Every now and then, you see and ad and you wonder who in the world they had in mind when they created that one. That’s how I felt when I saw this one

And how did I see this one? Well, our choir director sends out to the choir copies of or versions the music we should be familiar with by rehearsal. The device he uses to send these is free, which means it will have advertising. This is one of the ads. It was at the top of the column of ads for several weeks. I noticed it the first week—who wouldn’t?—but I didn’t start wondering about it for several weeks afterward. And what I wondered was this: who is this ad for?

The woman is there so you will read the text. Youngish, attractive; the little affiliative tilt to the head. Fine. She looks like someone you might want to affiliate with. It’s the traits that bother me. This dating site features “happy” and “loyal” women.

I think I could justify “happy” in the text. You don’t want to date dismal women. But on a dating site, “happy” seems too much. Is she always happy? Are there things she is happy about? Is she “happy” no matter what?

I wouldn’t want to characterize myself as knowledgeable about dating sites, but I did have a very interesting experience of online dating in my late 60s, and I have thought about these things in a way very few old men would have thought about them. I would have been puzzled if a woman had put in her profile that she was “happy.”

I don’t know any men who wouldn’t like to think of themselves as able to “make their wives happy”—to be a part of her life that tickles her or intrigues her so that she likes having you around. For myself, I was looking for a woman who was content. Not someone who needed a date or a boyfriend (he terms to use get a little wobbly for old people) but someone ready to invest in a new relationship to see what would happen.

“Happy no matter what” would have made me uncomfortable in a profile. As a part of the dating site’s ad, it’s just a puzzle. It isn’t my favorite puzzle though. For that, I’d have to vote for “loyal.” You can get in touch, by using this dating site, with women who are “loyal.” As a personal trait to feature in a dating app, that seems even odder than “happy.”

Who are they loyal to? What other traits have had to learn to take a back seat to loyalty? The app seems aimed at men who prize loyalty as if it is something they have been missing. Have they married before and to women who were not loyal? I would have thought that loyalty is something that would develop in the relationship. As part of a larger relationship, you know what you are being loyal to because you know who you are being loyal to.

Still, I guess you can’t put “willing to develop relationships that are worth being loyal to” on a dating app.

I may be overthinking this. I do that sometimes. Still, it seems to me that if you are going to put money into advertising, you would like to tailor the ad to the market you want to attract. The model isn’t glamorous in the least, for instance. That would be another market. This market is defined, I think, by men who want a relationship with an attractive woman who is happy and who is inclined to be loyal.

The whole pitch gives me a very uncomfortable feeling.