We agree that there’s a special genetic quality and stylish flair that sets Ukrainian women apart from the crowd.
Hence, lots of people – including some Ukrainian women – are trying to cash in on this beauty by setting up websites that sell women’s contact information or offer to serve as matchmakers, providing translation and other services.
The globalized Internet world, with its over-abundance of choices, is a far cry from generations past, when most people married someone they knew from their neighborhood, school, place of work or church.
But all that glitters is not gold, as the Kyiv Post’s two front-page stories have found.
Staff writer Daryna Shevchenko wrote about her experience working as a university student for dating agencies in Kyiv. She would adopt the identities of other women on the website, and send out affectionate emails to as many as 200 men a day, getting paid for each response.
While these scams have been widely reported in media, some companies have become more sophisticated. They use Ukrainian women, mostly low-paid, for communication with foreign men on international dating sites as men think they are speaking with females from their own country or even their city.
This is what staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska found, as she learned that Cupid plc was willing to hire “motivation managers” in Ukraine whose job was to keep as many men as possible interested enough in them to pay for online subscriptions.
This confirmed what many men told the BBC: They suddenly became popular and received lots of messages after registering for free. But when they bought a subscription, interest dropped off quickly and sharply.
There are many reputable dating sites – but separating them from the rest takes work.
We suggest a better way. Whether it’s men or women, if you’re interested in the opposite or same sex from a particular country, go there. Don’t waste your money on these websites. If you are interested in men or women from your city – just go out and talk to people.
Sometimes there’s simply no substitute to personal meetings, unless you want to live in a virtual fantasy world.
