Interestingly enough there are lots of women who are very attracted to men with hard science technical careers. Telling women you design, build and/or test weapons of mass destruction and death will get you more action than you might imagine. Not every woman is pining for the sensitive artist type.
Dude, have you been reading the same SDMB I have?
(I’m sorry to hear of your dating trouble/weirdness. I hope it gets better. Good luck.)
Stranger…with all respect…you are doing it wrong. 
Instead of investing huge amounts of time in it over a short period, then giving up in disgust you should, IMO, invest small amounts of time in it over a long period. Instead of doing 50 a week…do 1-2 a day. Make it a part of your routine, like getting the mail.
IMO, 100 is wayyyyy to few to judge. Think of dating sites like a bar. At a bar, there are many nonverbal cues to judge whether a woman is interested in you. You don’t have those on a dating website…except for them not responding or responding with a not-interested.
So, if you pass the attraction test, you have to communicate with them in order to find out whether you can talk with them (in the bar sense). Many women send signals (an email) but not be available, will be mentally unstable, not serious, too skittish and/or just looking for an ego boost…or even just plain weird. You also have to deal with things you wouldn’t have to in a bar such as them not using a current picture or even using a picture that isn’t them! (So they will never meet because, say, they used the picture of an attractive friend when they weight 489 pounds or they are 60 years old but use a picture of when they were 35)
After all this, you then can meet them…to find out they don’t pass YOUR attraction test and/or have no chemistry.
In addition, there is an effect I shall name the ‘kid in a candy store effect’ that hits women on these sites. Many of these women are not the cat’s meow and have trouble attracting men in real life…but they get on these dating sites and all the CUTE MEN email and are interested in them! They don’t realize that many men just blanket everyone and would not really be interested in them in RL. So…along comes humble ol you who these women would be tickled if you came along in RL but you do not compare to all those studs she’s talking with so she ignores you. By the time she realizes her mistake, she quits out of disgust. This is why you shouldn’t dismiss someone who has been on the site a long time and is talking with you…she could be one of these.
Frustrating…yes…but think of how many women in a bar you would have to go through in order to get one to even talk to you. So, online dating is not really all that bad in comparison.
Take it slow and take it over the long term.
{Bduck…who used a dating site many years ago after my divorce. Since I am a statistician, I kept stats:
Total women paired with in Eharmony: 1021
Women communicated with: 62 (outside eharmony)
Women met in RL: 14
Women with no chemistry either way: 7
Women I liked but not vice versa: 1
Women they seemed to like me but not vice versa: 4
Women had relationship with but didn’t work out past 6 months: 1
Women had good, strong relationship with: 1
Think of it - over 1000 women in order to have 2 successes but worth it…since I didn’t obsess over it.}
If this is truly how you felt about her, I can’t even understand why you bothered at all. But it would explain why you’re not having much luck. How little do you have to care about a potential partner before it starts showing through in your messages (especially if they’re on the… elaborate side)? Again, it makes sense to save emotional investment for later, but the quoted bit is borderline nasty.
Very good post. I absolutely agree with you that it is important to be persistent and not be discouraged by the failures.
Heh. Professor Groteschele, a nuclear-warfare expert in the novel and movie Fail-Safe, has a sexy proto-Goth babe practically throw herself at him after he talks about WIII at a dinner party.
Stranger, I understand your frustration. You’re not guaranteed to find the love of your life, but you never know who might turn up. My sister met several interesting guys through classified ads in a Pittsburgh free paper 20-some years ago; two of them are still very good friends of hers. Keep your chin up, and good luck!
Come on, can’t you at least post a few choice snippets of her rant? Pretty please?
Ditto!
I too have been down the online dating route and ended up burned out from too much time put in with so few dates as a result (1 to be specific). As an alternative, have you considered Speed Dating? It was WAY better than I expected, and I’ve come away with a date (leading to multiple dates) 3 of the 5 times I’ve been. You can better determine whether you’ll have a connection with 5 minutes of face time than you can with months of emails.
And this suggestion is coming from the most shy guy you’ll ever meet. Truly, if I can do it, anyone can. And the girls (and guys) who go to these events were very normal and cute. Sure you get a couple oddballs, but they are in the minority.
I would strongly suggest against a matchmaking service though. At my lowest point I signed up for one of these and regretted it ever since. It was over a thousand dollars for 8 “introductions” and not a single one of them led to a second date. It was obvious they were just matching people up on general age range, I didn’t have anything in common with any of them.
Other than that though, I don’t know how to meet new people. If you figure it out, be sure to let us know. 
I, too, have heard good things about Speed Dating and It’s Just Lunch.
Actually, last time I did this I sent out over 600 responses, got a 2% response rate, and a 0.3% who actually agreed to meet and followed through. Run the stats on that.
I have actually just been sending out a few a week over the span of several months. At this point, the profiles are just kind of a blur of cliches and pictures of women with their previous s.o. cropped out. I’m trying to soldier through another site, but my enthusiasm is waning, and the amount of time I have for this is limited.
shrug I responded to her because it was the only useful response I got back. I wrote to her the same way I would respond to someone I was interested in; I just didn’t expect much from it, but figured it was worth at least meeting her and seeing how it went, and otherwise chalk it up to experience.
Stranger
If you go by just numbers of people met, I had the best luck on the Onion personals (yes, those “personals of the day” are real - I was one, once!). Mostly, I met people that were cool but not really romance material for whatever reason - one of us wasn’t attracted to the other, neither of us were attracted to the other beyond friendship, that kind of thing.
I did Yahoo! Personals for awhile, and met one guy. Who is now my husband.
But my best advice is to give it more time, and maybe even join a few free sites, just to see what is out there. I did the personals thing off and on for a few years, and never ended up with a relationship of longer than a month or so before I met my husband, most people simply don’t find someone that quickly. Even if it’s just to go out on a few dates, it can take awhile.
Here is my advice:
Man up