With nearly all singles looking for love online, it can be tough to find like-minded lovers. This has resulted in a number of extremely specific dating websites like Vampersonals, Daily Dipers and Sea Captain Date.
One, however, is more grave than the rest. Dead Meet is a dating website for those with death-related occupations.
“If you’ve been dying to meet someone who shares your interests, you’ve come to the right place!” the site reads.
Dead Met has 5,000 members who work as morticians, grave diggers, funeral directors, taxidermists, crematorium techs and even nurses, who many don’t realize are responsible for “laying out” the deceased.
Carla Valentine, an anatomical pathology technician (someone who works on postmortems in hospital mortuaries), started the site because of her own career in the death industry. Considering the sensitive subject-matter of her position, she found it necessary to connect with others who work in professions similar to her own.
“I just wanted to be able to chat to someone who could really understand me,” Ms. Valentine told Vice. “I wanted more friends in the same profession, not just my co-workers, and perhaps even a partner to talk to in the wee small hours of the night. When asked, ‘How was your day?’ I wanted to be able to say how it really was, safe in the knowledge that uttering sentences not usually uttered by ‘normal’ people wouldn’t send someone packing.”
The site is a breath of fresh air for others in her position, but getting the site off the ground was no easy task. Ms. Valentine told Vice that Dead Meet can come off as a gag at first glance and that an article about the site was taken down because the publication’s board found it to be “too macabre.”
On that note, we wonder how Vampersonals recruited “millions” of members.