That Internet dating thing

Demon_G_Sides · 2010-01-17T19:11:11.000Z

Blowing my fucking mind right now Malkav.

teledyne · 2010-01-17T19:20:02.000Z

I don’t think what everyone is saying that you MUST play kickball, but do something that gets you active, outside and social. Kickball just happens to be one of the very few co-ed team sports that satisfies all three of those necessities. I guess you could consider bowling to be a co-ed team sport, but have you seen the people at bowling alleys lately? Yeah.

All highs are chemically induced. Endorphins = chemical high. Dopamine = chemical high. If you mean chemical highs not brought on autonomously by your body, then you’re giving yourself a pretty big disadvantage.

Then again, I might know the girl just for you!

Shadarr · 2010-01-17T23:25:28.000Z

malkav11:

I also don’t enjoy drinking. Alcohol tastes utterly vile and I’ve never understood why I would want a chemical high.

Let’s not turn this into another supertaster thread.

But, just because you don’t want to play kickball doesn’t mean you can’t come up with an activity you would enjoy that would put you in the proximity of single women. It’s not an either/or thing, you can keep plugging away at the online sites regardless.

WarrenM · 2010-01-18T05:28:28.000Z

I don’t think what everyone is saying that you MUST play kickball, but do something that gets you active, outside and social.

But, again, that gets back to not being yourself. If you aren’t a social person and don’t play sports, what possible good does it do you to meet women who are? You won’t be able to sustain the relationship and it will fail.

If you’re truly trying to change yourself into that kind of person, that’s one thing. But if you’re just doing it to get dates, that’s a waste of time IMO (hers and yours).

Brian_Seiler · 2010-01-18T05:44:41.000Z

Papageno:

I haven’t read this whole thread (way too long), but has anyone here had experience with eHarmony? I’m considering trying it out. Match.com a couple of years ago was a total bust. Met one truly gorgeous, brainy woman through it, had one great date, she talked about another one, but she was married to her job at Intel, I came off too eager and I never got a second date (not going to make that mistake again).

Yes, I have.

I would not bother with that site.

eHarmony takes all of the awkwardness and uncomfortable atmosphere of internet dating and attaches a standardized test to it. No foolin’. The first thing that you do there if you want to talk to somebody is send them some questions that you pick from a list. It also pretty well caters to the subomegulloids - there’s about 20% of the population that they apparently think just ought to be alone so they won’t bother matching you because their very basic functions that they use to do that crap don’t work on your extra special personality, because you’re such a freak, and everybody knows that if freaks get love that only leads to more freaks, and possibly world conquest. Also, the guy who invented it is kind of a dick on roller skates, but that’s neither here nor there. Point is, it’s more expensive than any service I’ve ever seen, it’s boring and awkward, roughly ninety billion percent of everybody there neglects to provide a photograph, it’s way too much crap to keep up with (think ten matches a day that you need to sift through - that gets old real quick), and I had to deliberately engineer my answers to the initial personality survey to even get in.

As far as that question about lady friends, I actually have some. In fact, almost exclusively, which some people would say implies that I am, in fact, a homosexer (holy living shit, Firefox thinks that’s a word), but really just relates to the fact that I kind of have a hard time making friends with real people and I’m not going to send a message to a guy on a dating site. The trick is, though, all of those female friends are just as weird and deviant as me, and also unfortunately are all involved in relationships or live in Michigan. Or both.

TheTrunkDr · 2010-01-18T06:16:25.000Z

WarrenM:

But, again, that gets back to not being yourself. If you aren’t a social person and don’t play sports, what possible good does it do you to meet women who are? You won’t be able to sustain the relationship and it will fail.

If you’re truly trying to change yourself into that kind of person, that’s one thing. But if you’re just doing it to get dates, that’s a waste of time IMO (hers and yours).

Not necessarily, you don’t have to share all of your partner’s interests to have a meaningful relationship. Also many women participate in such activities for the purpose of meeting men.

I’ll agree you should generally do something you enjoy as then you won’t be wasting your time if there isn’t anyone of interest participating. Also it can lead to new friends which can lead to new love interests. That’s not likely to happen if you don’t enjoy it and don’t go after two or three times though.

Mark_Asher · 2010-01-18T07:24:31.000Z

Creole Ned:

This was the sixth entry under ‘Vancouver’:

vancouver_lift_carry: “HI this is a group for those of us who love giving and getting piggyback rides and being lifted and carried.”

Ahahaha. That’s a bit out there.

I just checked. St. Louis has 390 meetup groups. I know at least four are devoted to writing topics. There are some singles groups. There’s a photoshop group, a reiki healing group, a shamanistic group, a real estate group, a libertarian group, etc.

No piggyback ride groups, though. That may be a Vancouver exclusive!

ElGuapo · 2010-01-18T07:31:04.000Z

malkav11:

I’ve not actually played kickball, but I haven’t enjoyed anything that could be fairly labelled as a sport, especially a team sport, ever. And ones in which there are large rubber balls flying into parts of my body? hell no.

I also don’t enjoy drinking. Alcohol tastes utterly vile and I’ve never understood why I would want a chemical high.

Look out, someone is challenging extarbag’s crown! Those girls are too vapid and uninteresting to talk to anyway, you wouldn’t enjoy it.

malkav11 · 2010-01-18T09:01:14.000Z

Shadarr:

Let’s not turn this into another supertaster thread.

But, just because you don’t want to play kickball doesn’t mean you can’t come up with an activity you would enjoy that would put you in the proximity of single women. It’s not an either/or thing, you can keep plugging away at the online sites regardless.

Well, yeah, kickball is obviously not the only such activity out there. However, I’m on the online sites because I haven’t been able to come up with an activity I would enjoy that puts me in the proximity of single women. My interests are not universally antisocial, but mostly they don’t lend themselves to large group gatherings, and the few that do (MMOs, say) don’t work for meeting people offline.

Brian_Seiler · 2010-01-18T09:15:34.000Z

Blizzcon?

One chance to meet women a year is better than none, I guess.

Kalle · 2010-01-18T09:41:07.000Z

Anders Hallin:

I’m Swedish, and I knew kickball was somewhat of a pastime in the US!

I’m Swedish, and I did not know that.

balut · 2010-01-18T10:29:02.000Z

malkav11:

Well, yeah, kickball is obviously not the only such activity out there. However, I’m on the online sites because I haven’t been able to come up with an activity I would enjoy that puts me in the proximity of single women. My interests are not universally antisocial, but mostly they don’t lend themselves to large group gatherings, and the few that do (MMOs, say) don’t work for meeting people offline.

What about boardgames or card games or the like? I’m sure there are groups out there for people that want to meet up to play games, and theoretically some of them might even have women there.

Also, have you checked out that site “Geek2Geek”? It’s a pay site, but there’s bound to be a population of people there with a similar social/non-social profile.

salwon · 2010-01-18T10:45:44.000Z

balut:

What about boardgames or card games or the like? I’m sure there are groups out there for people that want to meet up to play games, and theoretically some of them might even have women there.

HAHAHAHA!

Mark_Asher · 2010-01-18T11:05:37.000Z

balut:

What about boardgames or card games or the like? I’m sure there are groups out there for people that want to meet up to play games, and theoretically some of them might even have women there.

Also, have you checked out that site “Geek2Geek”? It’s a pay site, but there’s bound to be a population of people there with a similar social/non-social profile.

Those meetup groups I touted may have some of this. There’s a boardgames meetup group here in St. Louis, and I know several other meetup groups have regularly scheduled card games.

Shadarr · 2010-01-18T11:06:09.000Z

The point is to figure out an activity you enjoy where there will be women, not to fill your calendar with more sausage-fests so you have no time to meet women.

crazy_jane · 2010-01-18T11:17:03.000Z

Take up knitting or crochet and go to a knitting group that’s made up of people near your age. It’s okay if you don’t know what you’re doing – most women are so delighted that a man would want to knit that they’re happy to show you how to do stuff. Also, men who knit are sexy to women who knit.

balut · 2010-01-18T11:35:13.000Z

Shadarr:

The point is to figure out an activity you enjoy where there will be women, not to fill your calendar with more sausage-fests so you have no time to meet women.

But this seems to be the core of malkav’s problem. He doesn’t seem to like any of the activities that women might attend.

Then again, I know several women that really enjoy boardgame nights and the like once they initially gave it a chance, and for some it actually became a gateway to other types of gaming (roleplaying games, 1st person shooters, mmo’s, etc.).

Warren · 2010-01-18T12:07:30.000Z

Holy SHooT. This is a HUGE thread. I am overwhelmed.

malkav11 · 2010-01-18T12:56:46.000Z

balut:

What about boardgames or card games or the like? I’m sure there are groups out there for people that want to meet up to play games, and theoretically some of them might even have women there.

Why yes, there are. I go to one on Friday nights, have for well over a decade. And there are women there - quite a few of them. What there have not been, for the most part, are single women in my age range. I did develop a lasting crush on one person I met there, but she moved to California and wasn’t interested in dating me anyway.

But anyway, I should reiterate that I met someone on OkCupid and it’s going well. I do not really need dating advice myself, at least at the moment. I’m just pointing out that there are reasons some of us don’t do kickball or whatever.

Shadarr · 2010-01-18T13:09:57.000Z

crazy jane:

Take up knitting

Ha ha ha ha!

most women are so delighted that a man would want to knit

Of course they would be, if that ever happened. I’m not sure how delighted they’d be with a man pretending to want to knit as a cynical ploy to meet women. I suppose it depends how good of an actor he is. She’ll probably be less delighted when they start dating and he immediately stops knitting and goes back to videogames or watching sports.