ST. LOUIS– Very few people would post their weight on a dating website but Colin O’Brien isn’t shying away from the truth in his quest to find love. The 29-year-old created his own website in a genuine attempt to meet new people and go on more dates.
O’Brien posted the link to www.datecolinobrien.com less than a week ago on a Facebook group called Date Ideas & Things to do in St. Louis. The post already has more than 3.5K likes and 1,000 comments.
In the post he says, “it’s a revolutionary new dating service with just one eligible bachelor: me.”
He says he already has heard from nearly 200 eligible women and has 13 dates lined up.
“People have been awesome. It hasn’t been, nothing cringy or embarrassing, nothing mean. People haven’t been taking advantage of it. It’s been genuinely people who want to meet and think it is a funny idea,” explained O’Brien.
O’Brien said he and his friend had been joking about making a dating app where there was only one eligible bachelor. They toyed with the idea for years and O’Brien finally decided to make it happen with a website.
Datecolinobrien.com is laced with honesty and self-deprecating humor. There is a bio and a stats section that includes information you may not usually see on a dating site.
“I wanted to put my weight on there, my tax bracket and stuff and be like, this is what you are getting. It is not changing overnight to impress you. And I’m not ashamed of it.” O’Brien explained.
There also are testimonials from his mom, failed romantic flings, and even a Tony-award-winning actress.
He even has a merchandise section where you can buy Date Colin O’Brien t-shirts and stickers.
“I know that there is going to be people who don’t like me or aren’t interested in me or don’t want to be with me and I would rather them be able to see that right off the bat,” said O’Brien.
O’Brien says he wanted the site to be really authentic. He said with online dating, people often will share the most flattering pictures of themselves that may not even be current.
“They pitch themselves one way on Tinder or Bumble or whatever and then they are different in person,” he explained.
He said he’s used dating apps periodically over the years but was never able to get any dates.
“I am one of a million trying to be funny or unique over this app and it is draining,” O’Brien explained.
O’Brien says having the website has opened up a world of online dating to him that wasn’t there before.
The pandemic has made dating difficult but O’Brien says he thinks COVID has made this website seem less creepy.
He explained before COVID if you weren’t having success on a dating app people would tell you to go out and be more confident or just walk up to people in a bar. Now with the pandemic, those options were gone and people have to get creative.
O’Brien is working on his MBA at St. Louis University and it may seem like he’s got a good handle on marketing and selling himself.
But at the end of the day, O’Brien says, “this is my quest to find love, and as goofy as it seems, underneath it all is that.”
