Generic, generic Match.com MEN...

The BBQ Pit
41

I don’t think it’s too much to expect to get a “sorry, I don’t think we’re compatible” response. However, I also get the sneaking suspicion that because some dating sites make you pay to send email but receiving nibbles is free, well, a lot of the women are laying back in the buckwheat waiting for an email that actually makes them orgasm just by reading it, at which point some of the women might bestir themselves to chip in the double sawbuck in order to respond to the email.

Or maybe I could be wrong. Maybe the women are registering and they’re all just too inundated with perfectly good offers to get back to mine.

Or maybe they are registered and able to respond and they’re just plain rude.

I dunno, it’s tough to choose.

42

From the women I’ve chatted with, two things tend to eliminate this behavior.

They try to do this at first, and the men keep coming back with either pleading or cursing replies. Instead of using the knowledge they gained from the lady’s profile to get in her good graces they use it to hit whatever buttons they can.

Then… as time goes on, they just cannot keep up. For every 1 “thanks but no thanks note” they get two more. Half of them repeats with no way of knowing they are repeats because they don’t specify and there’s only so many names/profiles a lady can keep straight.

Some of them learn to block once they have sent off a “thanks but no thanks” which, if the service provides the option, allows them to perhaps keep on top of things.

Then there are the very odd cases where I’ve met women who actually get fewer nibbles than I do. I have no clue what’s going on there. But all most all of those do send back “thank you but you don’t fit what I’m looking for” or “Thank you but I found someone” notes.

43

Here’s the perfect date for you and this “monosyllabic troglodyte”: go to COSI to see the Chinese dinosaur exhibit* (maybe some of his ancestors are on display in the next room). :smiley:

*obligatory Columbus promo.

44

I found one major problem with your profile. I am too damn old to respond to it. :frowning:

I actually read want the women are looking for in their adds. All too often I don’t fit. Such is life.

But seriously, you need a little more mention of your son in the About You section. That at least will scare off anyone that can actually read and doesn’t want anything to do with kids. (The fools.)

45

See, some men (myself included) find the formal, made-up, dressed-up look less attractive and sexy than a more everyday look.
And yes, your pictures are hot.

46

I was on the onion.com personals until just recently (new bf, care of yahoo! personals, actually)

I found that there was a higher volume of men that I would have dated on the Onion, so you might want to consider joining those. It seems that on The Onion, there were more younger men, and smarter ones also, because it doesn’t attract as large an audience as places like Match.com and Yahoo! that are highly advertised. On yahoo, I got a lot of MUCH older men sending me messages (I’m 23, and I’d specified my age group as 21-28), along with people I just didnt’ seem to have too much in common with. Makes you wonder why the send you messages at all, really.

On the Onion, most of the replies were interesting (still some that were WAY off in either personality or age, but whatever), even if they didn’t go anywhere. I think there might be more men you would be interested in there. Though I met my boyfriend on Yahoo!, he was the only person I ever met from there, or even exchanged emails with (figures, right?).

I agree with most of the advice given here - take down a few pics, mention your son more in your profile, if nothing else than to weed out the guys that want absolutely nothing to do with kids. I find that the more specific you make your profile, the more quality responses you will get.

And some advice to the men trying to figure out how to respond…somewhere in the middle of a tiny, one sentence response and the long email. The responses I always liked best were the ones that said something like, “Hey, I liked your profile. I really like <<insert movie / book / TV show>> too, b/c it is…etc. So you like to laugh? Have you ever been to <<comedy club / seen this movie?>> Here’s my profile, I hope you like it”

Keep it simple, don’t comment too much on their looks (saying “you’re cute” or “you have pretty eyes” is ok, anything containing the words “hot” “smokin” and “babe” will most likely be deleted).

47

Delete your income. Money shouldn’t matter in relationships, but it does. Say you and I met at a party or other social gathering (possible, since I grew up in New Albany, and have got tons of family all over Columbus), based on the information in your profile, I’d say that you and I could probably have some enjoyable conversations (though, I’d most likely be struck dumb by your beauty and be reduced to saying things like, “Duh, yeah, just passin’ by, duh.”) I wouldn’t for a moment think anything about how much money you made, and if we did hit it off, it’d never be an “issue.”

However, when I looked at your profile, I noticed how much money you made, and immediately filed you under “out of my league.” Why? Because I don’t make nearly as much money as you do, so I couldn’t afford to take you to the kinds of places you’re used to going to, I couldn’t simply take-off on a week’s vacation with you if I wanted to (have to think how much the trip was going to cost, and if I could afford to eat, etc. etc.), couldn’t afford to buy you baubles that might impress you. Now, you might not have a problem picking up the tab for dinner, or you might have the connections I need to get a better paying job that I’m qualified for, but don’t know about, of course, I’d never know because I won’t bother to respond to your ad. Utterly foolish of me, I admit, but there you have it.

I’d be willing to bet that there’s a lot of other guys out there who feel the same way. It’s not that we’re ashamed of how little we make, it’s just that we don’t want to be a drain on your resources, whereas if we met you without ever having known how much money you make, we’d never think twice about the disparity in our incomes.

(In fact, the issue of your income being greater than mine is so deeply ingrained into me, that I didn’t even realize at first that it was the thing which kicked you out of my “possibilities” list. The fact that I’m 35, 450 miles away, and that you’re stunningly beautiful, didn’t strike me as “deal killers.” It’s all about the Benjamins, as they say.)

48

Instead of a “number of views” counter, this thread needs a “number of SDMB men who are trying to find subtle, but intriguing ways to hit on jay-c”.

Of course I would be doing the same thing, but I doubt that FL is within your 20 mile limit.

And you hate piercings.

And you have cats.

And you hate sarcasm.

49

I don’t think I was being subtle at all!

50

Screw subtltety and jay-c… I’m trying to figure out how to cause a paradigm shift such that the thread ends up full of women trying to hit on me.

51

I’m a little confused. The emails you quoted appeared to be from guys that demonstrated they had read your profile. Granted, they seemed to be total skeeves, but your main complaint seemed to be centered on the form letters issue.

I’m looking for someone who can make me laugh.

Me…

I appreciate someone who is honest and upfront, [values] directness over play[ing] games, and [has] a good sense of humor.

Me…me…me…

I’d also like a tall & athletic type that can keep up with me.

Wow, I am really close on this one.

You know, now that I’ve read your profile, I’ll be weeping into my pillow when I go to sleep. (New England’s not far…I was born in Ohio…does that count?) But I do have some comments if you’re interested:

Kill the canned requirements. They should be unspoken. Is there a single woman on the planet who doesn’t want a partner who makes her laugh? The intro could be shortened to “Don’t play games with me. Sense of humor is important. Tall and athletic is a plus.”

Do they allow paragraph structure? The first part of describing yourself is fine. Under your interests, I’d clarify a couple things. “snow skiing” is vague. It’s either downhill or cross-country.

swoon

I’d re-write this to be “I like kicking back to a good Browns game, or just hanging out.” Because if I hear someone say they like watching “football”, I think “whatever” and won’t address it (or believe them). But if you say “I like watching the Browns”, I might reply “I bet you’re one of those meanies who ran poor Timmy Couch out of town. You know, you almost made him cry. And Kelly is a girl’s name!”

It’s the specifics that invite engaging conversation. Tell me [your profile, not me] what music you like, not that you like music. Maybe mention the last concert you went to. Or your favorite ski mountain. I might respond “yeah, I completely wiped out on the blue slope by the lift…it was humiliating!” or “is that a good one? I usually ski at blahblahblah.”

Finally, the pictures. Yikes. Definitely keep only the glasses pic. But don’t worry about uglying it up. You can’t.

52

I tried out Match about 2 years ago. One of the women I met is now my wife! What is interesting is the women who still have their listings online and are still active. Weird. It makes one wonder what they are looking for and why they are still trying.
I varied between filtering on whether the person had a picture, or not. One person I wrote to and corresponded with for a time seemed a perfect match. Then I saw her picture! Uh, for me sex is eventually going to be part of an ongoing relationship. Looking at her picture I knew that there was no way that sex would be part of any relationship I would have with her. She was entirely unnattractive to me. From the look of the picture personal hygiene was optional for her. Hint: Buy a toothbrush and see a dentist! Shampoo and a brush are your friends.

I also had the email going into a black hole syndrome. And I sometimes spent hours composing a letter. That was very frustrating. I did get a good response for the most part after I smartened up. What I did was do a search of the competition. At my worst I couldn’t be as bad as most of what I saw. I took some hints from the better profiles and then modified my own while making sure that I also differentiated myself from the crowd. And those women who were too picky I ignored completely. Do you really want to be with a person who will only look at someone aged 31-32 and must be 5’10’ in height? Doing these things doubled my response rate while decreasing the time I spent on my letters.

Still after having done all that I was still frustrated that I had only met one woman and another that I had been emailing back and forth about a dozen times suddenly developed cold feet. I was at the point of giving up completely. I sent one more email to a women who didn’t have her picture up at that point. I should mention at this time I had a profile up on a russian bride site, too. I was getting about 10-20 emails a day from women all through eastern europe who, from a looks department at least, were an order of magnitude above what I saw on match. Needless to say my ego was tripping. When I wrote that last letter it was with far more confidence than my previous ones had been. Bingo! A year and half later we are now married. It was one of those things you have been told, but until you actually experience it, you don’t always believe it. If you act with confidence then things will happen for you. If you don’t then things are far harder.

53

MaxTheVool said:
Screw subtltety and jay-c… I’m trying to figure out how to cause a paradigm shift such that the thread ends up full of women trying to hit on me.
[/quote]

So, what are you doin later?

Seriously, if it weren’t for you live about 3,000 miles too far away, I’d ask you out.

54

Yeah, I was pretty upfront. I just don’t qualify. Again.

Lok

55

My theory: the difference between creepy and romantic/funny/whatever is how attractive the man is.

56

he must be 27-33, 5’11" to 6’8"
within 20 miles of a small town in ohio
and a college grad with a professional comedian’s sense of humor

face it, you are looking for someone who doesn’t exist, except in some fantasy world

sorry

57

See, that’s the difference here. She starts a thread asking for suggestions and she gets guys hitting on her. I start one and I actually get suggestions!

58

It doesn’t sound like she’s being too picky to me. Why should she be willing to accept a short, humorless, uneducated, old man who doesn’t live anywhere near her?

59

I met my wife through match.com so for at least a few of us it does work. As to your profile, it’s clear you are far too beautiful to date. Mrs. Feather told me she was getting 5 to 6 pages of e-mails per day. After a while, she was just deleting them all. Only my user name caught her eye. Fortunately, I was one of the ones who spent the time to compose a thoughtful note that she found interesting.

Sorry about the too beautiful to date comment. It’s too bad that most men are assholes. Glad I’m not one of them.

60

Perhaps jay-c is getting shallow responses because she herself is incredibly shallow :rolleyes: