Dear User,

Greetings! After almost 20 years of operation in more than 25 countries on five continents, eight languages, millions of photos, and hundreds of thousands of successful first dates, the time has come for those of us here at Match.com to announce that, as of this Friday, we’re closing our doors. It’s been a terrific run, and we’re so proud to be able to say that we’re closing because–after almost two decades in business–we have been able to find love for everyone.

Not only our current paying subscribers, but everyone. From the very young to those approaching death, from IT professionals to carnival barkers, everyone you’ve ever known and everyone you haven’t has fallen deeply and profoundly and permanently in love, thanks to our unique, patented matching system.

Our records indicate that you signed up for Match.com at 4am on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, at this point, all of our matches have been completed and we are no longer accepting new clients. As you can imagine, finding the ideal mate for everyone (everyone except for you, of course, which is why you are receiving this email) took years of careful planning, so we couldn’t exactly go back and start over just because you put off making a profile for the last six months. But let’s not dwell on that now. Not when all of our other users are even now embarking upon the adventure of a lifetime. Be happy for them, if you can.

Everyone! Can you believe it? When we launched back in 1995, most people thought online dating was only for the hopelessly awkward and the disfigured. Now we’ve brought complete and perfect joy to over seven billion people. For years, Match.com has been responsible for more dates, more relationships, and more marriages than any other site; now we are responsible for all of them. Can you imagine?

Well. Perhaps you can’t. Please be generous. It’s hard to find love when you’re consumed by bitterness, and when everyone on the face of the green and heaving earth who isn’t you is already in the throes of perfect understanding and perfect bliss.

So what’s next for Match.com’s more than 500 employees? Well, some of us will be moving on to wedding-planning sites like The Knot, of course. Others will be taking sun-soaked kayaking trips through Costa Rica with our new partners. We’ll laugh as we paddle through ancient mangrove forests, and hold hands silently as the sun goes down over our never-ending ceviche buffet. Some of us have found love in our golden years, which as you know is adorable, and plan on spending every afternoon holding hands and resting on the same park bench overlooking the river.

Some of us will simply lay down our weary, swollen heads after a long and exhausting 20 years, grateful to the love-swaddled world that can finally allow us to die.

Our matching system was the best in the business, and you could have easily trained it to find the best matches for you in your city. But, of course, that’s all moot now. We’ve destroyed our data processing centers and remote servers. Every one of our employees has melted down his or her desktop computer and turned it into reclaimed art, which they plan on presenting to one another at their respective wedding showers in Napa Valley (the themes are Companionship, Driftwood, and Lightning Bugs Trapped In Mason Jars, respectively, so please plan accordingly).

Match.com pioneered online personals when it launched on the Web in 1995 and continues to lead this exciting and evolving category by ceasing to exist. All of our professional goals have been achieved. Throughout its history, Match.com has helped redefine the way people meet and fall in love. Some of our competitors said it couldn’t be done, finding love for every stuttered, stunted soul on the planet, including the lost at sea, the chronically late, the shut-ins, the introverted, the dead. But it turned out that it could be. By us.

Match.com once provided a rich tapestry of ethnicities, interests, goals, ambitions, quirks, looks and personalities from which to choose. In our prime, we were able to pioneer online dating on MSN across Asia, Australia, the United States and Latin America. Match.com was once an operating business of IAC. Several years ago we successfully acquired OKCupid, which is also shutting down at the end of the week, so don’t think you can slink over there and try your luck with the freeloaders. We found all of them love, too. (It’s amazing. They’re so happy; happier than they ever thought they could be.)

We found love for Michelle Williams. Think about that. She’s been such a trooper, you know? And it’s all been worth it, this whole crazy journey she’s been on. You should see the guy we found for her. It’s a little bittersweet, of course, but the happiness she feels now more than makes up for those awful, confusing days after Heath Ledger died.

Eharmony’s gone too, before you ask. Remember that song they used in all their commercials? “This will be, an everlasting love…” We weren’t kidding around. All the shiny-haired dressmakers and the shy, smiling small business owners are holding hands and laughing softly over flan. Neil Warren and his wife are taking to the sea. They’re going to sail around the world, helping infertile sea turtle couples adopt.

There’s just not an even number of people in the world, you know? Or, I don’t know, there is but we had to make allowances for the polyamorists, and none of them liked the pictures you posted. The point being, we think it’s pretty impressive that we managed to pair off billions of exquisitely happy people with only one left over. That’s practically a margin of error of nothing.

In time, we think you’ll come to see it that way too. Just try to find a way to be happy for the rest of us if you can, okay?

Please note that membership fees are nonrefundable at this time.

All best,

Match.com