# internet dating from a guy's perspective **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 25, 2006, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-dating-from-a-guys-perspective/349813 "2006-03-25T01:30:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-dating-from-a-guys-perspective/349813/101 "2006-04-05T00:02:47Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > I don’t know how true this is, but I have a hypothesis based on my experiences and what I infer from them. Women get lots of emails. There are much more men than women on the internet, and men tend to be less picky overall. Since there are so many men, it is like candy in a candy shop to women. Too many guys makes them jaded, and only the spectatular ones stand out. I think that you’re correct but the tide starts to turn at the when you hit your late 30’s or so. I had one woman answer one of my personal ads who was around twelve years older than me. She wasn’t trying to meet me, she just wanted to tell me that she thought that I had a good sense of humor. She then went on to jokingly complain that women in their 40’s and 50’s have it tough. I told her that it was payback for the teens and 20’s. > [@Veuve\_ClicquotNJ](#): > > RE: all this stuff about pitting men who aren’t attracted to BBWs/fat women. We don’t _care_ that you’re not attracted to us. We care when you let us know by calling us “fatties”, “lard asses”, “porkers” and “Shamus” - all of which, btw, I’ve seen in personal ads. > > That’s what’s pit-worthy. Not the lack of attraction - the manner in which it’s put across. Fair enough. Any guy who would put it like that in an ad is a serious asshole. Not only is it rude, it’s going to turn off any woman of any size who reads it. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-dating-from-a-guys-perspective/349813/102 "2006-04-05T00:23:03Z")
> [@lavenderviolet](#): > > I’d like to hear more about what worked for you if you don’t mind sharing. 🙂 I had a male friend use Craig’s List with zero success and I’m curious about where we (I tried to help him jazz up his ad) went wrong. Of the women that I met from craigs, about half was from answering their ads which requires a different strategy. In general, I have approached the whole dating thing as a project. The odds of any date working out is not great but the odds of some date eventually working out is very good. I tried a few different things and finally honed it down to what works well. As I said before, match doesn’t work well because there is too much information about a person all at once. This isn’t a good thing. (More on that in another post if there is interest). The nature of match is such that giving only a little information is also a bad thing. Not so for craigslist. This is the key to craigslist ads and it’s counter-intuative. Do not write several paragraphs about yourself. Just pick one thing and write about that. All ads should include your age and a brief description and then the one thing. If you can be funny, that is a huge plus. A few examples: -You are looking for someone with a dog to join you and your dog for a hike. -You are looking for someone to go with you to a specific festival or concert coming up in the next week. -You are looking for someone who knows how to water ski who would be willing to teach a novice. Then when you are on the date or in emails and phone calls before the date, you can see if you also like the same movies or food or other activities or whatever. You already have the one thing in common and you’ll be looking for ways to make the other stuff fit. Once I figured this out, I had a huge response to my ads. Many of the women who wrote to me said that they had never answered a craigs ad before but they liked mine so much that they had to reply (this could have been bullshit, I know). ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-dating-from-a-guys-perspective/349813/103 "2006-04-06T07:02:43Z")
Thanks for the advice. I can definitely understand what you mean about how giving too much info scares people off. Online, a lot of us (I admit I find myself doing this too) are quick to eliminate someone who doesn’t fit our ideal or doesn’t have the “right look”, whereas we might have grown to like the person if we had met and gotten to know them in a more gradual, natural way offline. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-dating-from-a-guys-perspective/349813.md?page=5)