Where to Draw the Line?

Everyone knows that paying someone for professional services that include being around you and pretending to care about you (or simulating that experience) is perfectly acceptable. It’s not that your therapist, your hairdresser, your lawyer, your bartender or even your professional escort don’t care about you, exactly; it’s just that this is how they earn their living, and they probably wouldn’t be spending time with you if you weren’t paying them. By the same token, personal relationships aren’t supposed to involve the exchange of funds; you might pick up the tab if you go on a date, or buy drinks for a friend when you go out, but in general these people should be spending time with you because they enjoy doing so. But how do we classify a case where you have to pay someone to go on a first date with you, after which all future interactions are negotiable?

As weird as this might sound, a new website has just popped up that offers exactly this sort of opportunity. As reported on The ABC News Technology page , the site (called What’sYourPrice.com) allows people who claim to be attractive to auction off dates to people who claim to be “generous” for an agreed-upon price that does not include sex or anything else that would constitute an actual crime. You could think of it as being similar to any of the sites for consultants or freelancers, in the sense that you advertise your services and what you expect to receive for them, or alternately you can advertise what kind of services you need, and then wait for someone who suits your requirements to reply. This may be problematic on any number of dimensions – there have been all of the cases of professional escorts being stalked, attacked and even murdered by people who they met on Craig’s List, for example – but it does not appear to be illegal. There does seem to be some question about how far you can go into this grey area before you cross a line, however…

If someone has been stood up for a lot of dates, asking someone to put up money in advance would be an excellent way to avoid being blown off. If you’re fed up with people on dating sites who claim to be wealthy and/or good looking and aren’t, or people who claim to be single but are actually just capitalizing on their spouse’s business trip, or people who claim to be looking for fun, romance and a possible soul mate but turn out to just be prospecting for clients to sell insurance, securities, or real estate to, making them commit in this fashion might make them reconsider. The fact is, people do not place the same value on things they are offered for free, even when the things themselves are identical. When a community college I was working with offered business seminars for free anywhere from 40% to 85% of the people who signed up would just blow off the class; when we started charging $10 in advance we had fewer than 10% fail to show up. A date you have to pay for may not be the most romantic (or spontaneous) thing in the world, but it’s definitely going to produce fewer flakes – and if you want people to be more serious, you could always start quoting a higher price for less services…

On the other hand, the potential for abuse of this service is even more obvious than it is in conventional dating sites or services. One can easily imagine the people who are selling their time charging extra for a “happy ending” to the date, or a buyer offering to spring for three more dates at regular price if they receive a specified sex act at end of the current one. One can also imagine any number of scenarios in which various types of criminals use this service to screen their victims. In the long run, the whole concept may be legal, and may even become socially acceptable, but I’d hate to see anyone I care about participating on either end of this enterprise…