Actually, up until OKfuckingCupid made it so that you can’t read the goddam message that someone sent you unless you happened to have selected them affirmatively in a Tinder-wannabe environment called DoubleTake, OKCupid was one place where I could post a complex profile and wait, and reply to the women who messaged me. Women on OKCupid did indeed do their own looking and did not just select their men from the ones who wrote to them. The massive number of questions & answers, plus (back then) the ability to specifically search for all the people of a specified sex and distance and age range who answered this on question 238 and that on question 914 was a lot more useful to women than the mindless crap that would populate their message inbox. The women I knew as friends who were on OKCupid complained that most guys who messaged them had very obviously not even read their profile.
Again, nope. Some people on OKCupid had profile pictures that weren’t photos, or that were of themselves as a 3 year old tyke, or were pix of their left foot in a flip-flop. There was an entire board culture of “we’re here to connect with someone we have things in common with; if you wanna connect based on what someone looks like, get the fuck out of here and go join match.com or lavalife or something”.
There were home-made software add-ins that people created and passed around, like the one for poly people that calculated a “poly index” for each person’s profile based on their answers to an immense array of relevant questions (and would let you do searches for people with a poly index # of greater than 10 or whatever).
For every two people who would actually like each other I’ve found that there are at least two dozen scheming little shits looking for ways to sink them ( and high-five each other afterward). With the current #metoo world, guys really can’t make any moves without permission first, which just leaves a lot of people sad and miserable. Even Keanu Reeves has to hold his arms out eagle-wing style when a female fan wants a selfie with him.
And if Keanu is check-mated into a corner, what chance does any normal guy have? Just accept it: the era of relationships and dating is dead.
It would be ridiculous to say there’s no awkwardness or people no longer having firm paths to follow. But, as scary as that is, it’s also freeing. We’re in something like the adolescent phase of new relations.
MeToo might get a little too intense in some situations, and understandably so given the likely experiences of the people involved, but it’s not the end of move-making. One element that seems to have a chilling effect: Sexual assault is defined as “sexual contact without consent”. I don’t doubt the people who say it have good intentions but they seem to have a blindspot for its strict meaning under conditions of imperfect information when trying to read someone else’s mind.
I’m 68. And I was certainly taught as a girl that girls had to wait for boys to ask them. But I’ve known women to occasionally ask men out – or even straight out ask them into bed – since at least the 1970’s. Even before that, if the dance was at your school you were supposed to ask the boy – and that wasn’t only done in cases where the relationship was pre-existing. – come to think of it, flappers asked men out in the 1920’s.
Like i said, i was not including every user on every site. But i guess we only have warring anecdotes. I do have a couple of questions for you. First, what were the years or range of years you experienced this version of OkCupid? Secondly, would it be inappropriate of me to ask your age?
If you want to worry less about the whole #metoo business of being accused of nasty forward motion of a sexual variety, we could all switch wholesale to only the female folk take initiative. Yeah, they could on occasion do damage to innocent males but there’s a physical difference at the generalization level, a tendency for the males to be physically stronger, added to which fact there is the additional component of being specifically less sexually vulnerable (think about the rapable characteristics of cooked spaghetti). Again, there is still a potential for sexual assault by female against male to occur, but looking at the whole situation from the vantage point of generalizations it seems that male people as a whole would be less imposed upon by unwanted sexual advances from female folks even if we do not posit a greater overall interest in sex itself on the part of either.
I have never asked a woman out but I have had a few relationships, a couple other “relationships,” a marriage, and conceived 4 or 5 kids. A couple times I thought the woman was joking or playing a trick on me and a few times I accidentally declined because I’m just not good at that stuff.
a) I enrolled on OKCupid in 2004. TLDR: I sort of did it on a lark and didn’t realize my account was active (I was under the mistaken impression that I had to answer all the questions and hit, you know, something like an “OK” or “Submit” button at the end, and after the first 800 questions or so gave up on it). Got emails periodically saying so-and-so had sent me a personal message. Real use began in 2010 when I broke up with my non-poly partner and could seriously consider dating. Used it extensively until maybe 2015 by which point many changes had been made.
The theory I’ve read is that men are generally more “thirsty” for women than vice versa, and more willing to date/have sex when approached than vice versa, and so if a woman is turned down by a man, it makes her feel *really *ugly.
How many incidents of women killing men for rejecting them have been documented? While there are certainly women who get verbally hostile after being turned down by a man, I’m not aware of any cases where women are turned down then violently assault or kill the man who turned them down. While from the other direction things like this are not unheard of: These 14 Women Were Brutally Attacked for Rejecting Men — Why Aren't We Talking About It?
How is that even relevant to what I posted? I never said women get violent about being rejected, neither did epbrown01. What was being referred to was internal emotions, not outward behavior.
This most closely matches my theories on this subject. I’m going to guess that people who are used to doing what is “right” and getting most of what they want out of life as a result of this “good” behavior, find it really difficult to deal with asking someone out. I’m referring to women and men both.
Because, asking someone out is a crap shoot. Not guaranteed to work. And it’s painful to be rejected.
I guess I could go further and suppose that many guys are used to being told “no” or “you’re doing it wrong!” and so therefore guys might have an easier time dealing with rejection. But…being a guy who is used to finding the “right” way to do things, and don’t hear “no” very often, I have always found it super difficult to ask someone out that I am really interested in. So: Either I ask out people I am not as interested in (less terror), or wait for a woman to make the first move. And they do, lots of them in my experience.
It’s been a long time (I’ve been with Ms. A for 28 years), but I recall a shift in my early 20s from getting painfully rejected about 75% of the time to almost never getting rejected. Why? I stopped pursuing any woman I thought was hot and started paying attention to the signals women were sending. Once I got over being so self-absorbed, it wasn’t hard to get the unspoken Hey, ask me out! message.
But even then, only one or two actually (overtly) asked me out. Based on the younger women I know through work, I think they’re less reluctant now.
I like where you’re going with this Akaj. I probably remembered cases where I went out with a gal after getting definite signals as being “she asked me” when I’m actually not sure who asked who.
I started trying to pay attention to signals in high school. I could never get the hang of it, though. I misinterpreted signals so often that by my late twenties I pretty much gave up trying. I’ve been with Ms. P for 24 years, but I still can’t read signals. There was an instance in the past few months where she insisted that a woman at the grocery store was checking me out (which elicited a “look” from Ms. P). I ran it over in my mind and just couldn’t see it. The bottom line is that I can’t tell the difference between just being friendly and sending signals of interest, and I got to the point where I avoided the possibility of making a woman feel uncomfortable.
My son picked it up a lot faster than I did. After a few rejections and clumsy first dates with different girls, he announced “I’m asking ____ to Homecoming and she’s going to say yes.” He was right, and they dated on and off for the rest of high school.
Perhaps more thoughtful people are more likely to get what they want than thoughtless people and thoughtful people tend to be more invested in who they show interest? If a man is behaving like a callcenter cold-caller who’s casting a wide net to get sex, there’s probably no much anxiety. I think this may also related to why women are more anxious; They’ll typically wait some time to get to know someone before they become interested enough to even think of asking someone out.
Please go on about that. A newsletter would be great but a forum post would be nice too.
If it’s not done crassly or in inappropriate contexts, how likely is it to make someone feel uncomfortable?
I was at the point where I thought I was so socially awkward that asking anyone out would make them uncomfortable. Not rational, but that’s where I was then. It was also a matter of being extremely frustrating that I was thirty years old and still didn’t “get it.”