Living in a new city and stuck at home for days on end with a bad cold, I figured I would try out a dating site in hopes of meeting some likeminded men. My expectations were extremely low, my spirit was lagging, and I anticipated I wouldn’t last more than a day or two, but I decided to give it a shot. I don’t like the idea of dating “apps” so dusted off an old (and admittedly embarrassing) desktop standby, Match.com (whose parent company Match Group now owns all the dating sites).
After checking off boxes of “likes” such as racquet sports, chess, hiking, and swimming, I mentioned places I had lived, my former profession, and my recent move. Because ideological differences are putting such a heavy strain on relationships, I thought it was important to state my sensibilities upfront. I wrote a short paragraph saying I liked Substack and podcasts and that some of the people I followed included Matt Taibbi, Trish Wood, Walter Kirn, Wesley Yang, Meghan Daum, Bret Weinstein, Clifton Duncan, Jimmy Dore, and Whitney Webb (or some combination thereof). I wrote that I was rooting for RFK, Jr. in 2024 and would love to meet some fellow travelers.
Later that day, when I tried to sign back in, I received the message that “access to your account has been blocked by Match.” I wrote to customer service and was told that my concern needed to be “escalated to a different department.” I then received this email from a Camille F.:
I appreciate the time you've taken to contact us. I understand that you have inquiries and questions regarding your account. Let me see what we can do to help you out. Please know that due to our Terms of Use, your Match account has been terminated. We believe this action to be in the best interest of our member community. Any new accounts created will be subject to review and will be immediately terminated. For reference, our Terms of Use can be accessed at the following link: http://www.match.com/registration/membagr.aspx If you paid to attend an upcoming Match Event, please know your name has been removed from the RSVP list and any charges associated with the event have been refunded.
I wrote back asking for specifics and received this response from Camille F. (who may well be a chatbot):
I appreciate the time you've taken to contact us. I understand that you have inquiries and questions regarding your account. Let me see what we can do to help you out. Due to our privacy practices, we cannot disclose specifics about any Match account, including your own. Our Privacy Policy can be viewed at the following link: http://www.match.com/registration/privacystatement.aspx Our Terms of Use can be referenced at the following link: http://www.match.com/registration/membagr.aspx
Well! I feel renewed empathy for people who have been kicked off YouTube and Twitter with little explanation or recourse. I had a Match account years ago that as far as I know was entirely benign. Did the banning have something to do with that former account or with my political inclinations? Did they locate an unfinished, abandoned profile on another site where I listed my preferred pronouns as psy/op? No way of telling.
I suppose I have to give the staff at Match.com credit. They were not fooled by this sweet profile pic and recognized a woman with dangerous ideas when they saw one.
It’s far from a tragedy that I have been prevented from scrolling through endless bathroom mirror selfies and grammatically incorrect sentences; I imagine the site would be even more of a wasteland to me now if they are actively excluding the very people I would find interesting. But this seems like a bad harbinger of where we are headed. While this story is easy to laugh off, finding that your CBDC funds have been “terminated” due to some undefined “thought crime” would be no laughing matter, especially while the institutions we have traditionally depended on to defend free speech and intellectual freedom are nowhere to be found on these issues.
Top photo: Smartphone dating app illustration.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
Cheryl Hines, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress, is beloved in Hollywood. Now, she's supporting the presidential campaign of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas? https://nyti.ms/3N3iIVb
Susan, I didn't get a ham radio license to meet men. But there is a very active ham radio community of non-political people (majority men) in ham radio. I've had my license since 2017. The members are technical smart, from all walks of life but not judgy about politics. Since I am the archivist for my radio club I now contribute regularly to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications. There are far more members in radio than ALA. Although some members still use Morse Code, it is now longer required to get a license. NO SOCIAL CREDIT scores, but a world of waves. Forget the jerky Match.Com--we need women in radio! AND you get a call sign. Kathleen, KN4IJM
June 24-June 25 is "Field Day." Every Ham Radio operator in the U.S. gets 'on the air." My club is meeting at a Fire station. We do this to create interest in ham radio. I am sure there is a 24 hour activation near you. It would be grand if ALA would be as active as ARRL.
One warning. Radio operators use a lot of abbreviations, and you will be a YL .(Young Lady--all women are YLs). If you go to Field Day people without a license are allowed to GOTA (Get on the Air). Because Field Day is a competition and operators at other sites always respond to a YL voice the people running the stations will want you to GOTA.
There are lots of YouTube videos--here is an intro about YLs on radio (Australian accent is strong):
A chat with some of the women in ham radio! We'll ask them how they got started, what interests them the most about the hobby and much more.
Get On the Air. (GOTA). You can only GOTA with a license--except on Field Day (last full weekend in June all over the world). On Field Day clubs set up and invite people to see how it works. Then they compete to see who makes the most contacts. Clubs love YLs because they are only abt 10% of all who participate.
The national association has over 600K members. ALA could learn from them.
My wife got one when she became a CERT on the west coast. They have a license now that is basically rules and procedural based, not technical, which is what the CERTs need and gives them access to the emergency bands they operate on. I had a general license for awhile (many decades ago) and that required a code speed of something like 18 words a minute as I recall. I don't know if they still require this. That license gave you access to a much wider collection of frequency bands to operate on. I used to work 15 meters.
Took me two tries though. I was 14 the first try and 15 the second. My Dad drove me up to San Francisco for the tests at the FCC office were they did them periodically. Learned to copy code from a vinyl LP the ARRL used to sell. We're talking late sixties here. A paper route paid for it all. Glad to hear someone is keeping it alive. Might still come in handy someday.
O those days with the FCC are gone! Now local clubs give tests. We have a VE (Voluntary Examiners) team and upload results. The VE team all have stories like yours.
You might like to look at DLARC which is part of the Internet Archive:
I suppose it's possible they confused you internally with a sexual predator or something...I'm struggling here to think of a benign explanation, even one at the 0.01% probability level. But, really, how bizarre. Commercially, what they would have to be doing, based on the information you've provided, is excluding roughly 50% of the dating population as potential customers. This can't be a winning marketing strategy.
Maybe they let Trump supporters through and RFK, Jr. supporters are the new "Trumpers," to be shunned at all costs. Who knows? If I somehow find out that I was banned for an unrelated reason, I will definitely write a follow-up. But I was thinking, even if I was banned for something unrelated to my list of heterodox writers and/or RFK, Jr., they still banned me FOR LIFE without giving even the slightest inkling as to what category my offense falls into. That in and of itself is pretty bad.
I don't even care about getting back on the site, but I feel it is important to call these things out and mock them relentlessly, or things will only get worse. And someone could probably make some money off a lawsuit...
Yet more evidence that the Cultural Revolution has happened, but many continue to pretend this is all normal. (It’s not helping my optimism levels that I’m watching the Great Awakening doc as I write this. 😳)
I went on a long hike today and was thinking about those interviews they did in China for that film. Most of my acquaintances continue to focus on Trump as the symbol of the new Hitler, while they remain entirely unaware of the new regime that is being built all around them.
It's alarming how easy it is to hit some algorithmic tripwire; the scary thing is that the humans involved (if you can even reach one) might not even know what you did wrong either. The AI in the system just cancelled you.
Thinking this over I believe this is one of two stories:
1) I was banned for life for some minor technicality, glitch, or mistake, but I will never be able to talk to a real person and get it sorted out and so have no recourse.
2) I was banned for life for some unspecified "thought crime" and again have no recourse.
I consider myself pretty "up" on the Kook Camps in American politics. I don't think any of the names in your bio would trigger any Kook red flags, because one would have to be pretty "in the know" to even recognize those names (aside from RFK, Jr.). Might there be another reason? Is there an email address or phone number to try? I'm not accusing anyone of overreaction, but this strikes even paranoid me as a mix-up.
Personally my guess is that it was the RFK, Jr. reference because I agree that whoever is gatekeeping over there probably wouldn't recognize the other names, with the possible exception of Matt Taibbi. You can see my response to Jeff below in regard to my banning being due to another reason (and I am trying not to be paranoid as well).
As far as contacting someone by email or phone-- unlikely. I recently was trying to cancel my aunt's Amazon Prime membership (she is over 90 and doesn't recall any of the login information). Well good luck finding any way to contact them about someone else's account. Those behemoth companies are impossible to interact with out of the narrow methods they provide on their websites.
When I call that number I get the message, "We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service."
The abandoned profile (no photo) I created on one of Match Group's other dating sites with the same paragraph regarding the writers and RFK, Jr. and the "psy/op" pronouns remains up.
So if that was the problem I should have been stopped from creating another profile in the first place.
So... you see the photo I submitted. I checked a few hobbies like "badminton." I mentioned I had been a librarian. And then I wrote the paragraph about the writers and RFK, Jr. It seems like it HAD to have been that. I don't even want to be on any of their sites anymore but now I just want to find out why I was banned!
I don't think I can be bothered to try this, but I wonder if I tried to register with my Gmail address as opposed to my Outlook address if they would connect me as the same person.
Things get even weirder. I think that is a fake site. I just got a call back (supposedly) from Match. Sounded like someone in India. They said my account was banned because it looked like scammers from three different locations (in Ohio and Austin) had hacked into the account and were "charging $159 each." He said I needed to drive to Walgreen's and he would stay on the phone with me in order to purchase an EVAY (that's what is sounded like he said anyway) card for $25-$150 to verify my identity. I said I never entered a credit card into Match so why would it matter and he said well I guess if you don't care about someone stealing your identity then it doesn't. I said I would look into it and got off the phone.
If that's a recent picture it looks like Florida from the background. (We just moved to Florida last month). And gopher turtle holes out in that field?
Wow - was I ever off. Same flat backgrounds and palm trees here. But looking more closely I see that the other tree is a pine in your pic - would have been a pin oak here. And you don't have swarms of bugs clouding around your head. That should have been a dead giveaway.
My wife is researching "no-see-ums" right now on-line with murder in her heart.
I just read Match's User Agreement and I may have figured out what their problem is. This prohibition:
"Use meta tags or code or other devices containing any reference to Match or the platform (or any trademark, trade name, service mark, logo or slogan of Match) to direct any person to any other website for any purpose;."
If they see your mention of Substack authors as tags directing people to their website... I know I'm reaching here.
Holy shit. 😬 Well, that’s unnerving.
What Syl said. Holy shit, indeed.
The NY Times went after RFK Jr.'s wife for, get this, supporting his run for president, because it could 'normalize' his 'dangerous ideas..'
The actual tweet:
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1667515733817937920
Cheryl Hines, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress, is beloved in Hollywood. Now, she's supporting the presidential campaign of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas? https://nyti.ms/3N3iIVb
The future is a strange place.
I (hate) read that New York Times piece. The relentless smear campaign has commenced.
Susan, I didn't get a ham radio license to meet men. But there is a very active ham radio community of non-political people (majority men) in ham radio. I've had my license since 2017. The members are technical smart, from all walks of life but not judgy about politics. Since I am the archivist for my radio club I now contribute regularly to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications. There are far more members in radio than ALA. Although some members still use Morse Code, it is now longer required to get a license. NO SOCIAL CREDIT scores, but a world of waves. Forget the jerky Match.Com--we need women in radio! AND you get a call sign. Kathleen, KN4IJM
That's funny, let's just say I have been to some meetings where ham radios have been discussed.
June 24-June 25 is "Field Day." Every Ham Radio operator in the U.S. gets 'on the air." My club is meeting at a Fire station. We do this to create interest in ham radio. I am sure there is a 24 hour activation near you. It would be grand if ALA would be as active as ARRL.
http://www.arrl.org/field-day
I can picture a future where all RFK, Jr. supporters will have to communicate by ham radio!
He had an interview with Matt Taibbi yesterday and asked MT good questions. At least RK is opening dialogs and that is always good.
I have been meaning to listen to that one.
Just listened to it, great interview!
I found an event that looks close to me. I will look into it!
One warning. Radio operators use a lot of abbreviations, and you will be a YL .(Young Lady--all women are YLs). If you go to Field Day people without a license are allowed to GOTA (Get on the Air). Because Field Day is a competition and operators at other sites always respond to a YL voice the people running the stations will want you to GOTA.
There are lots of YouTube videos--here is an intro about YLs on radio (Australian accent is strong):
A chat with some of the women in ham radio! We'll ask them how they got started, what interests them the most about the hobby and much more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVEp1nQPHs4
What's GOTA?
Get On the Air. (GOTA). You can only GOTA with a license--except on Field Day (last full weekend in June all over the world). On Field Day clubs set up and invite people to see how it works. Then they compete to see who makes the most contacts. Clubs love YLs because they are only abt 10% of all who participate.
The national association has over 600K members. ALA could learn from them.
http://www.arrl.org/field-day
My wife got one when she became a CERT on the west coast. They have a license now that is basically rules and procedural based, not technical, which is what the CERTs need and gives them access to the emergency bands they operate on. I had a general license for awhile (many decades ago) and that required a code speed of something like 18 words a minute as I recall. I don't know if they still require this. That license gave you access to a much wider collection of frequency bands to operate on. I used to work 15 meters.
You were pretty fast! They dropped the CW requirement, but the Long Island CW Club is keeping it alive!
https://longislandcwclub.org/
Took me two tries though. I was 14 the first try and 15 the second. My Dad drove me up to San Francisco for the tests at the FCC office were they did them periodically. Learned to copy code from a vinyl LP the ARRL used to sell. We're talking late sixties here. A paper route paid for it all. Glad to hear someone is keeping it alive. Might still come in handy someday.
O those days with the FCC are gone! Now local clubs give tests. We have a VE (Voluntary Examiners) team and upload results. The VE team all have stories like yours.
You might like to look at DLARC which is part of the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/dlarc
Thanks! I will.
Wow. Blatantly preventing like-minded people from connecting is somehow shocking, but also not shocking. I'm sorry you had this experience, Susan!
If that is in fact what is happening here (only the chatbot knows) then yes, it feels like an attempt to keep "wrong thinkers" isolated.
This is scary
I agree. It does feel scary. And I have no way of knowing what the actual reason for the "banning" is.
I suppose it's possible they confused you internally with a sexual predator or something...I'm struggling here to think of a benign explanation, even one at the 0.01% probability level. But, really, how bizarre. Commercially, what they would have to be doing, based on the information you've provided, is excluding roughly 50% of the dating population as potential customers. This can't be a winning marketing strategy.
Maybe they let Trump supporters through and RFK, Jr. supporters are the new "Trumpers," to be shunned at all costs. Who knows? If I somehow find out that I was banned for an unrelated reason, I will definitely write a follow-up. But I was thinking, even if I was banned for something unrelated to my list of heterodox writers and/or RFK, Jr., they still banned me FOR LIFE without giving even the slightest inkling as to what category my offense falls into. That in and of itself is pretty bad.
I don't even care about getting back on the site, but I feel it is important to call these things out and mock them relentlessly, or things will only get worse. And someone could probably make some money off a lawsuit...
They must think you are incorragable.
Yet more evidence that the Cultural Revolution has happened, but many continue to pretend this is all normal. (It’s not helping my optimism levels that I’m watching the Great Awakening doc as I write this. 😳)
I went on a long hike today and was thinking about those interviews they did in China for that film. Most of my acquaintances continue to focus on Trump as the symbol of the new Hitler, while they remain entirely unaware of the new regime that is being built all around them.
It's alarming how easy it is to hit some algorithmic tripwire; the scary thing is that the humans involved (if you can even reach one) might not even know what you did wrong either. The AI in the system just cancelled you.
Yes I was basically just banned for life without being given any idea of my "offense."
Thinking this over I believe this is one of two stories:
1) I was banned for life for some minor technicality, glitch, or mistake, but I will never be able to talk to a real person and get it sorted out and so have no recourse.
2) I was banned for life for some unspecified "thought crime" and again have no recourse.
Either way it is pretty bad!
It does appear that random, inexplicable "bannings" have happened to other people: https://www.complaintsboard.com/matchcom-uninformed-termination-of-account-c263666
I consider myself pretty "up" on the Kook Camps in American politics. I don't think any of the names in your bio would trigger any Kook red flags, because one would have to be pretty "in the know" to even recognize those names (aside from RFK, Jr.). Might there be another reason? Is there an email address or phone number to try? I'm not accusing anyone of overreaction, but this strikes even paranoid me as a mix-up.
Personally my guess is that it was the RFK, Jr. reference because I agree that whoever is gatekeeping over there probably wouldn't recognize the other names, with the possible exception of Matt Taibbi. You can see my response to Jeff below in regard to my banning being due to another reason (and I am trying not to be paranoid as well).
As far as contacting someone by email or phone-- unlikely. I recently was trying to cancel my aunt's Amazon Prime membership (she is over 90 and doesn't recall any of the login information). Well good luck finding any way to contact them about someone else's account. Those behemoth companies are impossible to interact with out of the narrow methods they provide on their websites.
Match Group, LLC is in Dallas. Try (214) 576-9350. Ask how to contact membership and accounts. https://corporateofficeheadquarters.com/match-com-corporate-office-headquarters-hq/
I will try tomorrow morning, but I'm not optimistic.
When I call that number I get the message, "We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service."
The abandoned profile (no photo) I created on one of Match Group's other dating sites with the same paragraph regarding the writers and RFK, Jr. and the "psy/op" pronouns remains up.
I did find this regarding creating a new account with the same email address: https://help.match.com/hc/en-us/articles/6077035015835-Email-Address-Cannot-Be-Used?fbclid=IwAR2n59xK7LHWH51jIsWlOqPXUyTVI3D1HqjAuhaDzDGMH7uZ2D9WdeGkzX8
So if that was the problem I should have been stopped from creating another profile in the first place.
So... you see the photo I submitted. I checked a few hobbies like "badminton." I mentioned I had been a librarian. And then I wrote the paragraph about the writers and RFK, Jr. It seems like it HAD to have been that. I don't even want to be on any of their sites anymore but now I just want to find out why I was banned!
I don't think I can be bothered to try this, but I wonder if I tried to register with my Gmail address as opposed to my Outlook address if they would connect me as the same person.
I found a number. They are supposed to call me back. https://matchcareservice.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw7aqkBhDPARIsAKGa0oIwQdCI35CXVReh_Lc-SyaJRsiaQebaytgwlWolWxK93rVoBlHCmngaAnuyEALw_wcB
Things get even weirder. I think that is a fake site. I just got a call back (supposedly) from Match. Sounded like someone in India. They said my account was banned because it looked like scammers from three different locations (in Ohio and Austin) had hacked into the account and were "charging $159 each." He said I needed to drive to Walgreen's and he would stay on the phone with me in order to purchase an EVAY (that's what is sounded like he said anyway) card for $25-$150 to verify my identity. I said I never entered a credit card into Match so why would it matter and he said well I guess if you don't care about someone stealing your identity then it doesn't. I said I would look into it and got off the phone.
The other number I tried was indeed a scam. https://help.match.com/hc/en-us/articles/6140024199195-Contact-Us
If that's a recent picture it looks like Florida from the background. (We just moved to Florida last month). And gopher turtle holes out in that field?
Southern Arizona!
Wow - was I ever off. Same flat backgrounds and palm trees here. But looking more closely I see that the other tree is a pine in your pic - would have been a pin oak here. And you don't have swarms of bugs clouding around your head. That should have been a dead giveaway.
My wife is researching "no-see-ums" right now on-line with murder in her heart.
I just read Match's User Agreement and I may have figured out what their problem is. This prohibition:
"Use meta tags or code or other devices containing any reference to Match or the platform (or any trademark, trade name, service mark, logo or slogan of Match) to direct any person to any other website for any purpose;."
If they see your mention of Substack authors as tags directing people to their website... I know I'm reaching here.
I think that is reaching. Saying "I like Substack" without any links seems pretty benign.
(Shrug) it's the only thing I could see in their terms that even seemed farcical possible. Substack/Weinstein is sort of a link. Linkoid?
I'm going with the RFK mention triggering an "anti-vax-DELETE-DELETE" response.
That's my assumption as well.
We all have to look and act the same, ha ha. It reminds me of the song little boxes... we are suppose to be obedient clones of a specific template.
I always liked that song.