We all know how difficult it can be to find love and a committed relationship - especially in our instant-gratification society.

The stigma that was once held over using dating sites and apps has since been removed, thanks to the likes of Tinder, Match.com and Grindr.

However, one site in Japan has been forced to close by government officials when it was found that it had a little bit of an imbalance in its user database.

The unnamed site boasted 2,700,000 members. How many were women, do you think? One. One woman.

One desperately alone woman.

Known in Japan as "sakura sites", users interact with computer-generated programs that respond to text input from humans. The programs, whom unwitting human users think are, offer to sign them up to another site in order to meet them.

In other instances, men were hired part-time to talk to users, one of whom spent over €93,000 on the site alone. 

They're big business in Japan, raking in upwards of €72 million collectively.

 

Via JapanToday.com