yawn

My general response is NO! NO! NO!

I don't even give out my email until I've had a few messages back and forth with them, enough to convince me that it's a real person on the other end. Not a bot or scammer.

give your friends, coworkers, family members carte blanche to go out and play matchmakr

"Hi, I'm [name]" is usually a pretty good ice breaker.
Just ask some specific details about their profile.
Or ask about something simple that isn't on their profile: fave band/music, fave recipes

Or you could intro with some odd talent of yours.
Can you make a complex recipe? Recite the Declaration of Independence?

Keep it short and simple.
Sadly, you;ll find meeting people on here is like trying to meet someone face to face.
You just go thru the whole meet and ignore/rejection process A LOT faster.
But since you're not having to meet them face to face (unless you ever actually got to that point), you get used to it pretty quick.

The sad fact of essentially any online dating site:

- use a truly free website/app, and the good news is you can email anyone you want (some might have a limit on the # of messages).
The bad news is that ... well ... anyone can create a profile and send messages

- use a site/app with a subscription and you will get fewer messages from fakes/scams. bad news is that messaging on some sites can be equally restricted to the other person must ALSO be a subscriber. OR, they can only message back to a subscriber.
So it's not uncommon that once a sub is up, you probably stop using it, or delete your profile entirely.


Because people actually reply to the scammers and the scammers somehow are able to milk a few dollars out because someone, somewhere, falls for them ... they keep doing it.

You can block them, "hide" them, and moderators do sometimes wipe out a few accounts.
But like roaches and termites, you kill 1, but there are 10 more to pop back up real quick.

Sadly, seems to be true.
Frankly a waste of coding to even have it.
Either message or don't ... but oh well ...

Out of curiosity, what is the use of the "Match" feature?

Seeing as people can actually message each other (unless there's a daily email cap that I'm not aware of), isn't the function kinda redundant?