Dating Games

Meet Zhenya: she’s 29, tall, blonde, earns over $5,000 a month, has a flat in the center of Moscow, a house in the suburbs, a prestigious car, and she owns a law firm. She doesn’t have kids; she’s never been married. Like her? If you’re an uspeshny muzhchina (successful man) you can date her, maybe marry her. She’s single and looking for a husband.

That’s Zhenya’s online dating profile on Privet, Russia’s glitchy version of the popular mobile matchmaking app, Tinder. But if you want to talk to Zhenya, you have to first get through Andrei – a representative of a dating agency paid to post her profile, sort through the neuspeshny, and get her paired up with the best men. Andrei and his agency are not alone. Since Privet emerged in 2014, small Moscow-based operations have been taking advantage of the free app, representing busy men and women in the market for serious relationships, family creation, and even sponsorship. These services have something in common: they’re making money on free acquaintance platforms like Privet, and some of their clients are willing to pay good money – some upwards of $3,000.

If you’re matched with Zhenya, here’s what happens next.

Andrei messages you on Privet. He asks for your telephone number to organize a date, assuring you that it’s all completely free. Inside of an hour, he calls twice. The first is for a brief pre-date screening where he pries personal information out of you: about your job, your income, whether you own a car or a flat, are a smoker, or have ever been married. If you pass, you get the second call; it’s a confirmation of the date. According to Andrei, Zhenya will be wearing a blue dress at a table in a cafe next to the Oktyabrskaya metro station on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.

But by the end of the day, her profile on Privet has disappeared; Andrei doesn’t answer the phone. If you venture out to the cafe on Tuesday, you’ll find yourself sitting alone, wondering whether the beautiful Zhenya ever existed at all.

Irina Kuznetsova, CEO of Privet, says she and the team at the Privet office in St. Petersburg know what’s going on.

“We know about the agencies and block dozens of their accounts every day,” she says. “We’ve even developed a special tool that allows us to automatically find and block them. We also have a ‘report user’ feature in the app, so users can help us with blocking agents.”

Her comments reflect Privet’s privacy policy, a verbatim copy of Tinder’s, which states that users may not use the service in connection with commercial endeavors. Unlike Tinder, which is financed by InterActiveCorp, a company that owns the paid dating services OkCupid and Match.com, Kuznetsova swears that her company gets no backing from any agencies working outside of Privet.

“We’ve never collaborated with any agencies or encouraged our users to become their clients.”

Privet has over fifty thousand downloads in Russia, yet the project is still a struggling start-up without holdings or the kind of financial backing Tinder has from IAC. It means that Privet’s technology is not as well funded, glitchier and vulnerable to agency profiling.

But Kuznetsova says that the profiles agencies are posting aren’t scams at all; in fact, they are real organizations representing real clients.

“Russia is notorious for its dating scams. But this is the first time we’re finding legitimate organizations online open about what they’re doing.”

The rise of agencies like Andrei’s reflects a truth about the changing dating world in Russia’s biggest cities: people don’t have the time to date and they don’t seem to miss it. Russians are enjoying a new, customizable world, and it seems many would rather short-order their ideal mates and pay somebody to find them.

So, what happened to Zhenya? Where was she now and why had she disappeared?

Time is not your friend

One Moscow playboy named Dima can make a good guess. He specializes in finding women like Zhenya uspeshniye muzhchini for a fee and has been doing it for two years. He explains that, despite the economic crisis, Moscow is still teeming with wealthy men and women who simply won’t waste time on less-than-perfect.

“Some guy with a Porsche plucked Zhenya like a ripe apple from a tree,” Dima jokes from his self-styled “office” in central Moscow. It’s a table in the musty library of The Green Door, an anticafe where visitors pay for their time and not their coffee. It’s an ironic choice for a workplace, because here, time is money – literally. And that’s Dima’s working philosophy.

“American dating experts like Doc Love and Corey Wayne say that patience is key to winning a woman’s heart,” Dima says. “They’ve obviously never been to Moscow.”

At Moscow's Green Door Anticafe.

A public relations specialist by education, Dima now spends his day at the anticafe advertising his services on another free acquaintance platform on the Russian search engine Mail.ru. It’s a site well-stocked with the kind of clientele he needs – escort girls. Dima panders to them and other aspiring soderzhanki – a term used for women somewhere between “mistress” and “kept woman.” On his page, he lays out a romantic smorgasbord for potential clients: “impromptu meetings, trips abroad, work with additional responsibilities, a wealthy lover, model, nude work and possibly a permanent man, ready for you, and perhaps for a serious relationship.”

Because of the crisis, Dima now lists his prices in dollars: $127 buys a month of access to a private forum where handpicked, wealthy men are registered; it also buys a customized ad in social groups, including Privet and Tinder. On his page he instructs women to send him a message with a personal statement of what they’re looking for and the best pictures they’ve got.

As with other agents, paying Dima is as easy as paying a mobile phone bill in Russia. In most any shop, a client can put money on Dima’s account via electronic terminals that host his preferred payment methods – Yandex Money, Web Money and Qiwi Wallet. Paying this way is quick, convenient, and nontaxable.

After he’s been paid, Dima gets to work photoshopping out blemishes, polishing profiles, and cold calling men on behalf of his female clients.

“I could easily work a 12-hour day. With all these different social networks now, the possibilities are endless,” he says during a smoke break in the muddy courtyard outside the anticafe.

When asked about his clients, Dima wags a finger.

“I can’t tell you too much about them. I’m like a private investigator for love,” he laughs. “But let’s put it this way: I’ve dealt with university students, unhappily married women, and everything in between.”

This kind of online matchmaking is a relatively new phenomenon in Russia, and Dima believes it owes its success to the boredom induced by a higher standard of living.

“I call it ‘soul boredom,’” he says. “Today, most young women in the capital are financially secure, but don’t have enough to live the kind of life they dream of. Most have tasted exotic places and want more but can’t make it on their own in the present economic climate.”

On top of that, Dima claims that his clients have grown tired of the “old ways” – that is, courtships leading to marriage at a young age and traditional family life.

“Really, these women have got nothing to lose buying my membership. It’s not that expensive and what’s the worst that could happen? It’s an exciting alternative to the traditional gender roles they’ve been spoon fed all their lives.”

This new market is becoming so popular that agencies have even started working together, sharing information, resources and even becoming exclusive.

While Dima inevitably works with men, he only works with some men. Inclusion in his private forum depends on income and perceived social status.

“Most of my male clients are earning more than $10,000 a month,” he boasts. “I don’t work with your average Joe. It’s not about money, but usually there are two kinds of people who come to me: the guy who knows what he wants in his life and the guy who doesn’t – the latter is always the one who has a job he isn’t passionate about and isn’t where he wants to be.

“My clients obviously don’t want that.”

Just sending Dima a message as an average guy earns a gruff response. While he categorically refuses to work with them, he knows someone who will. He replies with a link to a sister website called soderzhanki (soderganki.ru) – it’s just like his own page on Mail.ru, but offers more flexible options.

Alexa, the owner of soderzhanki, knows Dima only by his referrals – the two have never met in person, but Alexa maintains they have a good virtual relationship.

“We help each other out,” she says. “I try to cater to all sides of the market. Those he [Dima] passes on basically pay for my website... The rest is profit.”

She rents out the space on her site and hosts personal ads from both the wealthy and average. In addition to VIP services, she offers ads for as little as $5 a week.

After a few minutes on Alexa’s site, however, it becomes clear that most of her clients are well-off. The site abounds with juicy images of women in lingerie beside scruffy, tanned men in suits. Banners link to short descriptions offering deals for women. Some Moscow men promise upwards of $3,000 a month to women for a casual relationship. One man with the username “porschecardriver” gets right to the point:

“The goal – a relationship and sex for money… I’ll help get a country girl to Moscow to live in the center. I offer support for the financial and emotional achievement of your dreams.”

Back at the anticafe, Dima laughs at such wording – two years working in this sphere, he’s gotten used to such crass materialism.

“You have to realize that these are men on another level,” he explains. “They are your American ‘one percent.’ You can’t blame women for wanting to get involved with that.”

Soderzhanki

Historically, mistress culture and prostitution in Russian society go back far beyond Dima, dating apps, and the internet. The military reforms of Peter the Great in the eighteenth century created a large class of unmarried men and generated a demand for prostitution. Future monarchs would handle the issue differently, but all with a touch of sympathy, instituting policies ranging from complete abolition to decriminalization.

While street prostitution has largely disappeared from big cities like Moscow, Russia still has one of the highest prostitution rates in the world, with over a million sex workers, Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov stated in a 2014 report. Legally, prostitution in Russia remains in shady terrain. Though illegal, it is neither a serious crime nor an imprisonable one; the fine for engaging in prostitution is R1,500-2,000, roughly $30 at the current exchange rate.

Thanks to the internet, prostitution in Moscow has evolved over the last decade into a highly lucrative and personalized industry. It now defies age-old conventions: soderzhanki are choosing their clients themselves and even the language that is associated with their profession.

In Bibirevo, one seedy northern district on the outskirts of the city plagued by petty crime and drug use, one local escort service uses the word individualki instead of prostitutki. On their site, bruised and battered-looking individualki set strict rules, pricing charts and codes of conduct on their profiles. It’s a far cry from the nineties when pimps and prostitutes openly walked Tverskaya Street, a central boulevard leading to the Kremlin.

“It’s an exciting time for a soderzhanka,” Dima observes. “The internet gives even low tier escort girls a degree of safety and myriad of men to choose from.”

Over the Hill

If Dima’s and Alexa’s sites are any indication, $3,000 is the going rate for a VIP super beauty. But Anna, a 30-year-old receptionist at a medical clinic, got an offer of a different sort.

She had recently returned from several years in America and signed up on Privet to get back into the Moscow dating scene. Her father was beginning to pressure her about getting married.

“He keeps making little jokes and comments about it. But I know, since he’s Russian, that he’s serious. I saw an advert for that Privet app on the metro wifi, so I downloaded it. Why not, right?”

Anna recounted how, after her application matched her with a prospective date, she received a message from a girl working at a dating agency. She called and interviewed Anna, convincing her to come in and discuss the match at their office – a stuffy room on the third floor of a building off the Garden Ring road.

“I decided to go with a friend for fun and see what it was all about,” Anna explained. “I thought it would be like a speed dating thing.”

Anna soon found herself in an awkward situation – a R50,000 offer ($800) for sponsorship from a bearded, middle-aged man from Russia’s troubled South.

“At the office, I asked to see the representative I spoke with on the phone,” Anna says. “They kept telling me she was busy. Then this guy walks in with some flowers, thinking I had already accepted the deal!”

Apparently, the man became enraged when Anna repeated that she was not for sale. He started shouting that she was “over the hill,” that she had better accept the offer, and that he was “connected.”

“It was pretty ridiculous,” Anna said, laughing. “I was lucky to have my girlfriend with me.”

Anna has deleted Privet and is not losing sleep over the app’s latest feature, “Augmented Reality Radar,” a function that allows users to see who is near them.

“I’ve already deleted the app. If that’s the new face of dating, I think I’ll stay single.”

It’s a reality she would prefer not to see. RL