maybe all the guys the OP is meeting are looking for someone who has it going on MORE than the OP? Somebody else’s mom, perhaps?
One of the pieces of advice I was given was to ignore any profile where the picture did not show the body.
That’s if you can trust that the picture isn’t 10 years old.
If 68% of people are overweight, then fat IS average.
That’s why all those descriptions are so stupid. Technically when they say average they could mean “a body representative of the statistical average American”. Still, I think the vast majority of people understand it to mean “a body that’s neither exceptionally slim, exceptionally fat, nor exceptionally muscular”. The fact that most people are exceptionally fat doesn’t change that definition.
They usually offer 4-5 euphemisms for being fat. I don’t think “average” needs to get taken too.
I suggest she change her user name to gregsmilf.
Or of someone else, that happens too.
Freakonomics did a study of online dating. Among other things they found women were far thinner according to their profiles than a sample in real life would be, and that the men had higher incomes.
I recommend reading The Big Lies People Tell in Online Dating from the OKCupid blog.
I sometimes wonder if ladies think that I’m shorter than I actually am. I put 5’8" because I really AM 5’8". But they probably think I put that because I’m in 5’6" and they expect every guy to lie by about 2".
When I dipped my toe into the online dating pool I was always 100% honest. As well as being an overall honest person I figured that they would figure out I lied on the first date so why bother? I wonder if it put me at a disadvantage?
I’ve been on online dating sites for a few months now, and one thing I learned quickly was that if you can’t clearly tell from a woman’s photos that she’s not fat, you can assume she’s fat. It’s amazing how deceptive photos can be if you’re naive about the tricks people use (all the shots are closeups of their face, photos with the camera held way up above looking down so as to take advantage of the converging parallel lines phenomenon, highly stylized “artistic” looking photos with all kinds of filters and tints to distract your mind from the fact that you can’t actually see her body at all.) If a woman is not fat, she is going to want men to know that and will make it obvious.
Seriously. Match.com offers “heavyset,” “few extra pounds,” “curvy,” “stocky,” “big and beautiful,” and “full-figured.” I can’t figure out what the differences are supposed to be. If our society truly had an understanding of what healthy bodies looked like, two of those, “curvy” and “full-figured,” would represent something I might be interested in, but even those terms have been hijacked by the obese.
This. I’m short. I put my real height in my profile. You don’t like short guys? Fine, move on, nothing to see here. I’m not going to tell you I’m taller, then when we meet you find out I’m short. Then I’m short AND a liar.
But yeah, it probably put me at a disadvantage. I don’t mind. I met a great woman and married her.
So how much do people lie about their age?
What’s your search criteria? Age range?
At the risk of making a “not just men blah blah blah” statement, I’ve seen enough women-seeking-men profiles that take their inspiration from Hobby Lobby word art to last a lifetime. Same thing with the non-stop excitement and travel, too. Photos of women at Machu Picchu are about as cliche as… well, they’re everywhere. Platitudes of “I love to laugh and have fun” are generic, but they also have broad appeal; far more so than “I spend my free time fighting the oppression of the patriarchy” and “I love showing off one of my vintage fedoras at a game night”.
Basically, most of us, men and women, lead rather boring, ordinary lives. We might like the idea of non-stop excitement, but very few really have that kind of lifestyle. It’s not just enough to be attractive and intelligent, but also interesting. For most (e.g. those who aren’t immersed in nerd culture), that means adventure of some kind. “C’mon, and join my adventures” has a lot more appeal “Let’s just chill on the couch and Netflix”, but what’s more common in a relationship?
TL/DR: “Does this person even exist?” Yeah, but it’s really only a small part of their lives. Unless you live in Boulder or someplace similar.
Everyone be eating McRIBS up in HAR!
Not necessarily. I’m not fat and about averagely attractive, but I didn’t use the best photos I had by a long shot when I was online dating. As a woman you usually get more mail than you can handle anyway, so although I wanted to show who I am, I preferred “fishing” for guys who had actually read my profile, rather than ones who had only looked at my body. It helps here that, while of course I want an attractive date, for me it comes down more to style and charisma and less to a toned gym body.
Online dating is frustrating precisely because so many people lie. As someone said upthread, tragedy of the commons. Frankly, I don’t really understand it either. If you’re lying about your appearance, unless your endgame is something short of actually meeting (pretty much only scammers) if you don’t look like your photos, it’s not going to go well when you meet. Is there maybe a thought process that you’ll win over that person’s heart and they’ll forgive a bit of a “white lie” when they see that you’re a little fatter than you claimed.
Quite frankly, even if I would have been okay with that, the fact that a woman was willing to lie about something like that doesn’t do much to instill any trust in her, and I’m pretty much done. Or, for a recent example, I was talking to someone that seemed like a good match, and when we met, she walked into a part of the conversation that revealed she was lying about her age. Frankly, her age is outside my typical range, but we had enough in common I’d not have cared too much, but since she lied about it, that was pretty much that.
And, well, it frustrates me more because for all the guys and gals lying about how they look or whatever, it means whenever there’s someone that does fit that description, there’s automatically doubt cast on it. I really am in excellent shape and it seems more often than not that I get comments like “oh, you’re in really good shape” or “you’re taller than I thought you’d be” but I just said the truth. I suspect it ends up turning away decent women because they just assume I’m lying because so many other guys would lie about that sort of stuff.
I met up with an online match when I was desperate and lonely back in 2002ish. Even back then I knew the rules: 1) Don’t meet a chick with a picture that looks old 2) Don’t meet a chick with a picture taken from a distance 3) Don’t meet a chick who has only one picture and there’s lots of shadows in it.
I went to a bar to meet her and she was very VERY unattractive and VERY weird. Major case of the snaggletooth. Kinda like a jackolantern but in real life, and unattractive. She was, what is described as a BBW in todays terms, but back then was self described as “average”. Spent about 15 minutes drinking a beer with her and decided there was no way I could fake it for a few more hours. Told her I didn’t think it was a match and rolled out, leaving her at the bar.
It’s the only time in my life I’ve EVER bailed out on a date, and I truly felt bad for her, but HELL NO…
ETA: Just to be clear, the desperate and lonely isn’t directed at online daters in general. My wife and I met online.
Porkers can work wonders to trick you. You gotta check every single picture and if there ain’t a full-body shot taken from a reasonable distance you can bank on her being a porker.
It’s a shame there’s no way to tell someone is a colossal asshole by their picture alone…
In my experience in online dating, every guy I met, except one, had lied about his height by about 2 inches. As a tall woman, it really irritated me.
I, too, was leery of the guys who were into bicycling and skiing and boating and working out and hiking and . . . and . . . I wondered when they’d find time for the relationship. Then I recognized that, because my commitment to my riding, I didn’t have time for a relationship either. Having all those interests and activities cuts both ways. When I realized I wasn’t interested in giving up my horse time for a relationship, I deleted my profiles and have been much happier. But that isn’t the right choice for everyone, of course.