I hear ya, they make me uncomfortable too, mostly just when they respond to my ad that clearly says ‘29 - 39 years old’ and I have to explain to them how 45 doesn’t fall into that range, even with New Math.
You guys should see what Match did to my profile when I put in Straight Dope Message Board. They made me a hetero-fascist, apparently. Hey, celebration time, I just got my first ‘cut/paste’ email response. I typically respond in kind…though not so kindly.
:wally
- Yes, if you can use the command line or understand the term RTFM.
- Correct.
- Bonus Points.
- For starters.
Please allow me to rudely hijack this techno-lovefest and say that Hoppes #9 is the one smell that brings back my childhood; not burning leaves, or popping corn, but gun cleaner. Marksmanship is a point of pride in my family, and we start young.
Yeh, alright, hijack over. Go back to drooling over your Commodore 64 and GO functions or what-have-you.
It might not hurt some folks to expand their ideas of what is an “appropriate” age group from which to date. I used to think the same thing, that a person had to be within 5-7 years of my own age (or so).
I ended up dating a man 12 years younger than me, I was 36 to his 24. We were close friends for about 2 and a half years, and then ended up dating for nearly 7 years, until I just recently moved to Texas. (PS, I was the one who’d initially had a lot of trouble with the age difference, he didn’t, also, I look a lot younger than my years).
Age is only a number, people come in all different states of “preservation”, don’t assign some ancient prune face to a number and let it freak you out and prevent you from what could be someone very special.
Just a thought.
I’d answer it if I lived in Seattle. Nothing wrong that I can see. If anything, though … this sounds superficial, but you might want to have a full body photo. Many men think that women who use just head shots are hiding something; i.e. about 200 or 300 extra pounds, or a third arm.
Because … well, you’re out of the league of about 85% of most men out there. Seriously. I think the profile would draw me in, if I olnly lived closer to you, but I don’t see myself as “tall” (I’m just 5’ 10") or “athletic” (working on losing 10 or 15 pounds, and I don’t have six pack abs). I’d write, but I don’t think I’d get a response. I’m a 6, you’re an 8, and folks tend to date those who are close to them on the System de Unites des Attractunes Physicale. I’d be thinking that I would be competing with hundreds of other men, some of which are, physically at least, better matches.
I hate to say (and believe) this, but there’s a lot of validity in those points; when I punch outside my weight class, I get my ass beat. And not in a good, ‘keep-it-comin’ way.
:eek:
Thanks for the kind words. My profile never said that I “definitely” wanted kids, I’m not sure where that came from. As far as I know, my answer has always been “someday”.
Regarding height, it’s not a strict requirement. When I initially set up my profile, I just chose the shortest of the heights of the men I had dated before. Apparently, I tend to date tall men. Really though, I’m a tall girl, and I tend to wear boots and shoes with higher heels, which would put my height at 6’0" or so. I wonder how many men out there are comfortable with dating a woman that is taller than them? I would never rule someone out on the basis of height though, so I will change my height requirement. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ah, that came from me. I’d just read a whole slew of profiles and must have mixed yours up with someone elses. Sorry.
To you, maybe, but not to match.com. Their matching criteria always considers height to be an absolute. Thus, you won’t end up appearing in the “mutual matches” list of men who are 5’ 11" ot 5’ 10".
With other multiple choice criteria on match.com, for instance body type, members can assign a certain weight to how important it is in your matching criteria. If you’re looking for somoene who is slim but you assign a weight of “not really important” to body type criteria, you might get some “few extra pounds” matches. It’s not the same with height, though. Women who are 5’ 4" looking for men who are 5’ 11" or taller won’t show up on my list of mutual matches, even if we’re otherwise a perfect match.
As an experiment, I changed my height from 5’ 10" to 6’ for a few minutes. My list of mutual matches grew by about a third … without changing my desired match height preferences. I think that’s why so many women who are really “a few extra pounds” or “large” select “average” as a body type; if they choose the appropriate category, they’ll get far fewer mutual matches.
Personally, I’ll go out with someone who is taller than me in heels. I browse through lots of WSM profiles from women who are 5’ 6" or 5’ 7", who want men that are at least 6’ tall, because they claim to spend a lot of time in high heels. Is that really the case?
I’ll play. Critique my Dating Resume. Hope I did the code right.
I putz around on the Yahoo! and The Onion personals. I find that The Onion tends to have the most interesting selection of people. When I lived in Hungary and sent messages to locals, I had a response rate of well over 75%. It was amazing. Batting well outside my league; it didn’t matter. The girls would respond. I would meet them. They were cool.
Here, back in the US, man I’ve gotten three freaking responses out of maybe 30 messages. And I’m not even looking for a relationship or anything, just interesting people to chat with. It’s a bizarre twist - I don’t have much of a problem meeting and making friends IRL, but on-line, I apparently suck. So I’ve just changed my approach and rather than have a normal profile, decided on a quirky, sarcastic profile figuring that if anyone is crazy enough to enjoy it, then we’ll hit it off really well. We’ll see how this approach goes.
Anyhow, what I don’t understand are the following:
- Profile pictures where an ex-boyfriend was obviously cropped out
- Profile pix where an ex-boyfriend is deliberately left in
- Profile pix with pets
- Profile pix with children, when they’re not your own. (Yes, I like a woman who loves children; it’s just that I assume any child pictures is her own; I’m not ready to support a child.)
- PrOfIlE TiTlEs In MiXeD CaSe
- Any profile that includes the phrase “I’m tired of the bar scene,” “I’m tired of lying/cheating/games,” “Looking for an honest man.” No shit.
In that case,
How you doin’?
Based on what I’ve seen, one thing you guys aren’t doing is market segmentation. In other words, decide what kind of guy/girl you’re looking for, research them, and adjust your profile to better fit what they’re looking for.
I’m not advocating out and out lying, but if you’re looking for a girl who likes sci-fi, anime and astronomy, talk about what aspects of those things you like. If you like girls who are smart and sassy, figure out what things they’d like about you, and emphasize those things in your profile. A shotgun-style approach isn’t going to work well for most people unless they’re Brad Pitt or Debra Messing, so the rest of us folks have to specialize a bit.
That’s what I did- I’m looking for smart, sassy, energetic and educated girls, so I engineered my profile to fit, and so far, the response has been pretty surprisingly positive- something like 100 views a month, and about 3-4 winks a week. Granted, not all of the winks are from women I’m interested in, but if I’m getting that many, I’m doing something right.
Here’s my profile:
http://www.match.com/profile/showprofile.aspx?Handle=mcp8491
Nice pictures, especially the one with the dimple…
The only thing I see is your female height requirement 5’4"…That’s a bit short for the average American female I think. I see that you are 5’7" and that’s probably your reason for that indicator, but would 5’5" or 5’6" really be out of the question for you?
I like your ad, bump . I am not surprised you get a good response. (I think all the pictures help.) I would wink at you too, if I lived in your area. Here’s a long distance one, anyway.
My last date was 5’7, so I guess not. I guess I think of the height thing as a preference, not a rule. Ah, maybe I’ll change it. I mess with the settings quite often.
Thanks for the compliments/feedback.
Hell of a drive home from the movie theatre tonight (freezing rain). Otherwise OK.
How you doin’, Joey?
I like how it’s concise, but also you’ve done something in your profile that I’ve seen other fellas do, which is to put ‘Definitely’ on the Want Kids and then ‘None’ on how many. So you’re definite you want none, is that it? I ask merely for information.
I think it’s a sort of bug with their software/form thing. If you say you’d like to have kids, I think it throws open this “Tell us more” thing, that defaults to what you saw- it didn’t have any option for “Don’t know how many”. Since I didn’t realize I could close it up, I just left it at the defaults.
I’m guessing that the other guys had exactly the same problem.
Oh- and as for the pictures, I went through a lot of effort to find relatively flattering ones. I have LOTS more pictures, but those were the ones that passed my female friends’ scrutiny for this… again, a case of showing myself in the best light possible. It seems to me that lots of people just throw any old picture up there and blow their best chance for getting more interest.
And chrisk72 thank you!