I deleted all my profiles a couple of months ago. Nobody ever replied to any messages, but I never really saw anyone that interested me anyway.
I’ve had no dramas, everyone who I have sent a message to or has sent one to me has responded and we have ended up exchanging numbers and in most cases meeting up. I have knocked back a few who just din’t fit what I was looking for but at the end of the day I went out with spiritual Buddhists, country girls, to hard nosed business ladies, you never know who will tickle your fancy.
I probably do Ok as I am looking for someone 36 to 46 and prefer it if she has kids as I have kids.
Don’t spend too long on emails etc, if you can exchange a few nice emails, meet the lady and do it quickly, don’t let it drag on for weeks.
So yeah has it worked? Have I found the one? Not yet but hey I haven’t met any weirdos yet and it has been fun making new friends and I am dating a lady ATM who might be the one, time will tell.
Just do it and approach it with a sense of humor.
online dating: awesome if you’re a woman.
kind of a terrible drag if you’re a man.
maybe it varies by age, but i’m a male in my low 30s. i through i’d try it based on these factors.
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i came out of a relationships that was by-and-large an experiment. she was gorgeous and fun but utterly not “my type.” she was extroverted (i’m INFP) and she was really…thoughtless? i’m a kind guy (and no bullshit–a great boyfriend as far as being sweet goes. i’m a tape-a-love-letter inside your shoes to find eventually kind of guy).
that failed because in all she was the opposite of me, and it just clashed. she didn’t like intellectual pursuits, or good movies, or even listenable music. in short, she loved all the things i cannot stand. it was inane. so i thought online dating would allow me to find someone based on more specific criteria (oh how wrong i was). -
i met a few really viable, awesome attractive girls in real life who had boyfriends and they claimed to have met their bfs on dating sites.
in retrospect, that makes sense, because of what i say below. but my idea at the time was “heck, if gals like YOU are on there, count me in. you’re kind of awesome. i’d date you. so. off i go.”
- i am a full time artist and i mostly work for rich older folks who can afford me (i value my skillset, so i charge at least as much as a plumber).
i am not really a “go to bars” socialite type, so meeting people at all is rather complicated for me. this seemed like a good way to meet people. i’m kind of at a loss as to where people even meet new people now.
here’s the catch: any girl, just by the virtue of being female, gets a lot of pursuants. if you are cool, interesting or even remotely un-ugly, you will have a huge variety of men to pick from on dating sites. and your account will probably be free and more promoted.
and guys like me are lost in the backscatter.
i’m just going to be honest. i’ve never had trouble procuring female company. i’m not terribly attractive, but i am ok enough looking that my quirkiness and charms all work into some glob of “he’s alright.”
but i have a fairly limited pool of resources. my point is i’m not super-standouttish, so on a dating site, i am but a rustling leave amongst a massive forest of guys.
i went out with one girl i met there, and all she did the whole time we hung out was check her account and replied to MORE guys. for many, it’s a sport.
again, it might be an age thing.
i have a few female friends who still do that stuff, and they all admit they are never, ever wont for someone to hang out with. their inboxes fill to capacity and it’s pick and choose who to ever even reply to.
so, in short, do it if you’re female. if you’re a guy, the odds are really stacked against you.
sorta of the same idea as lady’s night at a bar. there’s always PLENTY of dudes.
Same here (although I am not married yet).
I met two people that I saw for more than 3 dates, one kind of seeing each other for six months. There was never any spark, we just seemed to want to not be alone for a bit (it was a matter of months after a 9.5 year relationship ended). The other was a very intense month and half at which point we realised we approached relationships in very different, very incompatible, ways.
Everyone else was either OK or really properly mental. They probably thought the same about me. I got a few snogs and some random sex, but only casual. I feel it gave me the confidence (after my previous relationship falling apart) to meet someone else, which happened in the real world (Lindy Hop lessons).
I found logging in to the site (I used a Swedish site, not any of the well known English-language ones) to be a soul-destroying experience. If truth be told, I used online dating as a social life (which had fallen apart a bit towards the end of the relationship), so when I managed to get a proper social life I used online dating less and less often. By the time I met my girlfriend I wasn’t really checking the site anymore.
The on friend who had absolutely no luck doing online dating (or any other dating really) put up awful pictures of himself and had a lousy profile. When female friends tried to point that out to him and give him tips he stonewalled. “If she doesn’t like me because of the picture in my Yankee jersey then she doesn’t deserve me.” He put no effort into it and was doomed to fail. Just like he predicted.
:dubious: And you think this deluge of messages is a good thing. Interesting.
being in the catbird seat getting to PICK whoever you want from the deluge is *absolutely *a good thing. dubious face back atcha if you think that’s NOT a good thing.
being just another drop in the background noise of the deluge clearly is NOT a good thing.
“oh woe is me, all these wretches choices! for i only have a DELUGE of choices to pick from! this cannot be a good thing! oh how i wish i had no options at all!”
As someone who will cheerfully admit he found all the women on the online dating sites to be socially inept losers incapable of decent conversation, I have to say you seem to have a very unattractive negative opinion of the opposite sex.
what are you talking about?
go back up two posts and see meanoldlady’s post:
[QUOTE=MeanOldLady]
:dubious: And you think this deluge of messages is a good thing. Interesting.
[/QUOTE]
that’s HER argument, not mine.
i certainly think having the benefit of options is *clearly *the better position. who wouldn’t want options?
meanoldlady is acting like it’s a weird position to think that. “dubious face at you for thinking options are a good thing.”
how on earth would it be better to not have options?
I find that to be the case too. Which is why we all told my friend if he wanted to get any replies he needed to work on his profile. Maybe get a picture that doesn’t make it look like he is a schlub who is only looking for a sports fan. When someone gets a lot of choices they have to cull the herd.
Well it’s your attitude, not what you’re actually saying. There’s a hostility there that makes it hard to imagine that it leaves much room for success. Also you seem angry at MeanOldLady for some reason.
I also agree with her. I hate getting messages from women I’m not interested in. Actually I dislike it when real women I’m not attracted to seem into me. Part of me realizes that being rejected by me isn’t nearly as painful as I fear it is, but I still feel bad doing it. I’d hate getting messages from a whole bunch of women. Also all the women I have communicated with on online dating sites are awful so it’s not like you’re getting any good options out of being contacted.
I would never look down on too many options. I wasn’t too thrilled with the scam profiles but it was pretty easy to spot those.
considering you just said that exact sentence, maybe you don’t need to go around injecting what you think people’s attitudes are, especially when you’ve started out with a fundamental misunderstanding of the exchange that has occurred. i assure you you’ve misjudged mine, as you have this conversation.
meanoldlady was a women on a dating site. if you are so concerned about her feelings, don’t call her a socially inept loser.
I don’t care about anybody’s feelings.
I was commenting on your first post on the subject, pointing out that it comes off as hostile, like you’re angry at women for having an easier time on dating sites. I wasn`t commenting on any exchange that occurred, just your first post.
that wasn’t my first post.
THIS was:
which part was hostile? please point it out.
you seemed to have no bothered to read my first post yet jumped to a conclusion. you didn’t understand MOL’s reply, either.
it’s ok, you made a mistake. which is odd since you directly insult women who are on dating sites. hi, pot. meet: kettle.
Apparently one of the problems I had back when I was still interested in the whole relationship thing is that dudes would often think it was impossible, impossible I tell you, that I would be available. Preliminary research indicates that I look like a target to the jerks, whereas to the kind of nerdish, quiet fellows I like, I appear too self-assured to need a man (well… I don’t! But I do like one occasionally, preferably alive and about my age).
But if you’re on a dating site, you are putting up a banner that says “available!” - talk about a clue by four.
If OKC tags them as, “Replies very selectively”, I rarely bother.
AH! Online dating. I’ve had horrible experiences, scary and very scary experiences and not so bad experiences.
The only couple of guys I might’ve hit it off with were not in my area, oh well maybe I should move!!
Dumb.
Have you ever been a girl on OK Cupid? Half my messages only said “Hey, you look cute” or “Let me know if you want to chat,” and there were a lot of them. I mean, there isn’t even enough time in the day to attempt conversation with every single person who sends this kind of irritatingly asinine message. So yes, a deluge of this bullshit is bad. Then there are the messages from guys who aren’t robo-mailers (possibly), and have sent something coherent. Of these, most of them aren’t cute (I know, I know, I’m the shallowest person in the world for wanting my partner to be at least somewhat attractive; bite me), don’t fit what you’re looking for, and sometimes don’t even fit what you stated explicitly that you’re looking for in your profile. Kind of ridiculous the amount of men whose apparent strategy is to just shoot out messages to everything and just cross their fingers, hoping maybe the woman won’t notice that the the two of them have nothing in common.
I would be shocked to find I’m the only woman who would rather get fewer messages from quality people who have read their profile and feel like they might be a match, than to have to sift through hundreds of messages of BS.
Definitely, this. Online dating sites are pretty much a cesspool. You have all kinds of people on there. No one I met on there was worth anything. They just weren’t. They brought absolutely nothing to the table.
Online dating is absolutely horrible if you’re guy. You almost never get messages unless you somehow catch someone’s interest, but realize that there are more men than women on these sites. Also, if you’re guy, you somehow need to stand out because these women are getting 200+ messages a day. For a guy it’s pretty much luck (like Vegas odds luck).
If you’re a woman, it’s horrible because you have to sift through all the messages, and the majority of them are garbage.
Sample messages include, but are not limited to:
Hi, how are you?
What’s up sexy?
You’re hot!
Would you like to have sex?
(insert other harassing messages here)
Sometimes, they get a decent message, but most of them are deleted because they just get fed up with all the garbage messages.
I have never met anyone who met their SO on a dating site. In my area, people just don’t meet on dating sites. I’ve never been to a wedding where someone said, “I met so and so on a dating site.” It would be extremely uncommon.
Also, do you have any idea how many troll or spam accounts there are on dating sites? LOTS! How can you be sure that you’re actually talking to a male or female? Honestly, you can’t until you meet in person. When you do meet in person, I’m willing to bet that it’s extremely awkward unless you have been talking for said person for a long period of time, have skyped with them, have called them, etc. Even then, it still might be awkward.