It’s interesting what people will do for love these days. Case in point: Ren Lu You, the Harvard Business School graduate behind dateren.com.
He offers to pay $10,000 to anyone who introduces him to a woman that he dates for more than six months. This dating endeavor has amounted to a lot of media coverage for him, including People, ABC’s Good Morning America, Daily Mail, Business Insider, and the Washington Post.
While I think it’s great that someone is willing to be this proactive with finding The One, and I obviously wish well on You to find someone special, this kind of scheme could have incredibly negative effects. Other than the obvious likelyhood to fraud, because what’s to stop two friends from “pulling a Bonnie and Clyde” and splitting the cash after a six-month ruse, there’s a few more points that have not been well thought out with the Ren Lu You Method of dating:
- He’s commodified his relationship from the get-go. He named his price on what reward he’ll give to the one who succeeds in setting him up. (No word yet on what he’ll do if the woman refers herself. $10,000 six month anniversary gift?) People who pay for the services for a professional matchmaker, whose services range $10,000-$25,000, pay for the value of their database, their intuition, their recruitment and vetting practices, and of course access to privacy and safety. Essentially, these kind of people pay for premium price to acquire love in an optimal (and typically organic-like) manner. For Ren Lu You, his future relationship has a price, and that’s $10,000. Two very different things.
- He’s scaring away The One. Ren Lu You creates a website, gets publicity and even offers for a reality TV show, and now he’s really expecting The One to show up? There are millions of women, I am sure, that would prefer their relationship not to be indexed by Google.
- He’s setting himself up for failure. Where failure is equal to Ren Lu You not entering a relationship, he’s set himself up for the unexpected. Self-proclaiming that thousands have already reached out to you tells me two things: If the girl had not already been scared off by her potential relationship’s future stigma, she’ll be completely put off knowing she’d have to compete with 1000 women! Second, sorting out and dating 1000 women? What are the chances that this young man will settle as he begins to drain his bank account on revolving first dates? Ren Lu You is a Harvard MBA. I’m sure one of his business classes taught him the Paradox of Choice. While there are more options that can give us high satisfaction in unlimited choice, a limited set of options is more optimal to help focus on what is truly important in what we are seeking.
Ren Lu You had other options, and the best one I could think of that would have helped him enter a relationship is hiring a professional matchmaker. We basically cost almost the same as what he’s offering a stranger. (Of course, we get paid up front.) He would have had someone vetting with his best interests in mind, providing optimal introductions while keeping his name and relationship off search engines. It’s a bummer he jumped the gun.
Instead, he sounds like an incredible narcissist.
