There Are Paid Dating Impersonators and I Was Almost One of Them
I’ve received quite a few odd proposals for ghostwriting jobs. One involved filling out a GTA V roleplaying server application. Another was for a YA vampire novel. But the strangest by far was an offer to be a matchmaking ghostwriter.
The offer came via an HR representative of VIDA Select who responded to one of my Reddit ads, saying, “VIDA Select is a modern matchmaking company and we are looking for witty, fun, and charming writers.” From this, I assumed I would be writing ad copy, blog posts, or some other form of content for an Eharmony type dating site/app. What I did not expect was to stumble onto the strange and startling world of dating impersonation.
Though VIDA prefers to call these writers “virtual dating assistants”, in reality, they are professional dating profile impersonators. These writers create and manage clients’ online dating profiles for apps and sites like Bumble, Tinder, Match.com, and others. This includes sending opening messages to matches and flirting with them until they have gotten a phone number and set up an in-person date.
Most clients are men, though the company offers its services to women as well. However, all of their marketing is geared towards heterosexual dating.
Though there are a few companies offering similar services, VIDA seems to have a stranglehold on the surreptitious industry of dating profile management. Surreptitious may not be the correct term, however, as VIDA has been featured in a number of articles and news pieces. These are proudly advertised on the company’s website.
Of course, there is one article they don’t seem eager to show off.
Dates or Data?
Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin’s Quartz article details her work at VIDA as a ghostwriter who directly responds to matches for clients, called a “Closer”. The other key writing positions you can fill are “Profile Writer” or “Matchmaker”. According to Stuart-Ulin, despite wanting to hire creative writers for these ghostwriting positions, very little creativity is involved in either role.
Profile Writers, just as it sounds, create attractive profiles for clients based on specific facts they’ve provided for use. Their work is defined by narrow guidelines designed to get as many clicks as possible based on proven data. In other words, they use a lot of clichés based on the odd, often bare-minimum, facts a client provides.
Matchmakers send the first messages to potential matches. It seems like this type of work would permit a writer more freedom. However, VIDA considers reading womens’ profiles and coming up with unique opening messages time-consuming and not cost-effective. Matchmakers instead use a common SEO tactic of reducing interests to a single, easily searchable keyword, such as “yoga” or “hiking”. Once they’ve compiled a list of profiles including that keyword, they pick a generalized intro message and fire it off to hundreds of different potential matches across several dating apps and sites.
After the Matchmakers have finished their part, the Closers step in to handle the actual flirting. Closers undergo more rigorous training, as they have to actively pretend to be clients while communicating with matches. Even then, they are bound by several rules and guidelines, must get messages approved by a trainer at first, and have to read through several company manuals.
All of these manuals were written by the company’s founder, Scott Valdez.
Scott Valdez
As a freshman at the University of Georgia during the early years of social media, Valdez found an unsettling use for the new medium. Using filters to find women attending his school, he would message them on Facebook using one of five “templates” for pick-up lines he’d devised. He then cataloged and ranked the responses each message received.
After graduating and landing a job, however, he no longer had the necessary time for such an important field of study. But he didn’t let his new career stop him. A quick ad for a “personal dating assistant” on Craiglist later and Valdez had someone to carry on his work. As Valdez told GQ “He was kind of crap… but I knew my time was worth a lot more than what I was paying him.”
Once Valdez’s friends began to see the “effectiveness” of his dating assistant, a lightbulb went off in his head and the company VIDA Select (originally styled ViDA in 2009) was born. For Valdez, it was a way to help out busy professionals like him who couldn’t devote the necessary time to actually find matches through online dating sites and apps. As he told Quartz in an interview, “Our clients have successful careers… They work, they travel often, and they just don’t have that time. So the need a company like ViDA fills is allowing them to delegate this particular aspect of their lives to an expert, just as many have financial planners, landscapers, personal trainers, and mechanics on speed dial.”
And it’s true, online dating requires an undue amount of time and effort put in to be successful. This is especially the case for men, where what research is available has found heterosexual men using Tinder only match with 0.6% of those they swipe right on. Yet, ironically, the reason behind this seems to be because men swipe first and ask questions later. Research implies “that, rather than pre-filtering their mates via the like feature, many male users like in a relatively non-selective way and post-filter after a match has been obtained. This gaming of the system undermines its operation and likely leads to much frustration.” It would appear in general that men have to play the numbers game to find matches. Taken at face value, outsourcing their profiles and messaging seems like a valid method of increasing their likelihood of potential relationships.
This is what Valdez relies on for his dating impersonation service. It makes sense that a man with a career background in sales would apply the same rationale to dating. But as with most other commercialized services, the goal is not to ensure clients no longer need it. VIDA is reliant on monthly subscription packages ranging anywhere from ₤400 to ₤2,000 (roughly $555 to $2,773). For all of his claims of being a “self-taught dating expert”, Valdez and his company want clients to stick around and spend more. Large numbers of dates are their goal, not successful ones.
Alpha Males and Pick-Up Artists
What exactly is in those handcrafted manuals by Valdez? As we’ve seen, his experience is in sales and data, not relationships. In fact, he lists the 1993 collection of gender stereotypes and oversimplifications masquerading as a helpful book of advice, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, as inspiration for his dating strategies.
“The manuals have titles like Women On Demand and The Automatic Date Transition,” writes Stuart-Ulin, “and are loaded with his personal insights into the primal female brain. We are to treat them as dating-assistant gospel.” However, it seems that most of Valdez’s insights are stolen directly from cringy pick-up artists such as Daryush Valizadeh (or “Roosh V”) and Julien Blanc. This is made clear as she continues outlining key manual guidelines, “‘There’s no question about it… women want to date the alpha male. They are naturally drawn to the ‘leader of the pack.’’ Valdez elaborates later in the manual: ‘The alpha male is the selector, he chooses… he is not chosen.’”
In case you’ve managed to avoid it so far, pick-up artistry (PUA) is a community that believes there are secret techniques and practices heterosexual men can use to convince women to sleep with them. In their eyes, just as their cornerstone book, The Game by Neil Strauss, suggests, dating is a game to be won. Neil Strauss later published a refutation of his arguments for PUA in The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships which detailed how his time spent with the “seduction community” harmed his future attempts to build healthy relationships.
Central to this understanding of dating and relationships is the myth of the alpha male. This myth is based on a study of wolves (which was later refuted in another study by the same person who conducted it) which concluded male wolves were divided into “alphas” who led the pack and “betas” who were defeated by the alpha and thus, not permitted to breed with females. Pick-up artists have applied this disproven theory to people, believing there are alpha males who out-compete beta males, winning sex from women as a result.
“Despite my attempts at embracing the ‘Alpha Male’ attitude,” Stuart-Ulin writes, “the training staff have repeatedly told me that my writing is ‘too female,’ a characteristic that has never been fully explained.” She recalls the worst instance of this being her first successful commission. The woman she was messaging remarked on the recent passing of her dog. Stuart-Ulin wanted to send a heartfelt, empathetic apology for her loss. Instead, she writes, “[The trainer] crossed out my response and wrote underneath: ‘Alpha Males don’t apologize.’ What we sent back instead was an upbeat story about our client’s two dogs, which was a shamefully inconsiderate reply in my view.”
Dating as Product
Perhaps the saddest detail of Stuart-Ulin’s story is that the callous, “alpha male” response ended in a date for the client. The outcome left an impression on her, as Stuart-Ulin wondered, “was she learning — just as I was — that reaching out for a unique connection online would lead only to awkwardness and rejection?”
The unfortunate truth is dating impersonation and harmful PUA beliefs mesh perfectly with each other. Both carry the assumption that relationships are something to be earned. If you put in the effort or the money, apply all the appropriate practices or techniques, and message enough women, you are owed relationships/sex/dates. Online dating apps and sites only provide an echo chamber for this perspective. First interactions are whittled down to the bare minimum; initial attraction, match, opening lines, and finally plans for a date. This fosters a competitive environment based on initial impressions in which the best-looking profiles get the most matches.
For all the good online dating companies have done allowing unlikely people to connect and build relationships, their profits are still reliant upon people continuing to use their apps and sites. Potential matches are presented as items in a catalog, with their most marketable features put forward. Certain apps, such as Hinge and Bumble, have designed their UI and marketing around building relationships as opposed to casual dating, but still promote a “pay-to-play” dating method.
VIDA is just a symptom of the disassociation created from treating dating like a product.
Still Swiping
Online dating is rapidly becoming the most common way of finding dates, especially with the recent Coronavirus lockdowns. Younger generations have been steadily adjusting to online dating for some time already and the trend doesn’t look like it will change, despite the tentative reopening of many bars. It seems we’ll have to continue struggling with the awkward, disheartening, and commercialized dating app experience if we want the best chance at finding a relationship.
There is always the possibility for more unique and personal interaction over dating apps. My longest relationship began on Tinder and it was no less authentic than a relationship started the old-fashioned way. In a sea of cheesy pickup lines and awkward flirting, there is the real chance of finding someone you can connect with and intimately understand.
How can we foster more of those experiences on dating apps? Outside of completely upending the online dating world, not much. The most we can feasibly do is put more effort into changing our own online dating habits.
Do you use dating apps when you’re relaxed and comfortable or as a way to pass the time? Do you spend time looking at each profile or swipe immediately on gut reaction? Do you personalize your messages or send the same opener to every match?
VIDA seems like a great option if you’re uncomfortable with rejection and heartbreak, but ultimately extinguishes the personhood of dating. It simplifies one of the most confusing and exciting human experiences down to online ordering. Putting yourself out there will be embarrassing. That’s for sure. It will also be awkward and stressful. But those feelings are common with in-person dating as well. Running away from them won’t allow you to grow or learn healthy ways of dealing with them.
