropped it on my big toe. Ouch. And it was bad. It was really bad.
SPEAKER_02Big toe drop. No, I've had that. It's very painful.
SPEAKER_04It hurts so bad. Uh I did get the I got it up uh after I dropped it on my uh Oh, you went back from morning. Oh yeah, I did. Uh and it worked. I got it up, but uh I definitely lost that toenail, and it's never quite been the same.
SPEAKER_02I've had that too. It's a constant reminder of I've lost a toenail and it comes back weird. It's not good. You don't want that weird comeback now. It's it's weird, it's embarrassing. You feel weird out at the pool because people like no matter what else you're doing, they'll stop. Look, they'll look down at that toenail. What happened to your toenail?
SPEAKER_04Well, it was a workaround.
SPEAKER_02It was a workaround. So, those of you out there who listen to us who live by yourself, you know exactly what we're talking about. And yeah, you could get help, but sometimes that's a hassle. Sometimes it's late at night.
SPEAKER_04And you just want it done immediately.
SPEAKER_02I just want it done. And I was like two clicks away from being so proud of myself, but I was able to get this done all by myself because I don't know if I mentioned this. It's an unwieldy glass tabletop and I had a fabric bench. So we know that finding love can be difficult. Yeah, we talk a lot about that on this show. It's a recurring theme because humans are constantly dealing with it. This is something, this is like one of the central things that every human being deals with is trying to get love in the world. If you're really looking for your person and you are selective, it can be one dead end after another. If you're just looking for a hot moment, there's tons of that out there.
SPEAKER_04Easy.
SPEAKER_02But, you know, if you're looking for something more than that, and by the way, if that's all you're looking for, I got no problem with it. But if you're looking for more than that, it can be very, very discouraging. We've talked about the apps before in the show more than once, and how for most people they don't really work and they can be a soul-sucking experience. So today I don't want to talk about that. What I want to talk about is these high-end dating services.
SPEAKER_04I don't know what you mean by that, but I'm listening.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna chat you up. I'm gonna put some fabric on your bench. Wow. It sounds bad, but it's sounds bad, but it's sounds bad, but this is what I'll be saying to your partner. I know it sounds bad, but it's really not bad. That's not a conversation I want to have. Matchmakers. I'm talking about matchmakers. Matchmakers. What a racket this is. Oh my gosh. This is a racket, and the more I learned about it, some of it firsthand, because I'd tried one. I actually tried one.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Now, one of us is not on the dating market currently. One of us is happily partnered. Yes. And one of us, to put it euphemistically, is like that ratty curb sofa that nobody picks up. You know, that busted up joint sitting up there on the curb. That, you know, people will take anything that's free, but there's always that one crappy sofa that people like, you know. It's kind of wet. I don't know what those stains are, and I don't want to know. Like, send this to a DNA lab and don't return it. Like, if it doesn't come with a black light, I can't use it. So, how does it feel, by the way, to not be out there? Do you feel smug?
SPEAKER_04Do you ever feel smug? I feel a little bit smug, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think a lot of people who are partnered up feel smug about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. They can't help. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They can't help not only feeling smug, but giving their single friends a little advice.
SPEAKER_04I feel mostly smug because our relationship is like really good. Like we very rarely fight. We just have like a great time together. We have no stress because we don't have kids or are never we're never planning to have them. So it's just like easy breezy. So I try not to talk about it too much because I am smug.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's okay to be smug. I think you know, if you don't have kids and you don't have money problems, those are the two sources of stress in almost every uh relationship.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Money, kids. Yeah. If you don't have current money issues where you're worried about making your bills and feeding yourself, and if you don't have kids to worry about, it's you're kind of just calling it easy street. You're on easy street, and and you've known your person long enough where you have your routine, you know, you know, like he gets it when you've got to go and sit in the bathtub and you can't be disturbed.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02But what is that called? Your recovery time?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, my like my my solitude or like yeah, your fortress of solitude.
SPEAKER_02You floating in rose petals and scented water, and nobody better knock on the door. Don't talk to me. Don't talk to me and don't bring your bullshit in here because this is my time.
SPEAKER_01Go get me a chicken leg.
SPEAKER_02If you were dating right now, if you can imagine yourself single for the moment.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I'm picturing it.
SPEAKER_02How would you how do you think you would do it?
SPEAKER_04Man, I really feel like now you kind of have to do the online. I don't Yeah. Although I do hate leaving my house, so then I would have to like go.
SPEAKER_02You would have to go.
SPEAKER_04I was just thinking about this the other day, actually, like when I was single and I would have to like go on like first dates and how oh how awful that was, and you have to like talk yourself into it a little bit, and then you get there, and they're usually bad, you know, when it's this like not not always good, not always good, or they don't look like their picture. That's that's very common. Yeah, they're yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's a lot of work, a lot of work, it's a lot of effort. The older you get, the more you really have to rely on either the benevolence of friends recommending people, which almost never happens to me, anyway, because people who know me are like, uh no. And then the other thing are the apps. When you're younger, it's easy to meet people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the older you're going out all the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're out in the world and you're surrounded by people who are just like you. They're single, young and attractive.
SPEAKER_04Young, attractive, and there's a bunch of them all in the same area because you're going like to a club or something that's a ton of people.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yes. It's like you're interested in bacon and you're at a pig farm. Yes. And it's like everywhere you look, there's pork.
SPEAKER_04That's right. Pork on the hoof.
SPEAKER_02So that's those opportunities shrink. And then the other thing that happens as you get older, you don't want to hang out at those places. No, you know, it's like uh it sounds miserable. It's it is, it is it is, and just going through it, you know. So the apps, you know, whatever. But there are these high-end dating services. You start thinking about this because there are ads for these places all over the place. If you look, if you're single, you notice them. So you pay some amount of dough, and that dough can range dramatically. Okay. And the idea is now you have a matchmaker who's actually going to look for somebody who you want would want to hang out with.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And the hope is when you join one of these little clubs or whatever they call them, your hope is that somehow these people have tapped into a secret reservoir of single people that you otherwise would not have access to just using the apps or your own eyeballs or pork scents.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02Now we live in the Portland area, and there's about two and a half million people in the greater metropolitan area, and I have dated all of them. I've dated everyone here.
SPEAKER_04Every single one.
SPEAKER_02I've dated every single man, woman, and child.
SPEAKER_04Oh no.
SPEAKER_02A lot of it's illegal, but I'm freely admitting it. I just want you to know I'm trying.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'll date anybody, anything. I've gone out with a couple of dogs, which is pretty nice, actually. I'm not I'm not being pejorative here. I mean actual dogs.
SPEAKER_04Actual, fuzzy little animals.
SPEAKER_02Four footers, four-legged creatures. They're kind of fun. Oh, I had another dog dream last night. Did you? Yeah, I was cuddling with a dog.
SPEAKER_04We need to get you a dog.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You know, the hope is that well, they they have access to people that I I that just aren't out that are not available on the common market.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They're not in the marketplace of humanity that I'm fishing in.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You quickly learn when you join one of these, and I joined one, and I can't remember how much I paid, but it wasn't cheap. It was like probably around maybe $2,000.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And what you buy a plan. So this bought me like this plan where I could meet some number of people and there was no time limit.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I could stretch it out forever.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_02You the only cap was at some point if you keep turning down the offers or you're you reject the dates, that some point you run out of the number, whatever it was.
SPEAKER_04Is it that you reject them before you meet them?
SPEAKER_02Well, you get a certain number of uh I you know you can look at their profile ahead of time and there's a certain number of rejections you get. Okay. Yeah, you can say, No, I don't even want to go on the date.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_02And then after so many of those, they start counting them as dates. Because you because eventually they they either want to get you hooked up with somebody or they just want you to go away. Right. So, but they're all different in what their caps are. So this one offered for like $2,000. I got so many dates, so many rejections over time, and it really lasted a long time. This uh this deal that I made. And I thought it was a lot of money. I turned it turns out later this was the bottom of the barrel that I was doing. So basically, you pay this upfront fee, and you get, you supposedly get someone who you know, they interview you and they find out all the things you're looking for, the characteristics in a person, everything you like, and what your personal interests are. And then the idea is that they're going out and they have this group of people that they either are already have in their community or they go find them and they say, Here's here's this person. It's exactly the what you're looking for. Yeah. And they show you the picture, and then if you say yes, you go on a date to a place, you know, that they have or made an arrangement with, you know, the company's got an arrangement, and it's usually kind of a middle level kind of restaurant, sort of a place, nothing fancy, but nothing, it's not McDonald's, it's not Applebee's, but it's kind of like Applebee's adjacent. Okay. It's you know, okay. Yeah. You go on the date, and then there's you have feedback and you talk to your matchmaker how it went and what you liked, what you didn't like, and you go on from there. So my thought was if I'm paying, you know, if everybody has to pay to get into this game, at least unlike the apps, which are free for a lot of people. I know you can do paid app paid versions of the apps, but a lot of people are on for free. They have no skin in the game. It's like, so that's why you get a lot of jokers on the apps, you get a lot of posers, you get a lot of people who aren't serious, they just want to flirt, they want to fish, they want to do whatever they're doing, but it's never going to turn into anything. But here, somebody's I've if somebody laid out the green, I'm thinking, well, they're probably as serious as I am, at least trying to find somebody. I find out later that a lot of the a lot of the people they get haven't paid. Uh they're just trying to build up their stable, so to speak.
SPEAKER_04Gotcha.
SPEAKER_02Get more pigs in the pigs on the farm. And I include myself in this category of pigs on the farm. I just want to make sure you know I'm not calling anyone a name. It's just we're all poor.
SPEAKER_03We're all pigs.
SPEAKER_02We're all pigs, we're all future slabs of bacon. So, and what's wrong with that? Nothing. I'd like to be a rasher of bacon on somebody's plate. That's my pickup line, by the way. Can I be a rasher of bacon on your breakfast plate, ma'am? That's how it works. And they hope that you actually find somebody right away. They make their money in two ways. One, you find somebody right away.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Or two, you go away. But the way they don't make money is if you are holding on to dear life to all of the agreed-on meetups that they promised you, and they have to keep working and looking for anybody who might possibly fit your profile. Yeah. I will say 90% of the people that I met through this service were very nice people.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02And they did meet my superficial characteristics, my requests. So whatever you write down, I like kayaking. They'll find somebody who also says that. And whether they actually do or not, they say they do. So they're nice people. And I felt truthfully they were a little bit better than the average app date that you meet, where it's like, you're not even the per you don't even look like the person on the It's like, when was that picture? Is that a picture of you or what is that? But you know, the the problem, the challenge is the same, whether it's an app or whether it's a paid service, and that is the spark, the connection. There's no there's no way to know if you're gonna have a connection with somebody. And normally when you meet someone organically, you you know, learn to learn about them over time, and you learn what's interesting about them, and you find yourself maybe being fascinated with that person. But on an app or on a dating service, even if everything looks perfect on paper, you have no way of knowing that is this person actually someone I would like to hang out with. And do it, do they give me the spark? Or do they have a really weird, obnoxious laugh?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's like, oh geez, I can't no, I can't live with that.
SPEAKER_03No more fat on a blender. I can't live with that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But it I did find it to be a cut above, but I do want the spark. So I was one of these people who just kept rejecting all the people. So I'd either reject them out of hand because they'd show me a picture of someone, and I you know, it's a dating service. Right. So I I feel like it's okay to say this is not my type. Sure. Because everybody has a type or types. Yeah. And some you some people just don't like certain types. Yep. You only like what you like. You like what you like. And I feel like that's okay. And so I was making some choices up front. Like I just know that I'm sure this person's wonderful and I see that they match every single characteristic I wrote, every single thing, down to like, you know, basket weaving or whatever. It's like, oh, they like everything I like. And I'm sure they're a delightful human, but I just don't see it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, you walk down the street and you're not attracted to every person.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's just the way it is. So the more selective you are, the more they have to work, the less money they make, the lower their profit. So I you start becoming a profit sucker. And then they stop liking you so much. The matchmaker. Yeah. Because at the beginning they love, they love you so much. Oh, sure. They think you're so great and they're so happy and they're so positive. And then you start being selective and they realize, oh no, they're these guys squeezing all the profits out of this deal. He's getting he's getting his money's worth out of us. This is no good. And once they realize I wasn't just gonna settle for any like bag of protoplasm they dragged past me, you know, let's drag this by the tent and see if he goes for it. When it when they found out that I wasn't going for that low-hanging fruit, and normally you know I like the low-hanging fruit. But when I wasn't going for it, then they started to strong arm me a little bit.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02You ever get a bill collector after you?
SPEAKER_04Never. Oh man, they can be I'm very responsible.
SPEAKER_02Well, sometimes stuff goes wrong that you don't you can't control, and those bill collectors, they are nasty.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I remember one was calling me and it doesn't even matter why, but I didn't actually owe the money, but there was a mistake, and they wouldn't let me explain it. Like they say, hello, so-and-so. We're calling about this bill. I said, Yeah, yeah. I talked to the I talked to the store and I explained, and like before I could finish, like that I had already talked to the store and we'd already come to an agreement, that interrupts me and goes, When are you gonna pay, Ross?
SPEAKER_00When are you gonna pay?
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, you've got to be responsible in your life. This person screaming at me from some cubicle somewhere in the world, and they're like just assuming that I'm deadbeat Johnny.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02And it's like, wow, what? And they and and then it's like you it's one of those conversations that's never a conversation, it's all about them intimidating you and just yelling at you. Uh-huh. They started showing me. So in the beginning, they were showing me very like, unlike the apps, they were showing me current close-up pictures of the potential people. So you could like, yeah, okay, good. This is looks like a what a real person looks like. This is a great picture. Then suddenly the pictures start being like the app pictures, they're blurry, they're far away. You know, those far away you've seen like on your friends. Yeah, there's a really bunch of people in it. Oh, the bunch of people. That's that's a whole nother one. It's like, guess which one I am? Yeah, probably not the one you want. And then they have the faraway ones where they're like standing in front of a mountain somewhere, and you're like, see this little speck. Is that a person? I don't know. Right. Could be a cactus. So uh, and then they started showing, they wouldn't show me pictures. So this is where it got really weird. So they I would say, Well, I like to see a picture. Say, we have a match for you, and they they'd have a description, and they always want to talk to you. Like, I just want to do it on email. Like, I don't need to but they want to talk to you because now they need to strong arm you. So they said, Well, we want to talk to you first before we show you a picture. So they're talking to me about the person. I'm like, Well, that sounds great, but I need to see a picture, right? And they'd say, like, well, you know, Ross, you know, Ross. You know, most relationships that last are not superficial. They're based on like, and I go, I know, like, just let me see. Uh-huh. I just want to know. Right. They would get angry if I insisted on seeing the pictures, and then they would lecture me on how dating works. And when you get to be a certain age, you kind of know.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02You know what you do, you know what the world does.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't think I don't think my problem is like, I don't get how dating works. And then finally, after the strong arming didn't work, because I still kept saying, Well, I'm not going out with people that I don't want to go out with.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm sorry, but I'm being selective. Then they just gave up. They just disappeared. They went away. They ghosted.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I'd already it had been in like You ran through all your matches. I didn't go through all of them, but I even told them, I go, you know, we don't have to do this anymore.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, this isn't working.
SPEAKER_02You don't like me. I'm not crazy about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So they kind of just ghosted out, and I was okay with it until a couple of days ago when I got a phone call from the company.
SPEAKER_01And they wanna give me a new service. They want me to sign up for a new service. Uh-huh. It's their lux service.
SPEAKER_04Oh la la.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it's more money.
SPEAKER_04Uh-huh. Of course it is.
SPEAKER_02It could be as much as twenty thousand dollars. But guess what I get?
SPEAKER_05What?
SPEAKER_02Same thing. I get a matchmaker who really cares about me. Oh, wonderful. And they're this time they're really gonna try.
SPEAKER_04Ah, not like last time.
SPEAKER_02Well, as they kept saying, like, well, we're not trying to downgrade our normal service. That's great.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But this now is the best thing. Yeah. So I started looking up these services. So I read that some of these high-end luxury services go anywhere from where I were what they were proposing to me, like 20,000, all the way up to a million and more. Jeez. There are people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a date to meet that special person. And the idea is well, we're only taking on a few select clients at a time. I never believe that story. Right. I never believe that story. Like we only have a few limited spaces. You want to sell something for more than it's worth, you always tell people there's a very there's limited. It's a limited supply. Now, where do the women come from? So if you're a man looking for a woman, like I in my case, where are the women? Where do they come from?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I read that a lot of them don't pay anything. So I'm assuming like, well, if I'm paying X, the purse, the female is paying X.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The woman's paying X, right? So we're equals in terms of both being desperate as hell. We're paying so much money to meet each other at Applebee's. So at least we have one thing in common. We are losers. We're spending our nest egg at Applebee's on the hope that we're gonna have a connection. But that's not true. A lot of these people are just like signed up. It's like we need we need more women in this age group. Let's just go sign them up for free or have them pay a little bit of money. Yeah. Like a hundred dollars or something. So now what so I'm thinking, so they're pitching me the service, and I said, Well, what how do you know why these women are signing up? So if you know, so okay, so some service calls says, We're Lux matchmakers, uh Jamie Kins, and we we want to include you in our list of eligible women, and let's say you're single and you say, Okay, well, uh, let me look you up. And so you go online and you see that if you're looking for a man, the men on this side are probably paying a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dollars. Does that distort your view on what this is? Does that influence you in any way?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, kind of. I kind of feel like the men have to be weird.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04I didn't expect you to go there, but yes, they What's wrong with you that you have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a date?
SPEAKER_02Yes. So on the one thing we know, they have the money. Yeah. So that's it. But then they have the money, but they can't get a date. Because a lot of rich people don't seem to have trouble meeting people. Right. Because, you know, there are people out in the world who are looking for rich people and they're not hard to spot.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02They're on the yacht, yeah, they're driving a fancy car, they got a new pair of shoes on, got a fabric on their bench. That's how you know. That's right. Let me see a bench. Is that fabric? Yeah, so and but the other thing is, so they got money, but there also must be weirdos.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's gotta be something wrong with them.
SPEAKER_04What's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_02Like, you know, eyes going off in different directions. Something something's gotta have some jacked-up teeth. There's gotta be something.
SPEAKER_04Some secret room in your house.
SPEAKER_02Secret room, they're just weird. I don't know. There's something going on. To me, this is a fundamental flaw of these high-end services, because if one, I don't care if it's men or women, if one half of the equation is not paying the same amount of money to get into the game, then they have nothing at stake. Also, it encourages people who are kind of treasure hunters to get on board with that, right? Oh, I'm I'm gonna meet. Wasn't there a show? You must have watched it like Millionaire Matchmaker. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I don't think I tried it, but the woman was so unlikable that I was like, I can't, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I couldn't. I think I watched an episode. It's like, oh, this is not this is not good. But if I'm if I'm so if I put myself in the shoe, so I if I am asked to sign up for this and maybe I don't have to pay anything, and I find out that the guy who's taken me out to Applebee's paid a million dollars to date me, yeah, to have it up to have a chance to meet me.
SPEAKER_04You're gonna murder me.
SPEAKER_02That's well, I don't know, but it distorts my view of the whole thing. So maybe I'm worried about what's wrong with them, but also maybe I am influenced by that. Like, well, I wouldn't mind hanging out with a million, I wouldn't mind dating a millionaire for six months. You know, that could be fun. See what happens. You know, maybe, maybe I'll learn to like them a little.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02A less expensive option, think about this six thousand. To me, this is just crazy talk for a flash match event during which you'll meet six women at a mixer.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02And just hope that one of those six is six women, six thousand dollars at a mixer. You're at a mixer. So it's you and six women. Yeah, so it's like a bachelor episode. What is this?
SPEAKER_04Uh uh, can I steal them for a second? That's what they always say on the bachelor.
SPEAKER_02Or what if, see, this would be my fear. So you pay six thousand bucks, you go to a mixer, there's six women there, and they none of them will talk to you. They're all over in the corner drinking and laughing, and you're like, uh, hey guys, it's like uh read the room. Yeah, like it's girl time, we're not talking about here. There's no guarantee.
SPEAKER_04No, there's not.
SPEAKER_02I found I found one that costs twenty-five thousand dollars, and you don't get to see a photo before you meet the person. Oh wow, so you don't even get to see a photo. I don't know how many people you get, but they don't show photos because too many guys are like, nope. Oh. But that's to me, that's why do I want to? I mean, this is true for either part, and whoever is going out on these things, it's a lot of effort. And I just feel like if someone is a no from the jump, like why go through that effort? Right. It's such a you've I mean, I've been on app dates where the person doesn't, it doesn't look remotely like their picture, and it just feels so disappointing. And it's like, how long do I have to sit here now? Yeah. Because even if the person is a great person, why are they misrepresenting themselves? Yeah. Like, what does that tell you? Right. Anyway, a lot of these times with these high-end matchmakers, they're tapping into the same pool. And again, I think it's different. The older you get, we're not talking, there's only like, you know, like four people, right? So they're just gonna keep showing up. Yeah. So they have all these wildly different pricing schemes. They all are doing about the same thing. They say, Oh, we're gonna find you your person. We'll put people out there canvassing neighborhoods looking for your dream person who you have not been able to find on your own. Right. And we will be holding your hand all the way, and we will coach you, be your ally, and help you out. But what they won't do is they won't share any success statistics. They don't share success rates. Right. Because I think a lot of them are just like the apps. The apps have about a 10% success rate. Yeah, that's been documented.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Nine out of ten people you meet on an app, you are not gonna be crazy about.
SPEAKER_04Which I did. Well, my my partner and I started dating after finding each other on an app.
SPEAKER_02You were one of the success uh success stories.
SPEAKER_04Yes, but I feel like it's a little bit different because I had met him once in person before, and then I saw him on the app.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I think that's a little different because you already have an organic meetup, no matter how superficial it was, it changes everything. Yep. And that's the one thing that none of the apps and none of these servers, I don't care if you pay a million dollars or ten million dollars or whatever the crazy amount of money you got that you want to spend on an Applebee's date. Whatever that is, it there you can't, there's no substitute for that organic, natural meetup where you get to know the person in a multifaceted way over some amount of time. And yes, sometimes it's love at first sight, but a lot of times it's a slow build. It's like getting to know, wow, this person's kind of cool. And when you have those repeated exposures to another person, it's true. I mean, I admit freely, I actually stop caring about physical stuff when I finally meet someone who I'm really, really like this is a really cool person. So I I know that's true, and that's what they're always at these uh the one service I used, that's what they kept saying to me. Is like, you know, you meet somebody and you really get to know them, and a lot of this stuff falls away. And I go, I know, but I don't want to start out that way, right? I don't want to start out with a project. Yeah, like I have to learn to love this person because initially I don't want to go out with them. Yeah, it could happen, like in a stranded, like on a desert island situation, you could learn to love Brooke Shields. Was Brooke Shields the one? I think, yeah, I think I did see Brooke Shields in a restaurant in Boston. Oh, really? With her kids, yeah, it was a small place and she was seated. And I'm surprised she didn't have a better table, but she was seated kind of in the back. It was a very tiny restaurant, like maybe like ten tables max. Yeah. Tiny little place in the north end. And she was there with her kids, and so her her chair was very close to the bathroom door, which was like an old, like this is an old building, so you'd open the door and you'd kind of bump her chair with it. And then she'd be right there listening.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02So Brooke Shield listened to me, visit the happy house. So you don't know if the reviews are accurate, you don't have any success statistics, and it's not clear what you're paying for. What they're trying to tell you is no, no, no, this is highly exclusive. So basically, the way it works is they appeal, they find whatever amount of money you can afford, and then they try to make you feel special that we're giving you the special service. And if you're a zillionaire, then you'll pay a million dollars for something like this. But you're not getting anything different, it's the same routine, it's the same racket.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02My conclusion at the end of all of this, and I've been leaning this way for some time because I've been out there now like four years. That's a long time to be in the dating pool and not find somebody. And my conclusion is that no one can love this sack of salt. Just it's never gonna happen. I don't believe it. It's never gonna happen. Well, you are in a very encouraging angel in my life, but you need to take a sip of reality. You need to get that reality cool aid. Yeah, I yeah. I you know, I wanna be.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02I wanna be, but you know, how you you can't wrap your arms around a tumbleweed. You can't get excited over a fossil. What is this? A bone? I'm uh I'm trying to my new strategy is I'm trying to be more mindful of other moping losers around me. Okay. See them moping around like the shufflers, they drag their feet because they're so done with the world and they've got nothing left to offer.
SPEAKER_04All right, maybe that one.
SPEAKER_02There's somebody I can catch. That sounds bad. Every man, woman, and child. That's right. I have dated all of them. That's it. My I got, you know, the friends I told you about in the last episode, which that don't like me. Uh-huh. One of them says, Your problem is you live in Portland. You got to get out of there. You got to come to LA. That's where you're going to meet your special person. I'm not a person who says, Oh, I don't want any baggage, because everybody's bringing stuff. I'm bringing stuff, they're bringing stuff. I'm happy with the stuff. But there are certain things that they bring that are in the luggage that I just don't want to take on. Sure. And one of them is kleptomania.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02It's one of the things on my list.
SPEAKER_03That's your bugaboo.
SPEAKER_02Kleptomania, homicide, baby snatching. Just don't want to deal with it.
SPEAKER_04No, it's yeah, it's a lot.
SPEAKER_02It's just one more thing that I don't want to add to my normal routine. Because babies need a lot of attention. Yeah, too much. I really do. So needy. They're very expensive. They have a high expectations. Expensive. What I need is a baby with low expectations. That should be on my dating profile. I'm looking for a baby with low expectations. Thank you, Jamie, for talking to me about high-end dating services.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_02I don't recommend them. If you have tons of money and you don't care how you waste it, sure, give it a try. Right. Uh, I I think it's not worth it. Maybe you just maybe try the paid app feature that gives you something. If that gives you something a little extra special. But I don't know. I don't know if it's worth it. And I think your instinct about says something about the person who would spend that much money to go to Applebee's. Like, what does that say about the person? They have all this money.
SPEAKER_04Something's strong. Yeah. Sounds weird about you.
SPEAKER_02They can't meet anybody. Thanks everyone for being part of our community. Please help us by sharing the show. You can follow us on Instagram and send us messages there. We love getting positive feedback from you. It's the only thing that keeps us going from day to day. You can also support us on Patreon if you want to spend a two or three dollars a month or whatever it is. It's not a lot. You wouldn't miss it. And we would appreciate it. We have to pay Derek uh for the studio time, and he will not cut us any kind of break. He is a ruthless, ruthless taskmaster. He will uh give us coffee, though. Yes. So he's nice enough to do that. But when he gives us the coffee, we don't know what he's put in it, how it's been doctored. All we know is whenever we drink coffee here, we gotta quickly run to the startle cabin. If you don't know what the startle cabin is, you need to listen to more episodes. So there's lots of ways to help us. Uh the main thing we're trying to do here is entertain you with light conversation and stories. And if you like that and you can think of someone to share it with, we would appreciate it. So thank you very much for continuing to be part of our family. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are just like that unwanted curb sofa or just someone who's covering a bench with nice fabric, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody. Imagine with a fabric.