It’s a tough one. I think in a lot of cases this is a genuine sentiment – I know there are guys who will send dozens or hundreds of messages and never hear anything back. I can imagine that getting very frustrating over time. Sometimes it’s better to hear a no than nothing at all.
That said, it’s bad form. I think people tend to not realize that a lot the lack of response is due to overwhelming message volume coupled with occasional bad experiences (every girl I know who uses dating sites has at least one story about being insulted and/or threatened when they politely turned somebody down).
I have one and I’m of two minds about it. After a few good dates that ultimately fell apart due to the fact that I don’t want to commute to date, I made a new rule. In general I try to respond to someone that messages me, but lately I’m more likely to look at the profile note the distance and keep silent. Hetero-male in case anyone is interested.
That’s what I would suspect too. It sounds like something copied from scammers, as a way to find out who will respond or not and make it easier to reel in the suckers.
Is it really better? I would think that after having an empty inbox for a long time, it would be exciting for the original sender to get the alert that they have a new message, only to open it and see that it’s a rejection and be disappointed once again.
Also, in my thinking, it’s not really standard dating protocol for people to respond back to those types of messages, so if I did, I’d be one of the few or maybe only one who did. So now instead of the guy being upset with the dating world in general, he might have someone to focus his disappointment at and be upset with me personally.
It’s even worse on Grindr and the like. Problem with those apps is that it lets the other people know when you are on-line, so if you don’t respond within a minute, you get a slew of messages chastising you for not messaging back.
One time, I was waiting on some friends at a Happy Hour, and so I’d fired up Grindr. When they arrived, I put my phone away. A few hours later, I had 14 messages from one person, ranging from the “Nice profile. How are you?” to “Why aren’t you responding?” to “You stuck-up piece of…” The final messages were full of vitriol and bile, amounting to the fact that he’s glad I never responded, because I’m a horrible person who will die alone with my attitude.
A week or so later, I went back to that restaurant, and sure enough, I got “Nice profile. How are you?” from the same guy. Luckily, I’d remembered how crazy he went, and ignored him. But, that’s the weird thing - Grindr saves your chat history, so in messaging me anew, he saw his long rant from the week before. Why would he think that I’d reply now?
Sad thing is, he was actually fairly attractive. Glad I got to see his instability before I messaged him back.
Hetero dude here. I simply don’t reply. There is information in the fact that I visited their profile but didn’t respond. No need to emphasize the rejection.
I don’t care if I don’t get a response from someone who isn’t interested.
If I am not interested, I will write a polite rejection back if they wrote me a thoughtful note. I don’t respond back to things like, “Hi. how’s it going? ;-)”
Another thing I’ve noticed is that, basically, it is always the, um, not so, well, photogenic women who seem to send the first message. Usually, just about always, the guy sends the first message and the girls just wait back for the messages to roll in and pick and choose as to who strikes their fancy.
This is my I’m Going To Die Alone, Reason no. 5. I went on a few dates with a couple of women who did this it’s no better in person. There seems to be quite a few women who will submerge (is that the word I want) their personality in order to become the person you want. . This will ultimately lead to resentment. I’m not looking to perform a standup routine, interact with me damn it, I’m trying to find out who you are.
WTF do you mean WTF is up? She TOLD you WTF was up:
She was delighted by your pictures;
She thought her cousin or whoever would benefit from seeing them;
She wanted your permission to use them.
Some people, believe it or not, are able to engage in social interactions in a ilieu taht might not be precisely those interactions intended for that milieu. For example, some people flirt at the library instead of only checking out books there. In this case, while she wasn’t interested in you romantically, she saw a reason to communicate with you. She could have used your pictures without asking permission, but she figured it’d be respectful to ask permission first. And she complimented you because it was honest compliments, and besides that’s pretty standard format before asking a minor favor of a stranger.
Your response, no matter the wording, was beyond rude. The only proper responses would be:
Ignore her.
Give her permission with varying levels of curtness or civility;
Deny her permission with varying levels of curtness or civility.
But lecturing her on what kind of website it was? Totally rude, and her blocking of you was exactly the right response to such rudeness.
I think the word you want is sublimate rather than submerge.
I follow a few Tumblrs devoted to the oafs of online dating and the common understanding has become, ‘No reply ***is ***the reply.’ This isn’t a personal or business email that entitles the sender to a response.
Here is the full text of a message that I received less than an hour ago.
This was our first ever contact. Other than our age and the town where we live, I can’t find anything that we have in common based on reading her profile. What am I supposed to do with that? I don’t intend on responding.
I really did not wish to discuss this in depth but your outrageous reply here compels me to do so. This is what happened:
I received an unsolicited message on a dating site from a very attractive girl, who happened to also be in the very age range I was interested in. In the message, she told me how awesome my body looked, to keep up the good job and to tell me how much of an inspiration I was (in hindsight, I should have seen the use of “inspiration” as a red flag. No woman/girl that has ever had any romantic/sexual interest in me has ever called me an inspiration). She also asked if she could use my pictures to motivate her disabled cousing.
My reply was, “Oh, absolutely! I would love to be a positive influence for someone going through the changes of disability, no matter how slight that influence. I never had someone there for me when I was in that position, so I know what it’s like.” She said great and thanks.
I then asked her, “Can I ask you, though, was that the only reason you messaged me? To tell me I’m an inspiration and to ask to use my pics?” She replied, “Ohhh, no, don’t you think you’re getting off that easy, mister!” “I can always use a new workout buddy.” So, while I was a bit put off by the way she was saying what she was saying, I took it as a sign that she was interested in maybe getting together.
So, I tried engaging her in some light small talk. Just ice breakers to get a real conversation flowing. Now, on these sites, you can see just when the other person reads the message you have sent. My first message she ignored. For a couple days. Ok, maybe just busy, although she was ON the site this whole time. So I tried sending a few more, friendly chatty messages. Which, again, were completely ignored. For days and days and days. But they had been read by her within minutes of me sending them.
So it became clear to me that she had no interest in any sort of potential ANYTHING, she had just wanted to give me (yet another) “feel good” compliment and use my pictures. So I sent her another message, still very friendly, telling her I wish she had been more straightforward with me when I first asked her why she had messaged me. She gave me a very dishonest reply of, “Well, I can’t commit to dating anyone”. This conversation was taking place on a dating site, with a woman who specifically mentions that she’s “looking for a relationship” on her profile.
At this point, I was no longer interested in hearing anything more from this girl. I left one more message, saying, "If you saw and read my profile (which she had) and knew you were not interested in possibly pursuing any sort of further relationship with me, I think you should have kept your compliment to yourself. Because this is a dating site and I am here to date women. I can’t believe you don’t understand how what you did hurt me. This isn’t Facebook.
I sent this message and went and made dinner. An hour or so later, I come back and find our conversation had vanished and she had blocked me. Quite possibly the most utterly pointless and unnecessary blocking ever.
At no point was I in the least bit rude. I could copy the messages and post them here (with no identifying info, of course). I was simply communicating and trying to understand.
Another thing, if she had prefaced her message with exactly why she was communicating me, I wouldn’t have minded the exchange. But she came across as if she was attracted to me and wanted to know more, at least at first. And then when her real intentions became clear, she was dishonest as to why she hadn’t responded to my attempts at conversation. She told me she’s not ready to date. That’s offensive to my fucking intelligence.
If the message had been more like, “Hey, I’m not sending this as anything but a genuine compliment at what you’ve been able to accomplish with your life. I know this is a dating site but I just wanted to give you props, I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
There are appropriate places for such “inspirational compliments”. A dating site should be one fucking place I can get some reprieve from this crap. Facebook, messageboards, family and friends, random people during the day, gym members, anybody! Part of the reason I joined online dating was to minimize this sort of dreadful interaction.
Honestly, I don’t see what is so bad about asking “What are you doing?”. She’s just hoping that you are doing something that’s worth making conversation about.
Shining you on was not cool, no matter her intention. In fact, that makes it more insulting in my view, as though her affirmation meant more coming from a person who isn’t disabled. :mad:
I don’t think there’s a universal answer. Sometimes being acknowledged can be reassuring, even if it’s a no.
Again, I know protocol and whatnot enough not to be that guy, but, especially in a case where I tried to write a thoughtful, intelligent message to somebody who seemed to share a lot of common interests and had a compatible personality, simply never hearing anything back could occasionally get depressing.
