Tim Walker’s Dating

In the spirit of adventure I recently ventured onto one of those Asian Dating sites that are so prolific in floating their advertisements around the web; I even invested the lowest denomination of allowable currency just to see what would happen…

What happened indeed: for a site that seems continually to be altering its identity between AsianDating, AsiaDating; AsianDate, AsiaDate; DateAsia and AsianBeauties – clever title nuances that lead a potential customer to, well, over the years seriously question his sanity – DateAsia as I most recently knew it, did look mightily appealing.

…They take your money, that much is given; they then charge ‘credits’ to message the ladies, and further credits to read the ladies’ replies…

It ought to be noted that prior to embarking on my DateAsia quest I did in fact consult several websites under the heading ‘legitimacy of dateasia’, with perplexing results.

…You’d better believe I was sceptical – right from the start I was looking for a way to unequivocally condemn this ‘dating site’ and, in the beginning, given the corny and repetitious nature of ladies’ responses it appeared to be a certain ruse – then I took into account the fact that messages going both ways will have had to be translated thereby losing much of their personal essence, also that message templates were in play for less imaginative men/women, thus afforded the site some leeway…

The first ‘legitimacy of dateasia’ result was in hindsight, presumably, written by the American founder of the site himself and delivered an ‘impartial’ insight into DateAsia: maintaining, ‘ladies appeared real enough’ – using a pathetic before and after makeup example to show how efficiently women can do themselves up, in an attempt to explain away the unlikely event that 100% of these women are simply stunning in appearance – then even giving reasons for the site’s regular name changes – something about ‘keeping it fresh’ – claiming that he could see ‘no reason why anyone should assume DateAsia wasn’t legitimate’.

…Unfortunately there was inadequate leeway in the world to compensate for DateAsia’s wondrous assortment of supposedly single and self-professed ‘desperate for love’, yet exquisitely presented and mindblowingly gorgeous paragons of perfection.

…The second result was much less credulous and effectively negated every claim made by the first guy then suddenly, the whole racket started to make a lot more sense…

Where the first guy maintained that if it was a scam then these ‘poor unfortunate ladies’ were being scammed too and given their clearly inhospitable living situations this was a genuine hardship, which admittedly does engender sympathy; the second guy maintained that these women were obviously in the employ of the company managing the scam and were likely being paid very well for the task hence generating quite the comfortable lives for themselves, which engenders no sympathy at all.

…The fact is as much as these 18 – 55-year-old women claim to want to ‘be rescued’ from their current situations, to marry abroad and propagate a family with any man aged between 18 and 70, there will always be something to prevent them from making physical contact, or in fact even from transferring to basic email; they will keep a client in conversation, telling them what they want to hear and making them feel as though they are the only man in the world, while of course paying both ways for the honour, but never actually allowing any progress.

I didn’t stick around to find out how it ends – what the women do or say to eventually shirk the man, or if they keep them hanging on indefinitely – all I know is that I was swindled for 21USD and if those DateAsia ladies are to be believed at least twenty hearts broke when I opted out of the deal.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by D T Asher

Photography by Arn B Lee-Fable

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