After joining a new dating site a month ago, Brandon Scott Wolf was thrilled by the response: 650 people contacted him about going out.
Then again, he doesn’t have a lot of competition — or any, for that matter: Wolf, a 25-year-old bartender and comedian based in Kensington, Brooklyn, started his very own online dating service at DateBrandonScottWolf.com. Of course, he’s the one and only potential mate on the site.
“I never thought people would submit, and people would just think I was making fun of dating websites,” said Wolf, who got the idea for the site two years ago after a big breakup. “People are taking it seriously, though!”
Visitors to the site will find a video of Wolf describing his ideal date (going to a movie and eating pie) and a multiple-choice questionnaire for those interested in dating him (the “favorite book” tab allows a choice of four of the seven Harry Potter books — and nothing else).
Wolf, who recently tried Tinder without much success, says it helps not having competition.
“If you’re not ridiculously attractive by the media standard, you won’t stand out,” he said.
He suspects that a lot of his site’s popularity has to do with the fact that people are just happy to see someone willing to put themselves out there. Wolf especially appreciated a message from a woman based in Australia who told him that he “had balls, doing this.”
The DateBrandonScottWolf site also asks respondents for a photo of themselves and a 500-to-1,000-word essay about “an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition to adulthood within your culture, community or family.”
Of the hundreds who have responded, many say they did it for fun or out of curiosity. One woman wrote: “This is awesome. I’m just filling this out to see what happens once I sign up, but if you wanted to go on a date, I could talk to my girlfriend and see if she’s OK with it.”
But Wolf says he has also gotten some very sincere essays and overtures. Thus far, he has gone out with one woman he met through his site, and it was a modest success.
“We ended up grabbing coffee at a small Williamsburg shop,” he recalls. “It was a nice, normal first date and thankfully I wasn’t catfished or murdered.”