Stephanie’s Adventures in Singledom: An Open Letter to the Today Show

Dear Today Show,

It seems to me that you don’t like answering your critics.

I say this because back in 2011, you had Meredith Vie interview a woman who was suing Match.com due to being set up with a convict, but then two years later, use the exact same site to try and set-up Martha Stewart for ratings.

What that actually showed was that you supported a site that only cares about making money and not the safety of its clients that use the site. It also showed that they do in fact allow convicts on their site, as we all know Martha Stewart served time. It sadly also showed the hypocrisy the media will go to, just to get ratings.

As an author and blogger for the Rockland County Times, I have done groundbreaking investigations that proved that there are certain properties of online dating that actually work against love-seekers, making it no more effective than traditional dating for finding a happy relationship. The investigation also proved what every site has failed to recognize is that there really is no way to successfully predict that a relationship will last, especially when the most crucial information is not collected and I exposed what that crucial information was.

But the most eye-opening fact that my investigation proved was that the percentage of actual success using online dating is only 10 percent, not the numbers that the sites feed the public.
Beyond the investigation, if you look into just how many complaints are made daily about these sites and how they operate, you will see that almost all online dating sites are linked not only by the horror stories, but in fact, by how they advertise to the public, which is extremely deceiving.

You aren’t going to find a “Calvin Klein” or “Victoria’s Secret” model-type on these sites! They have the audacity to use beautiful people to pull at people’s heartstrings. Then they use “independent studies” that they claim prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their dating site works. We all know that sites pay for those independent studies to give them the results they want. Also, using testimonials of people who have used the site is also not scientific proof that it works. Notice, these sites such as eHarmony, never tell you the statistics of the divorce rate, only that they have “many happy couples.”

The FDA and FTC have prohibited companies from doing the exact same thing that all these dating sites are doing, and as the media, instead of exposing them for the lies they are selling, you have promoted them to keep lying to the public, while not exposing this practice to the FDA & FTC.

The online dating sites, when they were first introduced back in the 1990’s, were considered the first actual “social media sites.” When they first entered the “World Wide Web,” they were considered safe. But as soon after social media sites started popping up, the question of how are safety measures online were monitored were being asked left and right.

A recent study, led by Dr. Paige Padgett from the University of Texas Health Science Center, found that there was a false degree of safety assumed by women looking for love on the internet, exposing them to stalking, fraud, and sexual violence. (Source: National Sexuality Resource Center)

I have contacted you numerous times on this, since 2011, but you continued to ignore each and every time I waved the red flag. And now with your “Orange Room,” you have incorporated in your show, is that the room to hide all the Internet Skeletons, making people believe that the Internet is all good and mighty?

Young girls and women struggle with self-esteem, and that is why some turn to the Internet and dating sites. They end up meeting men who could be potential sexual criminals, as well as men who are dangerous because they are “allowed” to be these sites. Is it going to take a young woman getting murdered from one of these dating sites before something is actually done to prevent it?

So, the only way for these dating sites to be safer than it is right now, is by educating the public, by confronting the CEO’s of the sites and by forcing the FDA & FTC to make these sites abide by the same rules as other companies, as well as, force them to do thorough back ground checks.

Will you finally answer your critics, particularly, me? Or will you continue to throw a blind eye at the truth?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Stephanie Dolce

www.stephaniedolce.com