It's All My Fault

For the past few weeks I have been getting emails from a shidduchim site/app that I had joined. The app was free and after my initial perusal of its features I never saw a reason to check back in. The format for gaining access to and going through resumes was confusing and there were many better apps and sites out there. Occasionally I would receive an email from a man or Shadchan asking about a potential match, but all of these were quite far off base from what I had stipulated that I was looking for.

In the last few weeks the app let me know that if I did not update my profile with them it would be deleted. I saw no reason to do so, the app wasn't getting me results and I couldn't remember my username and password anyway.

Then I got an email and I discovered that I had allowed a tragedy to occur and it was entirely my fault.

"To our Members and Prospective Members,

The purpose of this letter is to notify you that REDACTED is closing effective Monday, February 15, 2021."

How sad! I guess there were others like me who did not find the site worth using. The site itself only wanted "to create a free, vetted, and safe database for everyone: singles, parents, family, and friends, to be able to search for themselves or other singles that they know and make matches."

However, here's where I messed up. The creators of the site, or, at least, the writers of this email said that I

1. did not take responsibility to respond to those that reached out to them about a match.

This was true. When I received the many profiles that were clearly fake or 40 year old men looking to get back at their exes I ignored them.

2. Many singles shared that they infrequently checked in to the network to search for matches.

That was because there wasn't a good way to search for matches on this platform. Trust me (trust me. TRUST ME.) When I am given a good platform where I can go through profiles I spend the next 86 or so hours without a break going through profiles. It might be because I write a comedy blog but I still do it. On your site, you didn't really make that possible, there were all sorts of strange permissions one needed to have an no way to get them.

3.Many of our members never responded to the administrative emails nor updated us when they were engaged and or married.

OOPS I'M SO SORRY I forgot to tell you I am married now you can still get me a crockpot at Bed Bath and Beyond here's the Zoom recording from our wedding.

4.We saw each day how many profiles submitted to our office were not adequately filled out. Our office needed to invest additional time to contact those singles and work together to update their written personal descriptions.

Ah, I see you've met my good friends: all men.

5. Also, many members did not help build the network with more profiles by encouraging others to create profiles.

I forgot when I became an Outreach Rabbi for singles sites. I already filled out my 2020 taxes though, so please send my check dated 2021.

6. Many shared that if an inappropriate shidduch was recommended, they just either ignored the suggestion or shied away from sharing in a friendly way why they felt the shidduch was not a match.

Hey this one was not on me. I genuinely enjoyed telling men that I need a guy who is going to make more than 20K a year because I like to eat meat and have heat and stop using me to get back at your ex wife I'm not a part of this narrative.

7.Many profiles contained fake email addresses, so our office and others interested in getting more information were frustrated in the search.

You made a site for shidduchim, a field where people are known to be cagey, dishonest, and corrupt, and then were surprised when they were cagey, dishonest, and corrupt?

The letter continued with the requisite thank you's to the staff and rebbeim, the spouses (way to rub it in guys) and to Hashem for allowing them to undertake this mission.

No where did the creators of the site take responsibility that perhaps their site just wasn't built in a way that worked. Instead, they laid it on their users.

I was a business major in college and this is a huge no-no. Company's gain admiration by owning their errors and moving forward. No company has ever come back from a failure by placing the blame on their clients.

But, I guess singles are so frequently villainized by mainstream Orthodox Jewish media that it's easy to blame us.

We are too picky with our dating sites just like we are with our dates. Too lazy to write real profiles or do the self exploration that one should do to enter a relationship. We are the scary stories of each community-as a young girl davening in shul on Rosh Hashana I'd see the older girls who returned year after year without sheitels and I would beg Hashem to let them find their husbands so I wouldn't have to worry about becoming a scary story myself.

Imagine if instead the owners of this website had put out a thorough search into why the site wasn't working when so many other sites do work. Then, they could have had the booming success of having the same 6 guys I have already dated joining their site too.

But they gave up and blamed the easy culprit (me!) and moved on with their lives.

I wish I could do the same.