Matchmaker...

Typically, a matchmaker is a person who arranges introductions for people for the purpose of marriage. It's a profession in some countries. I'm not sure where I heard the name matchmaker and the song first. It was a Broadway show in 1964 and made into a movie 1971. Chances are my dad got hold of a record or reel-to-reel tape.

(I planned to do one long blog, but for lack of time maybe I'll break it into episodes. My schedule this month has me working 6 days a week and training two newly hired workers.)

Mail order bride was a term I heard as a kid. I knew it existed and recall reading the back page advertisements of magazines and newspapers. Women looking men were the ones I recall. The matchmaker would post some photos of his clients and guys would have to send letters to obtain more information. The women were mostly from European countries.

30 years later and the beginning of internet had matchmakers doing business nearly the same way, except they were crossing over to legitimate dating sites, creating profiles that appeared to be 'too good to believe' and fooling other members into thinking a real person was using the profile. For simplicity, I'll put matchmakers and scammers in the same category.

Of the sites I was listed, many had Russian and Asian women sending messages like crazy. I was getting a few a day. One site had a private messenger style chat interface, person-to-person. This was something new. If the person I was chatting with appeared interesting, I would give out my Yahoo or Skype. One woman sent me many messages and I declined each time because she was much too young.
Her English on the messages was very good and she was persistent. Okay... I agreed.

What I found in a video chat was the woman sitting next to her translator! She spoke no English and had gone to a matchmaking service run mostly by college students who were fluent in English. I would speak to the matchmaker who translated what I said and the woman's response would be translated into English. I was learning about meetings like this from blogs and forums and know someone had to pay for the service, so I repeated my position and thanked her for the time.

Scanning profiles was something I became good at and I noticed that a handful of profiles from the same city all had nearly identical introductions. Obviously a matchmaking service was doing the work for a few clients, cutting and pasting cloning the text. I became suspicious of messages with perfect English especially from women in China, I would ask if the the member was real or if I was communicating with a matchmaker!

That's it for Matchmaker.
Is Matchmaker II to follow?

Guys, here's a tidbit for you... Remember getting messages from beautiful blonde women claiming they were 'interested in your structure' ??
Many said they were from America.
Where were they really from?