Santa Barbara, eh?
Yes. What’s your point?
I’m in my late 40s, somewhere in the middle of the fit and successful spectra, and no one is chasing me here.
Somewhere in California, a Venn diagram has converged.
I’m a couple of standard deviations over from the middle.
Good news, Robot - she’s a DEVIANT. Hubbax2.
Oops. I’m a he. Robot and I are not a match.
I just ran across this the other day:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/
What I found interesting is that down at the end of Myth #3, they actually do some statistical analysis of what kind of picture leads to more lengthy conversations.
What I found is that you can’t directly say you want a certain quality - for instance, if you say that you’re looking for someone intelligent, you’ll get all of the idiots coming out of the woodwork.
Also, just accept that you’re going to get a lot of fishers. Toss them because the possibility of them being worth any time is vanishingly small, so go on to the next.
Shhhhhh. Don’t be so hasty.
A lot of it boils down to getting what you pay for. Not that you can’t or won’t ever find a match on a free site, but you will be mixed in with everyone who isn’t serious and is doing it for an ego boost, whatever. The crowd thins down to the mostly serious when you put your money where the send button is. Try EHarmony or JDate for a few months. Contrary to what a lot of people claim, you do not need to be a Christian to get dates on EHarmony. They cater to all religions and none.
It could backfire. You could get hit on by the “players” who figure they’re more likely to score with less attractive women.
Something else occurred to me. Five percent is, of course, one out of twenty. At the rate that I would write to women, it would take me many weeks to send an email to twenty different women. My high rate of return is probably related to how selective that I am.
Will the lady permit a couple of (probably lame) observations from someone pulling stuff out of her butt? I’ve never tried online dating but a few of my meatspace friends have and they seem to agree:
[ul]
[li]Don’t have more than about 3 or 4 pictures of yourself. They felt if they had more than a face shot or two and a body shot or two they got more responses from guys who just wanted to give a Butthead impression of “Hey baby, you wanna hook up?” like they were shopping out of a catalog.[/li][li]They seemed to have better luck finding better guys when they (like **even sven **mentioned earlier) did the initiating. That way they were setting the tone of the emails and picking guys they found attractive.[/li][li]One of my friends read a magazine/blog article about a woman who went out with 100 men for 100 cups of coffee because she thought she was being too picky. So my friend adopted this attitude but made it 30 because she’s not as ambitious. She decided coffee instead of drinks or dinner so it could be a fairly quick meet and see if there was enough interest for more. She would agree to meet a guy as long as he was at least minimally attractive to her physically and wasn’t a ginormous douche in their correspondence. She’s arrange to meet quickly instead of a lot of back and forth. She ended up finding someone she’s still with over a year later. A few other friends tried this approach (but less strict w/ their #s) and had some success.[/li][/ul]
I have to admit I find these online dating threads interesting and I have no idea why. Blogs where people write in about their bad experiences with online dating (or any dating really) are like catnip to me.
Interesting to read some of the issues from a female perspective.
I tried the internet dating a few years back for a while, paid and unpaid sites, and gave up. I’m happy to stay single. it was an interesting experience, I don’t think I’m butt ugly but I am fairly direct and honest and picky. Most of the women I initiated contact with didn’t bother to respond and the few who did we generally had different thoughts on what we were after so it didn’t go anywhere. The ones who initiated contact with me were either scammers or ones I had no interest in, and told them that politely.
I’m not sure what the ratio of men to women are on those sites but the general experience appears to be that any half decent looking woman will get more attention than she needs and wants from all the desperados which then means the genuine blokes appear just more nuggets in the pile of dross.
Men also almost always outnumber women on dating sites, so just pure random chance leads to women getting more messages than men. Just thought I’d point that out. I’ve got no advice for the OP, as I’m not a woman, and I’ve had no real success on dating websites, mostly due to my fear of rejection.
Well I just went with what I thought are fair representations of what I look like. I didn’t pick out some photo where I look 10 lbs thinner and my hair shines like the sea, but I also didn’t pick some ugly, scowly pictures.
Heh, so I talked to another friend last night about this who is also on OK Cupid, and of course she whined about it, so I told her that according to the internets (you guys being the internets), you get better results when you initiate the contact. She, like I, responded with “Juh? I just kind of got a shitload of messages, and read through all of them, and they sucked.” Apparently we dames have a lazy as shit approach to this, and my totally scientifically legit sample size (of 3) tells me 100% of women on online dating sites spend their time weeding through messages and not initiating contact.
So of course, it begins already, but I’m not even gonna be mad. I’m just going to ignore these messages, breathe in and breathe out, and go scout some guys on my own. Btw, I literally got a message just now that said “lol… your funny :)” No, this is not my characterization of dumb ass messages. I copy + pasted that. Why would you write that to someone? What is wrong, mentally, with someone who would do that?
I figure that by sending out messages like that, he’s reducing his chances of breeding successfully, thereby doing future generations a big favor. A true humanitarian!
lol… thats funny 
Definitely do the initiating, MOL. You are supremely witty and hilarious, so guys sensible enough to appreciate that sort of thing will recognize it and put some effort into a response. As soon as they pass the “not a mouth-breathing retard” test, go out for drinks with them. Before you know it, you’ll be swimming in sweet Internet man candy.
I think that phrase just turned me gay.
Okay, I’m on it. Reading glasses on, thinking gin in hand, ignoring the message notifications that keep coming up, and am reading through profiles. Found a few who seem interesting that I will message shortly, then go through my inbox. I’m pretty sure all of the messages in my inbox won’t be worth regarding, but they’re there, so I’ll read them just in case. But they’re low priority.
Interestingly, one of the guys I’m going to message looks pretty cute and seems super smart, but not in a pretentious or forced I’m-going-to-shoehorn-my-nerdcred-into-every-aspect-of-my-profile way. He just comes off as a really smart guy with a great sense of humor, yet OKC says no one has messaged him all week. :dubious: Either this system is broken, or the women using this site are… oh god… the error of my ways and the enormity of how screwed this setup is becoming so clear!