That Internet dating thing

[ElGuapo]

Do’h! Well, hang in there beecubed. Everyone has some bad ones.

I have this feeling Brian Seiler is just a weird, weird guy.

[Brian_Seiler]

What, me weird? No sir. You show me a man who doesn’t secretly wish he was Mister Peanut and I will show you a communist.

[Creole_Ned]

Handy tip for profiles: Do not post a photo of yourself in the bathtub…with your dog.

[Anders_Hallin]

I’ve met some nice people through okcupid, not that I actually have much use of it now, though I do get mails now and then from people who seem interesting. Oh, here’s my profile, with an olde picture.

[Pogo]

I wish Mark had dated the girl I went out with for a couple of months who was attempting to convince me that she was an honest-to-God vampire. I think he tells better stories than I do.

[John_Many_Jars]

“Yeah? How are you at suckin’?”

[Diana_Baba]

It’s not entirely sexist - it’s correct to conclude that there are generally more “let’s all do something stupid in the forest and pretend that we can talk woodchuck” women than there are men, and there’s a very good reason for that. New Age bullshit is generally geared toward the feminine empowerment language. An extremely brief flirtation I had with tarot cards back before I was smart enough to know that they were a giant sack of crap very quickly taught me that in the eyes of many of that set, men were definitely second class. A lot of that culture seems to be very concerned with goddess theologies, for example. I assume it goes along with their whole counter-culture thing, but now it’s baked right into the marketing, so it should not be surprising to find a larger number of women who have been led to believe that they can talk to owls about bursting clouds with their brains or whatever than men.

What’s sexist is assuming that they’re more likely to believe because they’re women. They’re not. They’re just far more likely to be marketed to. If I could come up with socially acceptable mystical trappings around Penis Power, I’m sure I could make millions of dollars evening the scales. People end up believing in crazy shit like that because they want an alternative to…well, reality. The alternatives on the particular branch of New Age that you’re examining are mostly directed at women. Head on over to the conspiracy theories and reptoid side of the pond and I suspect you’ll find a different kettle of insaneopods.

Could be marketing, could be that ‘traditional’ religions aren’t exactly empowering for women.

[Athryn]

Could be marketing, could be that ‘traditional’ religions aren’t exactly empowering for women.

Yeah, this.

[John_Many_Jars]

Any way you shovel it, it’s still bullshit.

[AaronSofaer]

So to me, the million dollar question.

What kind of messages do I send prospective matches on OkC? Short (2-lines) and simple? Moderately long (5-10 lines) commenting on points of mutual interest they have listed on their profile? Or a veritable essay (probably not!)?

[Gourmand]

Yeah, definitely not the essay. I’m interested in hearing how others approach, as well.

[kerzain]

Communicate using animated gifs.

[beecubed]

Here are a couple of my recent opening messages:

Holy crap, you aren’t kidding, drumming is tough. I can usually manage the easy stuff, but as soon as it gets past wack-2-wack-4 wack-2-wack-4, I’m toast!

So, what did you think of the ending of the Dark Tower series? I know a lot of people were disappointed by it. I thought that the deus ex machina kid at the almost-end was incredibly lame, but the book was totally redeemed by the rebirth/reliving/whatever at the very end.

Result: Date

I once tried roller blading at Penn State (which is basically built on the side of a giant, long hill) with no brake. “Hey, I know how to cut my skates and stop on ice, and cut my skis and stop on a hill. I will simply combine these two proficiencies and have no problems.” It, ummm, didn’t quite work out as I had hoped.

The first wipe out, I managed to leap over a guard rail chain and do a couple of somersaults in the grass. Amazingly, and probably due to the fact that I hadn’t gotten hurt yet, I got up and tried to keep going. I was very shortly presented with the choice of going down steps, running into a fire hydrant, or running into a giant thorn bush. I chose to throw myself down on the sidewalk and skid/scrape/scream myself to a halt. Right in front of a couple that was out for a romantic moonlit stroll. My friend, who I had borrowed the blades from, came running after me and, when he had determined that I wasn’t dangerously hurt, starting laughing his head off. Which is fair, I suppose, it probably was pretty funny.

I also once wiped out on the Seven Springs Alpine Slide (which is kind of like a luge in a concrete track). That also hurt quite a bit.

Her profile said that she wanted to trade epic fail stories.

Result: Conversation, but no date

A couple of months ago, I tried an experiment to find out what a really good match might be. I created a new account, answered a bunch of questions, then checked to see how it matched my real account.

Your match percentage to me is actually higher than my match percentage to myself. Crazy.

Result: Response, but no conversation

I’m actually re-reading the Song of Ice and Fire books right now. Do you think Martin is ever going to actually finish the series?

PS - To a careful observer, like myself, it is obvious which “of these things is not like the other”. There is a (obviously, very happy) dude sitting on the couch, surrounded by women.

This girl had a picture of herself (she was white) at a party with a number of black girls and one black guy. The quote was “One of these things is not like the other…”

Result: Viewed profile, but no response

… I suck at Scrabble. I’m not sure what it is. I have a great vocabulary, but give me little tiles with the letters BXOTTLE on them and probably the best I could come up with is… LOT.

But I’m good at fixing things, have a sarcastic sense of humor, like cooking, and love books. And my puppy-loving is well established (I have two).

So, what is this wonderful/horrible mystery job of yours? :-)

Result: Viewed profile, but no response

[FlamingSheep]

I decided to jump on the gravy train, because it looks like fun. Admittedly, it feels like a time sink, like WoW but with less Asian child labourers!

Edit: Btw, I found this to be an interesting article on the effects of race in online dating.

[AaronSofaer]

I really don’t like POF, by the way. Ew. What a terrible, terrible interface… and their image quality blows, my picture became all grainy and blurry.

[Creole_Ned]

POF actually seems to have taken away functionality recently. It used to list the last three people who viewed your profile above your inbox, but my list has suddenly disappeared.

Here’s a great example of how lousy their interface is. Below is a shot of my inbox (no messages in it currently because I haven’t been checking POF much lately).

What do the 10 photos above the inbox represent? Who knows? There is no text explaining them. How about the 12 below the inbox? Again, no explanation. So if the photos aren’t categorized in any obvious way and lack labels providing basic info about each person, surely there must be a tooltip when you hover over a picture that displays such information. Nope, nothing.

But POF does have two advantages over OKCupid (for me, at least): first, it has far more people on it and online dating is a numbers game, so more numbers = good. Second, it doesn’t freaking match me up with people in Washington state or over on Vancouver Island because it thinks these places are “close” to Vancouver.

Overall, though, I agree, POF’s interface is dire.

[malkav11]

I like how it helpfully links you to a selection of women who think you’re hot. Incredibly useful information for a gay man, to be sure.

[AaronSofaer]

I think the top section of paid advertisements (some of them link to other sites) and the bottom is a match-search on POF. Not sure though… didn’t spend much time trying to figure it out. Maybe I should pull the page source and analyze the links.

[ElGuapo]

I think I may be going on 4 dates today. A new record!

If you’re curious:

1. Took a stayover date to breakfast this morning, then she went home.

2. Coffee date at lunchtime came back to my place for drinks, then had
   to leave to go to work.

3. Dinner date in a few. We’ll see where that goes. Expecting just dinner.

4. Meeting a buddy at the bar later to watch NCAA basketball, if date ends at reasonable
   time. After game, going over to fourth date’s apartment late
   night.

[ElGuapo]

Go ahead Warren, just thought it was amusing.