What the fuck is the point of setting up a profile on a dating website if you don’t check it for weeks or months? Or do check it, but make it clear that you’re happily married or involved with someone? I can understand doing that shit on myspace or facebook, but on a website specifically devoted to DATING, what’s the point of this behavior?
Look ladies, I’m here to fucking meet people and go out on dates, not click through hours of unobtainable eye candy.
I’ve never used one of those websites, but I understand that a lot of women use them mainly for the ego-boost of getting lots of messages from guys who are interested in them. I agree that’s pretty lame.
You accidentally inverted the sixth and seventh words of that line.
Not checking the profile: They may have forgotten about posting it. Or maybe they weren’t getting the response they wanted and gave up. Or they may even have died (sounds far fetched but I really do know someone who had set up a profile on match.com just a few months before dying unexpectedly 
).
Already attached people: Maybe the person isn’t sure yet that the relationship is solid yet and doesn’t want to delete their profile only to have to waste time re-creating it when they break up. 
Some people may think it’s the best way to find pen pals or people to do platonic stuff with. Meeting new people isn’t always easy even if you aren’t looking for love. Back when I was doing the online dating thing, I did make some good platonic friends through the process, so if I had a burning desire to get a new penpal that might be the route I’d try.
I think this is easier to explain in the case of places like OKCupid than eHarmony.
Sites like OKCupid seem to encourage a more friendly, casual vibe where hanging out there still makes sense even if you aren’t looking to date.
They have a section on their forums where people can give you feedback about how your profile comes across - hearing the advice of people who have been successful meeting people on the site could be very useful there. Even though I’m happily attached, I still love reading other people’s crazy stories about dating failures on the “Success-Failure” forum there. 
On OKCupid at least, there should be a way to filter your results to only show single people.
I used to be on OKCupid, and one of my many frustrations with the site was that although there was a filter to show only single people, it didn’t actually show only single people. It included people who were NOT single as long as they indicated that they were looking for new romantic partners. So even if you set it to singles only you’d still get couples looking for someone to have a threesome with, polyamorous people, and people who were just plain old looking to cheat on their partners.
While dating sites do serve all these kinds of people too, they are not single. Some people don’t care if the person they’re dating is actually single or not, and I figure that’s their business. But if I wanted to date someone who was already involved in a romantic relationship with someone else then I wouldn’t have checked the box that said I only wanted to see single people in my results! I don’t think this is a particularly subtle point, but somehow it is lost on the geniuses behind the OKCupid search interface.
All dating sites are personal information harvesting mechanisms.
I’ve had one for years and have no interest in communicating or dating or any of that.
I use it to see who’s out there in my community.
If the lady at the Post Office is suddenly single it’s a good bet she’ll have a profile up soon. I’m not looking for dirt necessarily but just some insight as to what the people around me are all about.
Not harmless per se but not terribly malevolent.
I suspect a lot of people do the same.
Unfortunately, your goals and those of the seemingly vast majority of women are not in concert. I, too, have had this problem (see [thread=511147]this recent thread[/thread]) and despite being described as being “a catch” (i.e. gainfully employed, reasonably civil, lacking any major emotional or substance abuse problems, and essentially unencumbered) by friends and coworkers have had essentially no worthwhile responses in several months of trying on a variety of boards. It is very frustrating, and exacerbated by a genuine interest and need to be dating at this point.
Stranger
Chillax bro. Get some hobbies. I know it isn’t easy but practice just being social. There’s a lot of cues to go on. Also a lot of good and bad signals you could be sending. Be brave! Talk to strangers and get comfortable doing it. I know it’s horribly ackward, but that’s the point. It’s easier to date if you can approach strangers.
Also I know potential rejection is worse then death followed by an eternity of Nickleback concerts in hell, but it really isn’t. You ever play Mario Bros? You feel ackward about not being good when you started? If no then neither should dating be. The ones that reject you are practice for the ones that won’t. Then eventually you meet one that takes you back to her place, and a couple hours later you’ve got a bigness.
I’m going to be 26 next month but I put off dating too. I need to focus on school and finding a job. You have those locked down so your next objective is becoming social. Then when you have that you’ll meet women, get their number, and date them.
I’ve been using school, the job search, and business (when I get it) to practice my social skills.
I know this intended to be constructive but it just comes off as being patronizing. I don’t need to “get some hobbies”; I have more activities than I how to handle and progressively less time to do them. I do “talk to strangers,” and accept the possibility of rejection; not that this is getting me anywhere. My social abilities are pretty much what they are, and years of trying to improve them has gotten me a somewhat wider social circle but not any more dating opportunities. You write of practice, but I can’t even get to the point of practicing when it comes to trying to date. It’s been eight years since I’ve had an genuine date that actually showed up and wasn’t just bullshit scamming. And the absolute waste of time–several hundred of hours, at this point, without anything to show for it that is internet dating–that the effort sucks away from other things I would like to do is very angry-making. And then for some (perhaps many?) women to use this dangling bullshit as just an ego boost is the complement of the sleezebag who notches his belt to count up conquests.
Sorry to vent at you. I know you’re trying to be helpful, but I’ve been attempting to make use of internet dating sites for months now (when I can find the time) to try to get some measure of success at this and deal with my current situation, and it has been naught but a waste of time and money. I’m tired of women who want a drawn-out e-mail chain, or try to IM me with, “Do u wana tk?”, or just want to see if they can appeal to someone besides their current husband or boyfriend. It’s a fucking waste of my time that I don’t have to piss away.
Stranger
But will you play Mario Brothers with me? 
Just kidding. Sorry it’s been hard. I’ve never accessed a dating site, and now I really don’t want to. It seems a weird place. Not trying to be patronizing but perhaps it’s not the place for you to be looking? Just a thought. Good luck.
I know it’s very hard out there.I don’t know your current life situation, what the local culture is like where you live and stuff, and you sound very busy. However you have any hang outs? Like places were new people come and go?
I’ve had some success meeting women at places like the library, school, coffee shop, laundromat, etc. It’s mostly about starting up and having a good conversation. Then when it’s most interesting/fun/etc saying something like a casual “I gotta go but would you like to go out sometime and continue this?”
Works better then dating sites. Dating sites was where I met a wallet thief, a liar and a player, and a good friend of mine.
The good friend and I both agree those things are more trouble then they’re worth now.
I don’t really have much time to “hang out” anymore, and certainly not a regular basis; most of my socializing is with a group of coworkers and a few long-standing friends, none of which is going to provide acceptable dating opportunities. Even when I did have time to sit around in bars and coffeeshops that never seemed to lead to anything fruitful. I was trying internet dating again per the recommendation of several people who have had success with it, and I need the diversion from another situation that is appealing but unworkable. I’ve also been trying to do more group activities (hiking, sea kayaking, et cetera) through REI or local clubs when I have the chance, but I find the whole group dynamics thing frustrating (when the notice says that we march at 0900, have your feet on the ground and gear assembled by 0900, damnit!) and invariably the only appealing women there are already accompanied.
Anyway, sorry to hijack the thread and lash out. I’m just at a complete loss for what to do differently. And like the o.p., I’m irritated with women who just want to play at communicating but don’t or won’t bother meeting up. That’s not my mission.
Stranger
Stranger, sorry to put you on the spot, but have you posted your profile and pictures here? You genuinely seem like a nice guy and are certainly intelligent and witty and a terrific writer. I just can’t believe that no one has snatched you up that I wonder if you make some obvious fashion faux pas or something.
As far as the lack of success on the online dating, I wonder if many of the women are intimidated by you because if you write in your profile how you write here it’s obvious to them you are very intelligent and maybe that’s a turn off to them? In my limited online dating profile viewing, many of the women there don’t even use correction punctuation and their profiles are filled with LOL’s and sentence fragments and crap like that. And I am sure this is all stuff you have thought , but I am just a single guy trying to help another single guy out. Good luck.
I noticed this in your other thread as well. Obviously you don’t have to tell us anything, but that seems really odd to me. I can understand wanting to date, but needing to date?
I need to date. Nothing else is as good as being with a girl. Of course I need it.
Stranger is making me scared of growing older.
I’ve actually had a professional PR person review my profile, and aside from a few minor organizational changes and recommendations to change some images she didn’t have any significant criticism. She did warn that my prose was a bit too…literate, and I toned it down as far as I could stand without making it completely cliched vanilla boilerplate. I’ve tried to overlook the poor grammar and punctuation when going though womens’ profiles and e-mail responses but at some point it just becomes painful to try to parse the l33tspeak into something intelligible, and frankly, I have a hard time imaging how I could deal with that on a regular basis without developing an ugly and irritating desire to ‘fix’ such language.
Let’s just say that there is someone in whom I have romantic interest, but the scenario is untenable for several reasons which are essentially immutable. Rather than pining away for the unattainable I’m trying to divert the emotional reflex to a hypothetically more viable alternative, albeit without success, compounding my frustration. And that’s as far as I’m going to go with that.
Stranger
What is so amazing to me when I read threads like this started by men is that I know about a dozen women who say exactly the same thing. Why can’t all these nice unattached men and women find each other?
Have you told your co-workers you’d like to date someone? That you’re “ready” or whatever? It’s amazing how many people know a nice gal from their church, or relatives, etc. etc. who might be willing to be fixed up.
Hmm, doesn’t anyone else get the feeling that some people just like to complain?
You know, as one of the aforementioned polyamorous people, I’m right there with you–because it does me just as much good to see the increasing percentage of profiles with “if you are polyamorous, go elsewhere” as it does for you to see “married, available!” in the header.
On the other hand, OKCupid does get points for being one of the few sites out there actually bothering to cater to the poly crowd.