That Internet dating thing

Fsszzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Sizzle, fire!

Seriously? How has no one posted in this thread in 3 years? :-o

And here we go…

I’m 47, over 6’2", still athletic (if on the thin side) and can write in complete sentences. That last one (and my height) pretty much put me in the top half of male profiles, regardless of if I looked like a troll. Which I like to think I don’t. Seriously, I read more than a few of the guy’s profiles before I did mine to see what kinds of things they all said, and what I could say to stand out. So many are so bad. How women sift through that is beyond me.

Oh, about the height thing. Man, if a dude puts on that he will only date chicks with big boobs and a trim body he would get hammered. At least a third to half the women’s profiles state they only will date guys taller than them, and plenty want it to be by more than a few inches.

Back in the dating arena about a month now. Been out of it since 2012.

Using OKC and POF (sorta) currently. Match has too many profiles and I’m not wanting to get hammered with so many contacts at this point. OKC is pretty good, but POF’s site if damned atrocious! The search kinda sucks as the only order is by last online or newest?! No ‘closest’ which is what i use most or ‘best match’ or whatever. Just freaking last online or newest. Horrible!

OKC still seems to have more NSAs than match (or even POF surprisingly) and that’s not what I’m going for. But it also has a pretty high quality selection (of women, I’m a hetro dude). And the questions are pretty great, especially for those that don’t like to write profiles. I’m talking about the women, as I’m pretty good about the profile thing I think.

So, via OKC I talked to and eventually met a gal who’s profile was terrific and who I’d seen on before. We had a great couple of first dates, more meets really, but things quickly evolved past the meeting stage. Anyway, the last time I saw her she was considerably cooler than before. After talking about it she simply said she was still nervous about relationships after her last breakup. I told her we could go at whatever pace she liked. She seemed fine with that and has texted me things that were more than just blow-off topics, but still things seem off.

Anyway, I have no idea if she wants to continue…ok, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t, but I told her we’d go at her pace so will let things run the course a little longer.

Regarding other apps. Tinder and Bumble seem to be the biggies but both require FB linkage. Hell to the no!

Like an idiot I tried howaboutwe and even paid $27 for like 3 months. Sounds reasonable (you kinda just say what kind of first date you want and go from there)…however there are literally 2 profiles that show to have been online in the last month. This is in DFW and with an age range I pushed out from 30-50. Match, for instance, has thousands active in that range and even OKC or POF have well over a thousand.

Anyway, anyone got any other ideas/apps/stories? I know when I divorced 4 years ago it was nice to hear the others on here and helpful to feel like you guys had my back.

Lostcawz, a few thoughts.

I used all of the dating sites you mentioned and think OKC was the best, hands down. I met my wife there and we both answered the questions honestly, We matched around 93%. So I like their algorthim.

For Tinder, I’ve heard good things (it came out after I met my wife). I would think you could just make a fake FB account tied to a new “dating” email you create. Then you can put no pictures or info on your fake FB profile and upload directly from the app. I know some guys that do that.

In general I think Internet dating is at least as good as traditional methods. The only advantage to meeting someone in person is that you know their behaviorisms, body language and charisma right away. You do have to put up with the “this is a younger, thinner version of me” phenomenon, but that goes both ways for both genders, right?

I think the biggest downside of internet dating is that it makes it extremely frictionless to filter people out. “But that makes it easier to find an ideal match”, I hear you saying. Well, no, not really. It makes it easier to sort people based on arbitrary criteria, and that’s helpful in some ways, but I think it also leads to rejecting people who might actually be really good fits if you interacted with them because they don’t fit the picture you have in your head. I find myself automatically discarding people who have a lot of pictures of themselves outdoors or talk about how much they love sports/camping/etc. I ditch people because they don’t mention science fiction or fantasy novels among their reading (though they might well enjoy them and just didn’t choose to cite them). I skip people who list a religion on their profile even if they’re not all “god bothery” about it. People who talk a lot about art and museums and travel. People who seem really focused on activism. And these are all women I find superficially attractive and who have high match percentages and seem at least somewhat nerdy. I don’t even bother with their profile if the first two things aren’t true. Etc.

I’ve been extremely into women that I met RL that probably fit some or all of those descriptions, but I got to actually spend time with them instead of having that stuff in my view immediately. And I mean, those things aren’t dealbreakers. Not any of them. They’re just not what I’m like, and it’s easy to assume I’ll do better with a sedentary gamer geek instead. I can only imagine what little tidbits on my profile are driving off the people I do message.

Unfortunately, internet dating is the only route that’s been even quasi-successful for me and none of my interests lend themselves to meeting women who live in my area that might be compatible and single and looking.

That’s awesome EG! Not sure if you’ve mentioned that here before, but grats on internet dating the hell out of it!

Well, I almost got married to someone I met on Match 4 years ago, so I know it can work. My biggest issue is that so many women (I assume men too) use it like a catalog and since there are so many other profiles why waste time with one person if everything doesn’t click immediately? Hell, even if it does maybe that other profile is .003% more compatible. I mean, I’ve had great first dates that went amazing and then…nothing. Unless we’re just totally and obviously incompatible I’m for taking at least a couple of dates to get to learn the person. I don’t get the mentality of one and done. At all. Oh well.

I get what you’re saying about categorizing the profiles, malkav. It’s easy to do and I fight against it. I don’t really have a ‘type’ but some of the profiles I’ve been most drawn to were completely the opposite of me. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to them. But since I know they’re be bored of me (I don’t have tons of tats, ride a Harley, or shoot pool) I haven’t contacted any of them.

I don’t know if this helps. But I met my present wife on Prodigy. How old is that? We were in a chat room. Some Norwegian dude was talking about suicide. He had just been dumped by his girlfriend. We talked to him for many hours. Then we made a room for the three of us. We talked for a while. He got his shit together. So then Caryn and I started to talk to each other.

Ultimately we started talking on the phone.

Now we have known each other for over 20 years, and married for 15 years. Shit happens I guess.

One thing I would suggest is not to overlook Tinder for serious dating. I know it was originally created to be the straight Grindr, but that’s not how things worked out. You can put straight people in the gay jungle, but you can’t take the straight out of them. (Even over in gay land, Tinder is the serious dating app. I’ve noticed little difference between men & women’s intended level of seriousness on Tinder, at least in the aggregate.) The only real result of Tinder’s link to Facebook is that it shows you mutual friends & interests, which effectively stands in for OKCupid’s question system. I wouldn’t worry about the link itself. Nothing really comes of it. And you can always make an alternate Facebook account, as mentioned above.

The downside of Tinder is that it’s more superficial than ever, but the upside is that it cuts down a lot on the effort spent per date. You know you’re both actually interested at some level before you send the first message, so the signal to noise ratio is much better.

As an aside, and regardless of which dating app you’re using, I highly recommend Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Even if you’re not dating, it’s a fascinating look at online dating culture, and it’s probably better researched than anything but Dataclysm.

Ok, that’s good to know about Tinder and how it works with FB. I could never get any real info on what it got from FB and how tied together they are. I don’t use FB much but do not want every person from high school on my friends list to be able to follow my social life. I’m assuming there is nothing that shows up on FB to indicate you’re also on Tinder?

Um…RichVR, if you and your wife met on Prodigy you might have known her for like 40 years, not just 20. ;-)

I think I must have really been doing something wrong. In six years on OKCupid, I managed a grand total of eight dates.

Try one of the others Anony, I’m in DFW so there are lots of profiles on all of them, but depending on where you are one may have a much larger base of users.

I dunno, that sounds pretty similar to my experience. Well, if those are eight separate women that you dated 1+ times. I’ve maybe managed to get to the date stage with a few more people than that but it generally falls through by date 3 if not sooner. I did find one woman last year that I managed to get to the “officially in a relationship” stage (met her family for Thanksgiving, even) but she’s got chronic and severe anxiety/depression and broke things off in February because she just couldn’t handle the stress of being in a relationship. :(

It was seven women, with just one second date. I don’t know quite what’s wrong with me, but there must be something. I’m fairly decent looking, have a range of somewhat interesting hobbies (cycling, photography, classical piano, etc), a stable and well-paying career, and when messaging I make sure to write in complete sentences, avoid any physical/sexual remarks, avoid rambling, and make a point to ask a question about one of their interests. But I probably have a ratio of message to response of maybe 80-to-1? At the moment, I feel just about ready to give up on the idea of relationships period.

For whatever it’s worth: I met at least 20 women, probably more, before my wife. I used OK Cupid and Eharmony and Match.com, but most results I got (including my wife) were on Match. I’m kinda surprised in retrospect that I saw it through. I’m a person who takes rejection personally, every single time, so it was pretty rough at times. I don’t think I’ve been as doggedly persistent in anything else in my life. My attitude in the end basically became, ‘fuck you universe, I’m gonna keep doing this.’ It took me about 3 1/2 years all in.

I think that ratio is pretty standard, unfortunately. My impression from the women I have gone out with is that there’s just a deluge of terrible messages from shitbags at all times, constantly, and even if you are what they’re looking for you can easily get drowned out by the tide of awfulness. Plus, y’know, easy to be picky even if they did get it. And the same shitbags train them not to actively turn anyone down because they never know when even a seemingly decent guy will hulk out the moment they get any sort of refusal.

It’s the actual dating process where I’ve become convinced there’s something wrong with me. They seem to like me fine for the most part, but it never actually goes anywhere.

Same! On the several occasions when I’ve been set up with a friend of a friend or coworker, the feedback I’ve gotten has been “He was really nice, but…shrug” and nothing really beyond that. I’m doing something wrong, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.

I wonder if OKCupid has A/B tested showing star based comatibility rankings instead of percentages.

I’m slightly trolling about game reviews, but mostly not. The idea that their algorithm could differentiate a fraction of a percent of actual compatibility (rather than just numerical question comparisons) is pretty laughable, so it’s clear that they’re displaying a false level of precision.

On the other hand, people like that, and would probably complain if the percentages went away.

Are you humorous? If you can make a woman laugh with genuine wit and humor, you’re halfway to her heart (note that I have no data to support that statement!). Also, as malkav mentioned, the women on these sites are inundated with messages, so make sure the titles of your messages stand out. Give her a reason to open and read your message as opposed to filing it in the dust bin along with the messages from creeps.

With regards to first dates, here’s a major no-no: if she feels like she’s being interviewed, you’ve lost her. Questions should come naturally as a result of the conversation, not asked as if you’re checking off bullet points. And remember: people enjoy talking about themselves. If you’re most interested in learning about her and she’s most interested in learning about you, that’s when the magic happens.

Well, screw it. Went on and setup a Tinder account last night. Lots of the same gals from other sites, but some new ones too.

I take rejection very personally myself, but it’s much easier to deal with this time around. Maybe I’ve gotten older (but I wasn’t a spring chicken last time) but mostly I understand the ‘game’ such as it is I think. I also can fall pretty quickly if I let myself. That’s great in the right situation but a deal-killer most of the time I think. So finding a balance between letting the woman know I want a real relationship and not terrifying her with a marriage proposal on date 2 is my challenge.

Anony, if you play the piano get your ass in front of a piano. Though I’m not sure how you’d do that without it being an obvious setup which would be a turnoff so maybe that’s not really such good advice. I’m just an old ex-jock who never picked up playing an instrument and can’t even really carry a tune. But I do know that women dig musicians. They dig normal guys with real jobs who can still play music even more. And have you tried more dong pics? I hear they like those too. ;-)

Oh, the laughing thing is uber-helpful too. A bit of self-deprecating humor is almost always a plus, so long as it’s genuine.

Wow - what a blast from the past this thread is. Hilarious to search through my previous posts. I was young-er and stupid-er, and much more funny 7 years ago! Might as well update - my OKC boyfriend and I have been together for 7 years now! Bought a house together - 2 dogs and everything. I believe he was my 3rd or 4th OKC date before we ended up together. I’m glad I got tied down before the proliferation of Grindr/Tinder and attention spans just got shorter and shorter. From friends/co-workers who are dating it seems like OKC and Match are still the best in terms of long term relationships. Tinder is still primarily for hookups - but at least it’s honest!

Anonymgeist -

I’m an OK Cupid veteran myself. You didn’t state your age or geography (or if you did, I didn’t catch it) but I’m now 49 (? the fuck, when did that happen?), live in the greater San Diego area, and got divorced about 4 years ago. Long story short but I was eager to start dating as soon as my ex and I had decided to make our separation permanent. I tried a few free sites but I really felt OK Cupid was the best of the lot.

Others have given you what looks to me like good advice. I would reiterate that, as a man, you’re definitely the one being evaluated or interviewed in a sense. Every woman I met admitted that there is so much bullshit they get from guys it is incredibly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and often they simply throw up their hands and give up and walk away for a bit. You, as a guy, (and hopefully not ‘that guy’) need to be pretty understanding about this. I can’t tell you the number of times I felt, judging by a woman’s profile, I just knew we’d be a good match (*) but my one or two or three introductions seemed to fall on deaf ears.

(*) My number one criteria… could I tell from their profile that they have a good sense of humor.

In the first year or so of OK Cupid I had probably 7 or 8 interactions with women from the site. A few didn’t go beyond messaging a bit and then they disappeared. Maybe 5 resulted in a date or a meet up in person. 3 progressed into repeated dates and a relationship of some sort. And 1 of those is now my girlfriend of two-and-a-half years and we live together now. I happen to live in a well-populated area so I’m sure I have had more than the typical number of potential matches.

I give you that level of feedback by way of saying, if not for OK Cupid I don’t know where I could have met even that many women… rather, women who I would want to meet and potentially have it blossom into a relationship. I’m not comfortable trying to pick up women in bars and that sort of thing and sort of shy to start with. So the level of messaging with OK Cupid where I could make a good written account of myself was perfect as an ice-breaker. I always tried to keep it short but not breezy and I always tried to be funny and smart. If I felt they were not funny or smart then I myself moved on.