Navigating the murky waters of internet dating

But go down the rabbit hole a little deeper and you move from the niche to the esoteric to the downright wth!

I’m talking about dating sites for clowns, vampires, diaper wearers, adulterers and even people with mental illnesses. I kid you not. So I decided to pick some of favourites from my internet odyssey, give them silly titled awards and share them with you.

Skin Deep Award

Have you ever sat down and thought “Why can’t I have someone who’s aesthetically average?” Well theuglybugball.com is the dating site for you. With a home page featuring two individuals that might make you say “I’m sure he/she has a great personality” and boasting one million users worldwide, this site is for everyone who likes to aim for the trees and hit the ground.

On the flip side is a site that keeps out all of the genetic riff raff, darwindating.com, which is “online dating for beautiful people only!” (their underline). Here’s a blurb on their homepage: “Sick of dating websites filled with ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos? We are. Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks. Will you make the cut?”

There is a list of about 40 things not allowed for potential daters including saggy boobs, nerdy glasses, acne, non-symmetrical faces, weird pubic hair, bad teeth and red hair. So if you believe you are God’s gift to men/women here’s a site where you can meet others of that ilk.

Honourable mentions for the Skin Deep Award are Candobetter where the world – or more likely just the users of this site – decide whether to stick with your current squeeze and drop them for another dater, and crazyblinddate which has no photos. Axe murderer anyone?

Locked Up in Love Award

Everybody needs a little love sometimes. Even if you’re serving ten years in the big house for armed robbery. If you like your lover with some baggage – read criminal record – you can try out meet-an-inmate.com which “includes profiles and photos of incarcerated men and women seeking correspondence and companionship,” or women.behind.bars.com specifically for female felons. Though they may be locked up your sweet words of endearment may set their hearts free as a bird on the wing. And at least you will always know where they are.

Show Me Your Money Award

“The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I want money”. If you find yourself singing this line from The Flying Lizards “Money That’s What I Want” on a loop then you will not be settling for any broke pocket partner. So you can find your sugar daddy on sugardaddie.com or wealthymen.com. Or become someone’s million dollar baby at millionairematch.com. Because nothing says I love you like a brand new Benz with a bright red bow.

Beam Me Up Baby Award

Are you looking for a sexy Vulcan to sate your Pon Farr or a savage Klingon to share a vintage bottle of blood wine? Well set your phasers to stimulated and engage yourself in some out of this world infatuation with TrekkieDating.com, StarTrekDating.com or TrekDating.com. Now you can watch that Deep Space Nine season seven marathon with someone not crying about missing Dancing with the Stars. May you find a match to live long and prosper.

Something Old,

Something New Award

You know the saying “age ain’t nothing but a number”. Well that should be the motto for agematch.com which caters to older women dating younger men and older men dating younger women. The age range starts from 18 and goes up to 99. But unfortunately no centenarians. They may be old but that doesn’t mean they’re cold.

It caters for “older men (who) are looking for younger women for vitality and life” and urges older women “why wait out the storm, when you can dance in the rain”. I have no idea what that means and I don’t think I want to. Runner up award goes to Cougarlife.com.

I Am What I Do Award

I will not spend much time on this next section because they are all pretty self-explanatory. Singlefarmer.com caters to single farmers and SeaCaptaindate is for single sea captains. And we fully understand this. It can get pretty lonely on a big farm with nothing but the cacophony of animals and the wind blowing through crops to keep you company. Or those long days and nights out at sea would pass much easier if you had a good woman waiting ashore for you.

Sadly boohiccup.com’s Official Clown Dating Agency was shut down otherwise they would have definitely received the award.

Somewhere a clown may be smiling on the outside but his heart is broken on the inside.

Date My Dad Award

Is your single parent spending too much time on the couch and not enough time out meeting new people? Well sign them up for mylovelyparent and help them meet someone online. It will at least get them out of the house and out of your hair.

Differently-abled Love Award

The inspiration for this article was a friend’s comment on Facebook that she heard of a dating website for disabled people. I thought “Now that’s unusual. I wonder what other unusual dating sites there are out there.”

I found two sites for people with physical disabilities dating4disabled.com and the more specific paraplegicsingles.com. Differently-abled people encounter daily struggles which the rest of us will never fully comprehend. One can understand the draw of being with someone who gets you, and we say more power to them.

Like A Pill Award

And now to a different kind of “condition”. Have you ever noticed how attractive and happy people in ads for STD treatments look? Well they must be using positivesingles.com, which is “the World’s Best, Largest and Completely Anonymous STD Dating Site for people with Herpes, HIV/AIDS, HPV, Hepatitis, and more”. Which makes one wonder how many dating sites there are for people with STDs. At least this site gets one awkward conversation out of the way.

Runner up prizes to mental illness dating site nolongerlonely and recovering alcoholic dating site soberandsingle.com.

Dark Shadows Award

“I vant to suck your blahd...but first take you out to din-nehr”. For all you faux vampires out there, find your Mina or Vlad on vampirepassions.com. I presume breakfast and lunch dates are out.

If you’re not undead but a brain devouring reanimated corpse then find a lunch date with zombieharmony. For the dark but non-fictional there is always gothicmatch.com. They are easy to find on blind dates, just look for the all black ensemble and racoon mascara.

Behind Closed Doors Award

Lock up the kids and unlock your inhibitions because it is time to get kinky. Firstly a definition. A furry is a member of the furry fandom community, people who like to dress up like animals. We found two sites for furries seeking other furries to scratch and paw with – furrymate.com and pounced. Furrymate will help you “meet your purrfect furry match today”. Yes, they made that joke.

The furry sites will tie for first with diapermates which, as the name suggests, is the “internet’s largest free personals community for Adult Babies and Diaper lovers”. And no, this is not a load of crap. Third place will go to naturistpassion which is a site for nudists. Because after relations between people dressed like stuffed animals and grown men and women doing the nasty in diapers, people walking around in the buff is kind of, meh.

Naughty, Naughty Award

Do you like to cheat on your significant other? Would you like to find other people who also like to cheat? Then sign up for ashleymadison.com which has the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair” and is “the premiere website for discreet connections”. Now you’re wondering “how many adulterous dating sites are there?” We found one other, gleeden.com, which is dedicated to people looking for extramarital affairs. Yes, the apocalypse is coming.

By now you must be saying – what about Caribbean people? A quick Google search for the regional lovebirds will net you caribbeansingles.com and caribbeancupid.com. If you want to keep it local you can even try free-dating-tt.com. Just be smart and be safe out there because, as you may have realised, the internet dating world has gotten “curiouser and curiouser”.