Oh. So it’s just me, then. 
sniff
Why do you think this is the case?
Your geographic area is a huge factor. The people, male or female, who are getting 20 messages per day are likely near huge urban centers.
Actual message I received last night:
[QUOTE=OKCupid stranger]
Hello beautiful lady…how are you doing? You’ve got a charming smile…will you infect me with it please?
[/QUOTE]
My profile specifies casual local dating. He’s on the opposite coast of the US. He’s looking for someone to marry and have kids with while in my profile I make it clear that I am not. He doesn’t believe in evolution and thinks homosexuality is a sin. Our match percentages are all very low.
Did this guy really read my profile and make a conscious decision to contact me, or did this message go to an arbitrary subset of women on OKC?
Speaking as objectively as I can, I don’t think my smile is particularly charming. For the sake of argument let’s concede that it is. What does “infect me with it” even mean?
Would you respond to this message from a seemingly total mismatch? If so, how?
eta: Ellipses are his. That is the entirety of the message as received.
I don’t go looking at male profiles as a rule, but I’ve seen a ton of women’s profiles where they are in a huge group, sometimes as their main photo, and they hardly ever say which one they are. Really hard too when they have the same friends in each one. I also see a lot of self photos in the mirror. I think it would probably be the same for both sexes.
I’ve started writing slightly smaller messages just due to me not getting many responses in return. I used to write 2-3 paragraphs, now I’m down to 1-2. Still makes me wonder why I don’t get more then a 5% return when I actually read the profile and comment on something.
I think part of my problem is being almost 40 with kids and a lot of women around my age want kids. But yes, as a guy I’ve found one has to send out a lot of messages.
On the plus side I did meet a friend on the site, we’ve taken to hanging out together for the past 6-7 months.
No, I would not respond to someone who obviously didn’t bother to read my profile. I was very clear about no religious men need apply. “If you are a Christian believer, please do not contact me. Just. Don’t.” Yet, I’d get message after message from guys for whom apparently the whole religion or lack thereof thing was a nonissue for them. So they messaged me anyway. I don’t want anything to do with someone who refuses to respect my boundaries. What happens when I refuse sex? Are they going to just force themselves on me anyway? Why should I bother stating preferences if those won’t be respected?
My favorite tale, so far (I have actually killed my OKC profile because I think it’s a pointless waste of time):
I got a message from some dude in Greece. He asked me three questions and I only responded because I was so wtf about his lack of boundaries.
- What if the man of my dreams was a Christian? (If he was the man of my dreams, he wouldn’t be christian. Next question)
- I can’t remember the second question.
- What if I were to become pregnant, what would I do? (I’d clearly stated I didn’t want children, ever.)
I thought it was pretty rude and disrespectful and OMG, did he just ask me if I’d abort or give birth to a child I didn’t want? Really? That’s appropriate for an introduction? So I answered all of his questions honestly and then proceeded to ask him if it was true that Greek men are all into anal sex and what was that like? Was there some sort of cultural thing where dads tell their boys that is the end-all be-all bestest part of funnekkidsexytimes? I mean, hell, if we’re going to be asking each other inappropriate questions, let’s go there then.
Internet dating sites are generally miserable if you are a man, unless you are among the top 10-20% of men in sex appeal or somehow manage to send out the right signals. I can’t do either.
A couple more weeks, little extra luck. I try to send a message to at least a couple folks each week, and the rate of return is about 20%. If you don’t count the folks who responded only once to answer the icebreaker question, then it’s more like 10%.
OKCupid is weird. I wrote to a girl about something she had in her profile. She responded in 15 minutes (!) and, I directly quote, said your words resonate with my soul (!!). I sent her a message back, and then… nothing. I sent a “did you miss my message” type message a couple weeks later and still… nothing. I can’t explain it.
I’ve been able to enter into a few casual conversations that never went beyond that. Maybe one response out of 5-10, but you have to be pretty realistic and circumspect about whom you contact in the first place. I also got a few real people actually contacting me (aside from the usual “Hey Sweetie” responses from Philipinas).
It’s pretty important to actually reference something specific they said in their profiles, to differentiate your message from bulk senders.
I would have guessed escorts or webcam girls.
I signed up on Wednesday evening and have a lunch date tomorrow (Sunday).
I’ve sent a few messages and received quite a few. About half are guys outside of my geographical area, to which tell them thanks, but no thanks (and why).
My biggest challenge is not holding it against someone if they misspell or misuse words. (It happens to me if I’m on my Kindle Fire or iPhone–autocorrect seems to know what I’m trying to say more than I do.) Lack of capitalization and punctuation though,they’re outta there. And if they substitute text-speak (u for you, 2 for to, etc.), then I won’t even consider them at all. These are skills they should have learned in elementary school, and if they’ve ditched this bit of knowledge, no telling what other learned behaviors they’ve ditched along the way.
I think it’s kind of funny–about five years ago, I did the online dating thing (through match.com, I think) and it was all about guys who liked working out, and there were a billion pics of shirtless guys posing in front of their motorcycles or on their boats, and now it’s all about “relaxing at home” and pics from the shoulders up. Guess five years makes a big difference.
What changed is having camera phones with lenses on both sides so you can take (halfway decent) pictures of yourself. That’s my guess anyways. You used to have to find pictures that people took of you. Now all you have to do is take a picture of yourself when you’re feeling confident for 5 minutes during a commercial break.
That IS handy.
MyFootsZZZ has gotten pretty lucky with OkCupid.
On the other hand, in this other thread, you can tell my results from Speeddate have been rather questionable.
I’m kind of jealous of you guys. Being married for over 20 years now, I’ve been out of the dating pool for a long time, and have never experienced broadband mate (or date) searching. The potential possibilities must be mind boggling.
Oh well, another experience I’ll never have. Thank goodness I lucked out the old fashioned way. 
That’s like saying “man, those slaves had it good. Free room, free board, no bills, can’t get fired, man what a life!”
In theory, this online dating IMO should be the bomb. IME not so much. About the only advantage I can see is that its cheaper than hanging out in smoky bars.
Don’t be. There’s a reason I named my blog as I did. 
You really need to explain to me how what I said is in any way comparable to this, because I don’t see it at all. Are you saying that online dating is so horrible that it is akin to slavery, or???