AWFUL Dating Trends

Welcome to the wonderful new age of very ugly dating trends: Being dumped via a pre-recorded message; and hiring a professional to act as a "wing-woman" to help get dates.

The Rejection Hotline is an automated tool for rejecting unwanted callers. Developed in 2001, it consists of a phone number which, when dialed, answers with a recording stating that the person who gave the dialer this number did not want them to have their real number.

A list of possible reasons for the rejection is then enumerated, albeit with the caveat that there is no way to know with certainty what particular reason is applicable to the situation.

The idea of creating the number was conceived when Jeff Goldblatt determined that it would be better to create a centralized rejection number that people could give out rather than, say, the number of a local pizza parlor.

The company that operates the Rejection hotline also operates many other hotlines of humorous intent such as the Breakup Butler, the One Night Stand Hotline, the Easter Bunny Hotline, and fake headquarters hotlines for the Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and John McCain presidential campaigns. Occasionally it covers new issues, e.g. the Billion Dollar Bailout hotline.

So, here's an example: When a woman meets a fellow and he asks for her number ostensibly to call later for a date, she gives him this phony number instead.

When he calls it, he gets a recording, one of which says: "Thank you for calling the rejection hotline, you've been rejected." It goes on, but is pretty awful.

Of course, the dumpee can be of either gender, and all sexual orientations are at risk.

There are various Rejection Hotline numbers across the country, but I will not dignify any of them by repeating one here.

Frankly, I find the entire idea and use of the application hurtful, disrespectful, repulsive and a truly gutless way to treat another person who simply wants a date. Shame on anyone who has dumped someone this way!

In the second example, there is a service available primarily to men to hire a woman to come with them to a social venue or event. It then becomes her job to "breaks the ice" for the guy with a group of women that has gotten his interest Once she "plays the man up," he moves on in.

There are a lot of different "wing-women" services, but I am quoting from information directly from the UsWingwomen website:

"UsWingwomen.com is a modern service for men who want to meet women.Every guy out there knows that it is much easier to meet women when you're around other women. Here at UsWingwomen.com we are able to provide you with those women.

At UsWingwomen.com we provide "Wing Women" to help you have a good time and more importantly to assist you in pick up those girls who always seem to slip through your fingers. We've all been there, out with one of your buddies standing against a wall watching everyone else have fun and meet women. Are you sick of player hating from the sidelines? Well now you can be one of those guys who are having fun and meeting women.

Usual nights on the town are you going out with your friends and trying to meet new female acquaintances to add to your repertoire of potential "friends." Most weekend nights, men can be seen spray painted against mirrored club walls, improving their talent of stirring and sipping strong drinks. It all boils down to watching other men squaring away new phone numbers in their cellular phone books or rubber banding new business cards in neat stacks. Of course, by the end of the night, you are a few hundred dollars poorer, you've accelerated your own liver failure from all the alcohol, your lungs are a shade darker, and you still didn't get to ask that beautiful lady for her number (you didn't even talk to her!). It's another familiar failed partying night. Maybe it's time to reconsider your whole pickup strategy. If it hasn't worked for you and your friends in the past, then it's time to try a new strategy: The Wing Women Strategy. Why just be a spectator? Why not let us enhance your night out with amazing company and more importantly help you attract the curiosity of other women."

And there's more from the website:

"I had never been one to have a great deal of trouble meeting women, but like most guys I found it frustrating as to how much effort was necessary to approach and meet women. I would go out a couple nights a week and spend a ton of money on drinks for myself and often for the girls only to have it pan out every once and a while. Life as a single was frustrating and it was just too expensive and inconsistent for my liking.

In the summer of 2002 I started spending a lot of time with my two friends Amber and Katie. They are both attractive girls with great personalities. In the past, I was hesitant to go out with them because I thought they would hurt my chances of meeting women. I always thought "How could I meet women, if I was already hanging out with other women"? Then the first night I hit some bars with them I was having such good time I didn't even care about meeting any other women. As the night moved along, I ended up meeting five girls, Amber introduced me to two of them and the other three actually approached me. The girls could see how much fun we were having and wanted to be a part of it. I wound up going home with two phone numbers that night.

Over next couple of months, I went out with Amber and Katie frequently. Each time I was out with them I wound up meeting other women. Then I started telling my guy friends about this and they were begging me to let them join the fun. So, I started letting some of them tag along with us and they were having the same success as me — the phone numbers were rolling in. This got me thinking about all the guys out there that would enjoy and benefit from such a service and UsWingwomen.com was born.

Why this would work? In this day and age an outing to any social event is regarded as a potential meat market. Most women have gained a keen sense of most efforts that men make to corner their target. As formidable of a game plan that a wing man is, it has come to our attention that there is always going to be one disgruntled member of the party that wishes that a strobe light would somehow intercept for a clean getaway with no hard feelings. Now imagine yourself with one of our Wing Women. While you are in her company, she will be:

— Initiating conversations.
— Making sure women notice the person's she is with.
— Introducing and Ice breaking you to other women.
You will notice how easy it is to see if any woman in the bar gauges more than your attention. You will be making the choices, socializing, meeting more women then you ever did as a "player hater."
— Creating an Image.
Our ladies are all apt at the art of socialization. Other wonderful women will not only notice your company and you, but be drawn to meeting and greeting you as well.

And, there's even MORE directly from the website:

"UsWingwomen.com is a revolutionary service for men who want to meet women. Every guy out there knows that it is much easier to meet women when you're around other women. Here at UsWingwomen.com we are able to provide you with those women.

At UsWingwomen.com we provide "Wing Women" to help you have a good time and more importantly to assist you in pick up those girls who always seem to slip through your fingers. We've all been there, out with one of your buddies standing against a wall watching everyone else have fun and meet women. Well now you can be one of those guys who are having fun and meeting women.

Advantages to having a "Wing Woman"

In the game of meeting women, it is understood that in most cases, it's the man who does all the work. Unfortunately, women have not made it any easier for men to approach them. As a result, men have learned to work together in order to increase their success rate. The solution to the male dilemma is the "Wing Man" pickup strategy, which usually has some level of success. But some women have learned to recognize the "pack" mentality and have developed reactive strategies to counteract the wingman's pickup mission. The guy's response to such female defenses is the Wing Woman. Its an amazing union that if properly applied has a 65% conversion rate. Surprised? Well you shouldn't be, and here's why the wing woman approach is so effective:

— Domino Affect
Women are attracted to men who have women around them more so then men who have other men around them.
— Limited Resources
Women want what they can't have.
— Let The Games Begin
Women are very jealous and love to compete with one another.
— Icebreakers
Women tend to lower their defenses around men who have other women around them. Most women tend to see these men as having a seal of approval and being less hostile.

What does it cost me to get a Wing Woman?

Our Wing Women rates are $50 per hour. That is a flat fee, there is no tipping because our Wing Women will not accept tips. So don't even bother trying to give them extra money. Sure it would be nice if you bought them drinks over the course of your time together, but that is not mandatory. What is mandatory, is that your Wing Woman makes every attempt to introduce you to the women you desire to meet. If you require more than one Wing Woman, each additional Wing Woman is $40 per hour.

Results

What we provide at UsWingWomen.com is an attractive, outgoing and fun spirited Wing Woman who will do her best to introduce you to other women. Nothing in life is certain, so we cannot guarantee that when your time with your Wing Woman is up that you will have gotten any phone numbers or had extreme success meeting women. But we do provide some measure of a guarantee, if after the first 25 minutes of your time with your Wing Woman you are not satisfied, you will be refunded the full amount of your payment.

Safety Measures

To make sure our Wing Women are as safe as possible all meetings will occur in public places (bars, clubs, lounges, etc.). Your Wing Woman will not go into a place where she does not feel 100% safe. Do not ask your Wing Woman to accompany you to your apartment or anyone else's apartment because she will refuse. If you act inappropriately with your Wing Woman, your time with her is over and you will not be refunded your payment.

Do I get to select my "Wing Woman"?

We can assure you that all of our Wing Women are very good-looking and extremely personable. Should you have any preferences as to the type of Wing Woman that can best help you meet other women, we will take them into account in selecting the ideal Wing Woman for your evening. If you are unhappy with the Wing Woman selected for you, we offer a full refund as long as we are notified within the first 25 minutes.

Can I see a picture prior to our date?

Of course you can. Once you have booked time with a Wing Women we will be glad to email more information about your Wing Woman as well as her picture.

Our recommendations for your night out:

— Tell Her What you like
Do be social, and let your Wing Women know exactly what you like and dislike in other women.
— Show Her What you like
Do point out women that you find attractive, and would like to meet.
— Be a good host
Do be a great host for your Wing Women. Please act as a gentleman would. Not only does this help socially, but helps encourage your Wing Women throughout the night.
— Be a Cautious Drinker
Drinking is allowed for Wing Women, but please be responsible in drinking (no one likes a belligerent drunk).
— Stay in Public Places
Do meet in public places. (Lounges, Clubs, Bars), Wing Women will not escort you to a place she doesn't feel is a hundred percent safe.
— No Tipping
Do not tip your Wing Women. She is not allowed to accept any tips, no matter successful your night out was.
— Have Fun
Do have an amazing time on your night out and meet lots of women!"

Guess what? There's even a website guarantee:

"With the employment of our services you will be provided with a charming woman who is guaranteed to dazzle a room, and create the kind of buzz that leaves everyone wanting to meet you, specifically other dazzling women. If for any reason you are not satisfied within the first 25 minutes of your company with our Wing Women, we will refund the total cost of the service."

O-kay then. I hate the entire concept of "wing-men," who are friends that help each other out with women. Again, sexual orientation in terms of friends in the real world is often unimportant. I could not find whether UsWingWomen only provide its services to heterosexual men.

Anyway, I hate it regardless. I find the material incredibly sexist and juvenile, describing women dating targets in the most stereotypically and insulting manner. Not surprisingly, it is a popular concept that has spread nationwide.

I'm old-school. I want real people to dump me. Hmmm. I don't think that came out right, but you know what I mean.

I also want someone to recommend someone to date who actually knows that person, and hasn't been hired to tell me what a wonderful person he/she is. Someone who doesn't view all women merely to be played and as completely shallow — except for our protruding breasts!

Dating and relationships in general, are about trust and honesty. If you decide to go down these dark paths, they will likely lead to nothing but heartache and very, very bad karma.

— The Curator

For the Truly Gutless/Heartless: Hire Someone to Make THE Breakup Call!

I hate this, hate this!

Breakups are agonizing. For both the heartbreaker and the heartbroken, the let's-not-do-this-anymore conversation is always awkward and very often painful, particularly for the person getting dumped.

Bradley Laborman knows this because he has probably been through more breakups than anyone else. That's because he runs the website iDUMP4U, which lets users hire a relationship hit man — i.e., Laborman — to do their dirty work for them. For $10, Laborman will make the breakup call, which he records for posterity — and for YouTube. That's right, customers can choose to broadcast these calls for their entertainment (or revenge) value.

Sound terrible? It really, really is. But, I think it also symbolizes just how far our society had devolved. People and relationships are beyond expendable, they have become simply 'objects' to be used then discarded along with the trash without a backward, emotional or responsible glance. So, why not use the new technology to keep your own hands clean? Dis-gusting.

But people do use the service. At $10 for a standard breakup, $25 for ending an engagement and $50 for demanding a divorce, iDUMP4U isn't turning a profit yet, but Laborman says he was surprised at how quickly business picked up after he launched the site in September 2009.

Originally starting it as a joke, Laborman so far has conducted more than 200 breakups, for almost every reason imaginable, from cheating partners to lazy lovers. And if last year's requests are any indication, Laborman's numbers are about to get a boost. The phenomenon known as the Turkey Dump — in which college freshmen break up with their hometown loves over the Thanksgiving holiday — provided Laborman with a lot of extra business last year. "Last year I had a lot of Turkey Dumps," he says. "I also had people who didn't want to buy a Christmas present [for their partner]. This time of year is the busiest."

Although Laborman may be the most extreme, he is not the only provider of third-party dumping services. There's BreakUpEmail.com, which asks users to fill out various details — their name, partner's name, reason for breaking up — and then produces a breakup e-mail to send to their soon-to-be-single sweetheart.

The site gets up to 5,000 visits a day, and its creator, Chris (who asks that we do not include his last name out of concern that moonlighting as a breakup facilitator might negatively impact his day job as a humanitarian-aid worker), says he has gotten thank-you e-mails from two types of people: those who find the site funny and those who actually use it.

And, of course, there's an app for breaking up. Erase Ur X can be used to create a form e-mail sent from your iPhone that breaks the news to your soon-to-be-ex. After that, the app does what creator Cory Wiles calls the hardest part of the breakup — deleting the now-ex's number from your phone. (If you aren't actually conducting the breakup yourself, that probably is the hardest part.)

For those of us who can still remember the time when breaking up over the phone, rather than in person, was thought to be in poor taste, services like these may seem an unimaginably impersonal way to end what should be your most intimate relationship. But for those who began their dating career in the age of texting, Twitter and Facebook, relationships have a whole new communication system. And so do breakups.

"We are so used to having standardized etiquette, and in some ways we are still waiting for that to emerge [online]," says Ilana Gershon, an assistant professor at Indiana University and the author of The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. "But no one has set out the rules of what's acceptable and what's not." So for a society that once lived by Emily Post's code of conduct, we now find ourselves navigating the social scene sans guidelines, and what may seem like horrific behavior to some is (borderline) acceptable to others.

Ironically, Erase Ur X's Wiles and the other guys who run third-party dumping services admit that they'd never want to be broken up with by their own companies. BreakUpEmail.com's Chris says he's never broken up with anyone over e-mail, which may explain why he's still friends with most of his ex-girlfriends (one of them even gave him advice on developing the site). And iDUMP4U's Laborman says he'd prefer a face-to-face breakup to any other method.

Yet each defends their services as having a practical role for today's relationships. Wiles says that social networking has changed our ideas about privacy. "It used to be that breakups were private," he says. "This is just the new trend, a natural progression."

Laborman contends that with all the ambiguity that new media can bring to a relationship — it's not officially over until your Facebook relationship status says it's over, right? — using a third-party dumping service can let your partner know how serious you are about the breakup, and therefore improve your communication.

"Or," he counters, "it's the perfect way to burn a bridge."

No kidding! Anyone who would use one of these services is not someone I would ever be interested in having a relationship with in the first place. Relationships mean taking risks, and they require mutual responsibility and have consequences. Sometimes they cause pain, but they can also produce a profound joy like nothing else in the entire universe. They are not iPod applications for God's sake, they are real life. You remember real life, right? Jesus, I am developing a real, honest hatred for this era!

— The Curator

Mother Wants Death Penalty for Daughter's Killer

Authorities suspect that a 7-year-old missing north Florida girl, whose body was found by police beneath trash in a landfill Wednesday, may have been sexually assaulted before being slain.

The killer of the child, Somer Thompson, remains at large. An autopsy has been completed and investigators now know how she, died but they declined to disclose their findings, or to provide any details regarding the body’s condition. They also declined on Friday to confirm that she was sexually assaulted. The autopsy was performed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Savannah, because the girl’s remains were found near the Florida state line.

Somer vanished on her mile-long walk home from school in Orange Park on Monday. She had been squabbling with another child, and her sister had told her to stop. The girl got upset, walked ahead of the group and was never seen by her family again.

The girl’s mother, Diena Thompson, believes her daughter's killer will be caught, and that whoever is responsible should face the death penalty. Mrs. Thompson appeared on the three main morning television shows in the US on Thursday.

Speaking on The Early Show on CBS, Mrs Thompson said of the killer: "I hate him. I hate him."

She added: "He needs the death penalty. And I hope they put him in a cell with someone who absolutely can't stand a child predator and let them have fun with him."

On ABC's Good Morning America she added: "We're coming for you. We'll get you, and hopefully justice will be served."

Mrs. Thompson appeared red-eyed and struggled to maintain her composure during the interviews, just a day after Somer's body was formally identified.

She said she has been told little about the investigation into the murder of Somer, only that authorities are searching a vacant house near where the girl was last seen.

"I feel responsible," she said. "If I could have just, I don't know, left work or something and been able to pick her up, this wouldn't have happened."

Orange Park is a suburb of Jacksonville with about 9,000 people, just south of Jacksonville Naval Air Station. The area where the girl disappeared is a heavily populated residential area with homes, apartment complexes and condominiums.

On Thursday, a Clay County Sheriff's spokeswoman called the girl's death a homicide, though she refused to elaborate. Authorities have not said whether investigators believe the crime was committed by one or more people. Police have questioned all of the registered sex offenders in the area.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show a shocking number – 161 – sex offenders live near Somer's home. Florida's sexual offenders and predators registry, which is updated daily, shows 88 registered offenders live in Orange Park, while the remaining offenders live within a five-mile radius of her home.

Investigators finished interviewing all of them on Friday, saying that they don't believe there is a suspect in that group.

The victim’s identity was confirmed a short time after authorities said clothing and a birthmark on her left shin found on the body they discovered in the landfill led them to believe they had found the missing girl.

On Monday, authorities had immediately launched a countywide search involving helicopters, dogs and volunteers walking arm-to-arm through wooded areas.

Investigators had followed nine garbage trucks – lorries – leaving the neighborhood where the child disappeared to the Chesser Island Road Landfill, near Folkston, Ga., about 50 miles from where Somer was last seen.

On Wednesday, detectives were combing the landfill when they spotted the poor child’s legs first, then the body, which had been partially covered by garbage.

Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler said he told the girl's mother to prepare for the worst, and called her after receiving the tragic information confirming her identity Wednesday night.

"Needless to say, she was absolutely devastated," he said. "It was the hardest phone call I've ever had to make in my life, and I hope I never have to make another one like that."

Beseler credited one of his detectives with suggesting on Tuesday that the landfill be checked. Trucks were scheduled to pick up garbage in Orange Park on Tuesday morning. He said detectives were told to go through the debris looking for evidence as the trucks brought it in. Investigators sorted through more than 100,000 tons of garbage.

"Had we not done this tactic, I believe that body would have been buried beneath hundreds of tons of debris, probably would have gone undiscovered forever," he said. Even if the body had been found later, key evidence could have been destroyed or degraded, the sheriff added. An FBI forensic unit is helping process evidence from the landfill.

The girl's father, Sam Thompson, lives in Graham, N.C. He and other family members were "torn up" after hearing the news, aunt Laura Holt said. She hopes authorities will find her niece's killer.

"I don't think they deserve to live," Holt said. "I don't think there's anything worse that a person can do – to kill a child and dump her in the dump like a piece of trash?"

"I fear for our community until we bring this person in. This is a heinous crime that's been committed," Beseler said. "And we're going to work as hard as we can to make this community safe."

Two deputies stood guard at mother Diena Thompson's home early Thursday morning. It appeared to be full of supporters. An oak tree across the street was decorated with flowers, candles and pictures of Somer.

"This has been so unreal for the neighborhood," said Sharon Galloway, who lives across the street from the Thompsons. "I just hope they get that son of a gun."

At a nearby shrine formed by flowers and dozens of teddy bears. Somer's family was making funeral arrangements Friday.