I guess just how inconsistent Seth Stevenson is being in his review of the Chemistry.com ads depends on whether or not he is gay.

The reason I say that is because he thinks the gay-focus ads are great because he can understand how discrimination from eHarmony is unfair and that gay people are a market segment that needs to be addressed. If he isn't gay, then he's being very sympathetic towards sensibilities he doesn't really share.

But then there's the sensibilities of the people whose tastes and non-sexual orientations differ from his own. Evidently he can't quite get his head around the idea that even people who dress in a way he finds distasteful might just want to find a match too.

So if Stevenson is gay, then he's inconsistent in that his sensibilities only extend to his own group (How dare eHarmony reject gay people, but lord, how tacky is that vest?!?! ) If he's straight but a fashion prig then he's being inconsistent because he can see how other viewpoints are valid market shares but only if they're based on sexual orientation.

Stevenson reviews ads all the time when he's not the target demo, and does the best he can to think about whether the ad will appeal to the demo it is targeting.

In this case, the distinction is legitimate - gays are likely to rally to chemistry because they were dismissed summarily by eharmony. Straights are less likely to flock to a site that has people who eharmony found unappealing prospects, because that's a black box, and there's a professed scientific reason why this person's a lousy mate. Online dating already involves a thought process of "why couldn't this person find love offline?", and now it has "why was this person rejected by an online site, too?"