I hung out with someone from a Craigslist ad and it was fine. I also posted a reply to a woman’s ad in the w4m section and got a couple emails from guys asking for pics. Pretty much all of my female friends who have had anything to do with online dating have at some point been emailed pictures of penises. So yeah, it’s an open sewer with some good stuff floating on top.
That’s my feeling. So glad I don’t have to read any more profiles of women who value honesty and like to laugh and have fun.
Well, yeah, but if you google “Gary Whitta” it’s not in the first 6 pages of results. So if she just googled his name she’d have no idea.
Unless she clicked on his QT3 profile page (1st page result!), where he’s currently viewing the Choggle thread.
On OkCupid, I found it immensely helpful to have a good female friend go over my profile and tell me where I should tweak it and why. My profile went from overly snarky and somewhat confrontational to something more inviting and open. And it did make a big difference both when women responded to my approaches and when women approached me on the site. And the core information remained the same, it was just presented in a better fashion.
Okay, so reading this thread made me realized I haven’t googled myself in a while, and that it would be a good idea if I ever decide to online date (which I never have).
And SWEET JESUS WHAT THE FUCK. After all the actual, salient things relating to me, there are a like 10 pages of this shit:
Hidden Warrens of the Stained Paw :: View topic - free porn …
<MY NAME> <MY TOWN> indian topless models hsitory of latin america i like anal irish women nude hentai previws homosexual adoption negatives …
tomorrow.daigotsu.com/viewtopic.php?t=KC Sinemaları
<MY NAME> <MY TOWN> humping dad’s cock japan hentai happy pics horseback riding las cruces housewife fuck fantasies herbal remedies for fatty tissues …
inemalari.com/index.php?option
How the hell did this happen and can I do anything about it? I don’t even look at porn!
Yeah. That’s my problem with dating. I hate having fun. And laughing is quite unpleasant. In fact, I find pleasure off putting. And honesty is stupid, too.
There are times when I’m glad that I share my name with a legendary British newscaster, and thus will never, ever have anybody googling my name come up with anything remotely related to me.
Or the ones who are equally happy going out, or staying in on the sofa with a bottle of wine and a DVD.
This type of thing is always the first thing that pops into my mind when I read content-free blurbs like that.
The second is “What an idiot.”
Yeah, see, I’m the only match for my name on the entire internet, barring all that spam. :-\
Well, I submitted a spam report to Google. Hopefully they’ll eventually kill the links, though that isn’t a permanent fix since it looks like this is mostly a bunch of bots spamming messageboards. Obviously they got my name from facebook and the legitimate google results for my name, but I haven’t seen someone hit this hard by that kind of thing before.
Man, that is one spammer-infested forum. Unfortunately it looks like the spammer’s scripts for padding their spam with random text just happened to grab some of it off some site with your name on it somewhere. Not much you can do except get all those forum admins to clean up their spam, and good luck with that. (Edit: Whoops, like you just said…)
Yeah, the ones I’ve checked so far that are gay-exclusive are pretty much centered around sex, none of that pansy “relationship” stuff. And the usernames…oy. How do you introduce yourself to someone named rimjob69? I mean, really.
That’s a good approach but doesn’t work so well for me, alas.
I did create a separate e-mail account for this after realizing most of my e-mail addresses are easy to do searches on (though my name isn’t tied to porn like Cosmic Hippo’s, thankfully). My first meeting with someone last week was in a public place. He didn’t show, contacted me online six hours later and said he fell asleep and was drunk (mentioned this in the random thought thread). But still, sound advice!
I agree, I think looking for a perfect or near-exact match is pointless. If someone has different interests, great, expand my horizons! Judging from my experiences over the last week I’d say the single most important thing is probably sense of humor and that’s nearly impossible to convey in an online dating profile.
Sounds like match.com and OKCupid are the best bets so far.
I met my SO in Dark Age of Camelot. We found that we had interests in common outside of MMOs as well, and are very happy. :D
I met my wife on Match.com.
She was my 5th Match date in my first week. All the girls I met were pretty cool, interesting people.
So I’m an enthusiastic supporter of online dating.
Whatever you do, Ned; bring the rainbow wig FTW!
Ha, I remember that. And no. :P
I’m signing up for OKCupid first and trying to come up with a decent screen name. Trying being the operative word.
Well you are off to a good start in simply realizing that rimjob69 is a horrible one. While screen name isn’t everything, I do think it should somewhat reflect what you are trying to get from the site.
I have a question, for those who might know. There is a scene in Sex and the City, where the insecure gay guy (as opposed to the brash one) is trying blind dates. He waits for a guy on the street, and when the man shows up, he looks at our hero and says something like “I don’t think so” and walks away. Is gay dating really that brutal sometimes? I used to have a lot of gay friends, but after a couple of moves I don’t really have any that I’m close enough to to ask such questions. But I have experienced some brutally honest gay men that I could see doing something like that. I was just wondering how common it is, because that would make dating much tougher I would think. I couldn’t take that kind of reaction many times.
I had a creepy experience once.
I used to hang out in a local-themed, general IRC channel and one day I spoke to that girl. She sent me a pic or three of hers, and we agree to meet. I bring one male and two female friends along, she brings a female friend.
The problem is, she is like a version of the pics she sent, that has gone through an uglyness x20-filter. Really. She’s… big, has bad skin, has fluffy hair all over her face. Then she sits next to me on a bench and she’s giggling and saying “how handsome!” to me and grabbing my hand, while my friends giggle because it’s totally obvious I feel awkward like hell and want to GTFO, and one of them even makes comments like “here you go, you two! Enjoy yourself!” and whatnot. Then my date-monster says “I need to go to the ATM to get some money for a taxi” and I say “yeah, show yourself the way” and my pals send me after her. Finally she asks me “you don’t fancy me, no?” And I feel bad and say “uuuuuhhhh well no, you are not really my type. But anyway, I was just looking for a friend!”. I end up driving her home and swear to myself never to do something like that again.
A few years later I saw her again, as my better half and I were shopping for a pair of boots. She totally recognized me, but I looked away, and so did she.
A few weeks ago I received one of those “x has invited you to join her circle of friends on xxxx” from her.
ANY dating has the potential to be that brutal. A friend of mine is overweight. She was meeting a guy for a blind date. Since she’s aware that she’s a big girl and some people aren’t into that, she was totally upfront with the guy on the phone so there’d be no surprises. He got to her apartment, she answered the door, he looked her head to toe and left. He didn’t say a word, just left her standing there in the doorway.
I’ve never used Craigslist. But last night, after work, I went to my local sushi shop for sashimi and sake. I sat at the small bar; soon a girl walks in and sits down a chair away from me. She keeps to herself, listening to her ipod and reading from a notebook. Then her food comes and she puts those things down and I strike up a conversation with her, she asks me what I do after work as hobbies (she just graduated college and got a job and is having trouble adjusting to it). I mention a few things, give my acknowledgement of life after college. I give her some suggestions as to what she can do to meet folk to hang out with and she mentions that she’s gone out with people on Craigslist. I mention that that is probably not a good idea; she agrees with me and mentions she found that out after going out a couple times. I ask her what she’s listening to, she answers John Mayer, she mentions that it’s depressing and that she’s enjoying the depressing quality to his songs. She begins talking about being depressed since she was a kid, in college, her work with elderly people, etc.
I’ve never gone out with anybody on Craigslist. I very much likely never will.
I dunno, me? I guess I’m old-fashioned or whatever.