On-Line Dating, Cont'd... Part II

In My Humble Opinion
1

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=288832&highlight=On-Line+Dating
Welp, it’s been a few weeks. What’s up, Misnomer and all you others? Also Sunspace if you’re here, how did your date a couple months ago work out?

I met both the potential soul-mates I was talking to. The one, like I said, I’m definitely not attracted to. We may become casual friends though. The other one, who I just knew was the man for me, I met him Saturday night. Meh. Not the one.
Back to the drawing board for me.
How about you guys?

2

Oh, crap. I gotta learn to preview.Duh.

3

I am interested in hearing too. As for myself, I signed up on cupid and even wrote a few people with no luck. Not terribly surprising on my end.

4

Well, been talking to someone on AIM and on the phone now for a bit. Its…kind of complicated.

But I’m a persistant bastard, so I’ll see it through :smiley:

5

I’ve been kinda tooling around on OKCupid. I’m not really worrying about it too much right now cause I know I’m busy and traveling this time of year, and I figure other people are too. Once the holidays are over, I’ll start in a little more seriously.

6

I have no idea what’s going on right now. :smiley:

As mentioned in the other thread, I met a guy (I’ll call him “Bob,” as that’s my favorite all-purpose name at the moment) a couple of weeks ago for lunch and some pool. That was Sunday the 5th. The meeting went very well, and we went out again two days later (Tuesday the 7th). Dinner and a movie. Also went very, very well, with much good conversation and good fooling around. We parted for the evening with his assurance that we would see each other again soon.

I followed up the next day with an e-mail thanking him for the evening, and propositioning him for the next time we both had a Friday or Saturday night free. He wrote back the next day with “what a wonderfully ‘naughty’ idea,” but went on to say that life was suddenly complicated because his daughter was sick and he had family coming into town the following week. Said he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to manage even a weeknight free – but that he could, he just needed a couple of days to figure out his schedule. I wrote back saying “no sweat, free time is scarce around the holidays, do what you need to do and I’ll hear from you when you get a chance to breathe.”

That was almost two weeks ago.

On Thursday (the 16th) I sent him a short e-mail: “Hi! I know you’re busy; I saw something online that reminded me of you, so I thought I’d drop you a quick line and say so. Hope you don’t mind. :)”

No response.

Tonight I reached the end of my patience, and a few hours ago I called his cell phone. I got his voicemail, so I left a message to this effect: “You know, you’re supposed to start ignoring me after we have sex. I think you’ve switched things around. Ha ha. But seriously, if you’re still interested, you need to throw me a bone, Bob. If you’re not still interested, that’ s ok, but just let me know. I mean, I’ll be disappointed, and a little confused, but at least I’ll know that I should move on after the holidays. Either way, let me know what’s going on: I don’t do this uncommunicative silence thing well. So throw me a bone, ok? I hope all is well with you.”

And, of course, now I don’t know whether I want to hear from him or not. Part of me thinks there has to be a good reason for his silence – family stuff, holiday stuff, daughter stuff, etc. But I know there’s nothing too serious going on, because he’s managed to log into OK Cupid every day for the past two weeks. And what kind of man passes on a sure thing? I was only half-kidding in the message I left him: I might have better expected this treatment after he got laid, but not before. I’m having a really hard time reconciling the guy I met on those two dates with the guy who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. He seemed just as interested in me as I am (was?) in him: not scary interested, but conversation was good and the chemistry was undeniable. Did I mention that I am (was?) a sure thing?? And that he knows – without a doubt – that I am/was a sure thing?? I know the holidays are fast approaching and everything, but how freaking busy can he be? And even if he really is that busy, how hard is it to send me a quick e-mail saying that his schedule is tighter than expected, and it might be a week or so before I hear from him again? If he can log in to OK Cupid he can send me an e-mail, dammit. Part of me worries that I’ve been too pushy, but the other part of me says “f*** it – what’s his problem?”

I guess I’ll have an answer (even if it’s a silent one) by the end of this week. The situation is just very, very bizzarre . . . not to mention confusing, frustrating, and a little demoralizing.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen two other profiles that interest me, so I have at least two ideas for who to message after the holidays if Bob can’t get his shit together. I’ve also gotten two messages in the past couple of weeks: one last week from a 22-year-old who didn’t seem to have read my profile at all; and one just today (yesterday, technically) from a 41-year-old self-described Deadhead who I don’t think I’d be a good match with. I ignored the 22-year-old, but will write back to the Deadhead tomorrow (he mentioned bits of my profile in his message to me, and I never ignore messages like that).

Thanks for following up, trublmakr! Sorry for the really long post: I’ve been thinking about venting about this here, but never really felt like taking the time to write it all down. I can’t pass up being asked specifically, though. :wink:

7

I didn’t participate in the other thread, but I saw OKCupid mentioned and out of morbid curiosity I decided to take their test. The response I got roughly amounted to “We don’t want you here. Come back when you’ve grown up a little.”

Ah well, at least I still have Internet porn. Sweet, sweet Internet porn. Who needs real social interaction when you can have Internet porn instead?

8

Misnomer, I’m not too familiar with you. But I have to say judging from that single post alone, I’d say you’re too good for this guy.

You should dump him and go out with me instead!!

Oh, wait, Dammit! I don’t live in the DC area!!

Seriously, though, I hope that works out for you…

we’re the same age too. double dammit!

9

Are you sure that was OkCUpid? That really sounds a lot more eHarmony-ish. eHarmony is the one with conservative, Christian values (although they tend to downplay the religiousness in their ads) while OKCupid is just a fun, silly non-judgemental site.

As for me, I emailed one guy who I sounded great, looked cute, and was actually in my age range (most of the guys are under thirty, it seems) and after one enthusiastic email, he’s kinda blown me off. ::pout:: So I’ve decided he’s probably gained two hundred pounds since his pictures were taken and that’s the reason.

Kinda corresponding with a couple of other guys but it’s the holidays and kinda a crappy time to schedule anything. I guess we’ll see what happens in the new year…

10

Thanks. :slight_smile:

Lest you get the wrong idea, maybe I should clarify that I was a sure thing for Bob. It’s rare for me to meet someone I’m that attracted to that quickly (and even more rare for the attraction to be mutual), but when it happens I see no reason to beat around the bush (so to speak!). So I’ll happily have sex with someone I don’t know that well – with the proper precautions in place, etc. – but the chemistry really has to be right.

That was my reaction, as well . . . Hunter Hawk, would you consider taking the test again, or taking more than one? My experience with Bob aside, this past month that I’ve been on OK Cupid has been kinda fun. :slight_smile:

I’ve definitely noticed that. It was mentioned pretty early in the other thread that the age range seems to skew young at that site, and whoever said it was so right! I wish I could bring myself to be open-minded about guys under 30, but I just can’t. :frowning:

11

Hey, trublmakr, thanks for remembering!

The date went, but there was no ‘click’. Based on my experience over the past few years, I am now not sure that the ‘click’ has a high chance of happening through online dating.

A bunch of us got into a big discussion about this (some of them had been on LavaLife or knew people who had been), and we came to the conclusion that the chance of success with online dating is low, because the selection process weeds out the Unexpected Successes: people who ‘click’ with you in spite of the fact that they are completely unlike your previous expectations.

For instance, I tend to screen out people who declare themselves as religious, because I don’t want to go out with an inerrantist or a proselytiser. However, how do I know that I missed someone very good for me, who happened to declare herself religious?

12

Yep, smart observation.

This is where the “online shopping” paradigm runs into problems. With, say, a custom shoe manufacturer, you can order up anything you want on the internet, and get it exactly to specs, but with online dating, the selection may be large, but it is limited … to actual, real human beings.

We think we want one thing (certain height, certain weight, specific religion, X hair color, Y skin color, etc., etc.), we actually need something else (the great vague unknown spark, or whatever), and the two have little inherent relation to each other.

The Shopping paradigm encourages us to be our worst selves, prejudging and discriminating on all sorts of trivialities that our hearts don’t really care about, but which we absorb from television and mass media, basically.

Hmm. Guess I’ll have to go try this OKCupid stuff!

“I am not a number, I am a free man!” - No. 6

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But don’t you think that the odds of “clicking” with someone you meet online are about the same as “clicking” offline with an Unexpected Success? Not that the odds are good, but maybe even?

It takes a lot of trial and error to find an online “click” (hence my disappointment with the Bob situation . . . though I guess it wasn’t much of a click after all!), but I don’t really think it’s any worse than the trial and error required for random strangers met via a bar, party, work, school, volunteering, etc.

That said, I like that you brought this up, because my age “requirements” are something that I struggled with until recently. I will reject a 25-year-old out of hand on paper (figuratively, of course), but if I met someone IRL who I liked I probably wouldn’t care if he were 25 – or 47, for that matter. It seems somehow unfair that whether someone’s age matters to me depends on when I learn about it, but the conclusion I’ve come to is “such is life.” :slight_smile:

That may be true of people who get super picky online: the ones who dictate their “perfect” mate’s eye color, hair color, height, income range, etc. I’ve never understood those parameters, myself. I filter online no differently than I would if a friend said, “Hey, I know this guy that I think you’d like!” I want to know his education level, some basic interests, his age, where he lives (but not necessarily how he lives), and whether he smokes. If he’s very religious I’d like to know, but otherwise even that doesn’t really matter. The people who give in to the “shopping paradigm” you describe aren’t doing themselves – let alone the other people on the site – any favors.

14

What’s that old saying about being careful what you wish for?

I think OKCupid has the right approach, and it would be fantastic if they had a signficantly larger user base. Maybe with time…

The other problem I have with online dating is that I haven’t figured out how to accurately convey my personality in a text-only medium. I expect I’m not the only one who’s dealt with that.

15

I’m not sure that’s true. We may try to increase our rate of success be straining out obvious non-matches (in my case, smokers or the aforementioned proselytisers, for instance), but the problem seems to be that these sites cannot describe their clients in great detail.

They’re a first rough sort, if that. And, if the categories provided do not match what aspects you want to look for (or sort yourself in), you’re out of luck. And, the accuracy of categories that you slot yourself into depends on how accurately you view yourself. LavaLife has gotten a lot more detailed in their sorting categories, but I find myself wishing for completely-different ones at times.

And so, through what could be called ‘quantisation errors’, you possibly miss someone you would have clicked with.

And even when you find someone that looks interesting, there’s no telling how accurate the listing is. Still pictures can be less than helpful at times, even before Photoshop comes into play–because they do not show how a person moves, their mannerisms, etc.

This year, I’m taking a different approach–I’m going to get involved in more social stuff relating to interests I have and forget about the online dating stuff. Maybe I’ll meet an Unexpected Success.

16

Yeah, it was OKCupid. I thought the response was kind of odd, because when I tried eHarmony a year or so ago it liked me–and I think eHarmony is supposed to be one of the stricter sites out there. So either I’ve turned into a major asshole in the past few months (an entirely valid possibility :wink: ), or my responses somehow just didn’t jibe with OKCupid’s desirable-person filter. If I get some spare time at some point, I’ll work through both sites’ quizzes again and see what happens.

17

eHarmony is Christian? My best friend met his girlfriend in there, and he’s an atheist.

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eHarmony has ties to the Christian right, and caters towards socially conservative, marriage-minded folks.

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So I went and signed up and answered a bunch of questions.

I’ll say this for OKCupid, compared to what I’ve seen of the other services, it’s more entertaining and streamlined. And the search-and-sort engine is less constraining, unless you want it to be.

An interesting feature it has is the “Bad Match” list – it shows your anti-matches, the human anti-matter to your soul. I looked at my Bad Matches. They all were similar, they did fit a certain type, evil freaky women all! Horrors! And I looked at my (good) Matches - they too all seemed to be a certain type of more clean-cut wholesome person.

It occurred to me, then, that my ex- would fit right in really well with the Bad Matches… On the other hand, we were together for 8 years, and really happy most of the time. Food for thought.

And the most annoying part of the evening’s expedition? I actually found someone I liked. Who lives nearby. Who’s at the top of the local Match list. Who’s sort of close in age. Who logged in today… Darn! Now I have to take this seriously, and start thinking and worrying about what I’m doing … ! Where’s the camera, I need a photo! I have to put more in my profile! It has to be good! Where’s a good date place – I don’t know her part of town at all! And I’m going to be out of town! What if she never logs in after I get back?!
:wally

20

Update: I got an e-mail from “Bob” this morning! :eek:

I still think he could/should have said something earlier, but of course now I’m all forgiveness and understanding – or at least, I probably will be. The jury will remain out until I hear from him again, but it’s predisposed toward an acquittal . . .

::sigh::

You provided a very valid list of reasons why the online approach isn’t perfect (or even great), but I still haven’t seen a reason why you think the odds are any worse online than in real life . . .

I’m no online dating apologist, but I’ve done it off and on for the past 6 or 7 years and don’t think it’s any better or worse than any other method of meeting people.

Good luck! (I mean that with all sincerity!) :slight_smile:

I used to think I just needed to get “out there” more, but I guess my interests != single straight men my age. I have done several different kinds of volunteer work, taken classes, played softball, etc. I refuse to do anything with an ulterior motive, though (which is why I avoid the Single Volunteers organization), so I’ve only done things that I was interested in/would have done anyway. Graduate school might offer some possibilities, even though my program is dominated by women: for example, I recently made a new friend through the class I took this semester, and there’s always the chance that she and her husband know some good single men. I’m not holding my breath, though. :wink:

We got another one! Heh heh heh! :smiley:

Welcome to the wonnerful world of online dating. And, in case no one else has said it yet, welcome to the SDMB. :slight_smile: