I have a problem with the topic of other people in pictures, too. In fact, I just got a match today and the guy had five pictures…several headshots, and two full-body shots. But in one of the full length shots, (which included the Eiffel Tower) he was being hugged by a smiling woman and had his arm around a pre-teen girl. No!!! If this is the happy family he was part of before his divorce, I don’t want to see his ex-wife just yet! I certainly don’t want to see them looking blissfully happy together! I don’t want to be thinking that I look too much like/not anything close to the type of woman that made him happy before. I don’t want to wonder how long ago was this picture taken, and has he had sufficient time to heal? I don’t want to see other people in the pictures at all! I’ll take disembodied arms anyday over a picture of the guy I might be interested in looking blissfully happy while dressed in formal wear, standing with a bride who is too old to be his daughter. Without captions to clarify the relationship, I don’t want to see these other women in his life just yet.
On the other hand, another match I got today had several studio pictures and one candid. The candid was first up, and he looked nice. In his profile blurb he said, “women tell me I’m handsome”. So I clicked on the studio pictures. Seriously goofy-looking guy. Vague resemblance to the candid, but quite startling. I was just going to pass by, but I thought about this thread and decided to not be that girl, and maybe respond, since the rest of his profile was interesting. I’d really like to meet him in person just to see how he looks for real, because the two pictures were so different.
I don’t cruise men’s profiles, but Oh My Gosh some women are stupid like this. I’ve seen two women in the same picture and no note about which one is the poster, “never married” women holding kids and no note about whether they’re cousins or whatever, and some who post their dogs or cats as additional pictures. You’re so into your cat that you HAD to put its picture into your dating profile? That’s some serious cat love, that I don’t think I’m into. Oh, and they’ll post the arm-in-arm pictures with men. Of course, it turns out to be a brother or cousin or something, but they don’t say it. That kind of oversight to me says something, because, let’s face it, I kind of live in the details.
I am assuming you aren’t directing this solely at me, but what I am after is supplemental information. Photos also say alot about what people like to do (eg, action shots of them climbing mountains). It gives context.
They can also show a person’s demeanor in some cases:
“If a person is usually cheerful, they smile a lot so their face gradually acquires the creases of smile lines. Over time, their face will tend to settle in a cheery expression which we all recognize.”
Read that somewhere by Hugh Willbourn, PhD.
Me, I like expressions. I myself have a very expressive face, and most people can tell what I’m thinking by just seeing the look on my face.
Not sure why I need to defend my need for being able to visualize a person but all I can say is different strokes…
No doubt. But I still want to know what I’m getting myself into. There’s certain body types I’m attracted to, certain looks I’m attracted to, and certain ones I’m not. When I did the dating thing, I posted my photo. I’m pretty much an average looking guy, balding, slightly overweight (about 10 lbs), but I want women to have a decent idea of what I look like up front, so I know I’m not wasting my time. Physical attraction is a big part of dating, so I don’t feel like I’m somehow vain for insisting to see a woman’s photo. If some girl isn’t attracted to balding men, so what? I don’t want to waste her time, either. Works out best for all parties involved.
I’m a photographer, so I know what the camera can do to people, so I definitely keep that in mind when looking at pictures. The woman I’m currently dating I found on Match in February and her photos were so-so, but she fell into that category of “it looks like she might be attractive, but just doesn’t photograph very well.” I clicked on her profile, and she seemed to be very interesting as well, so I contacted her. And it worked out very well.
Actually, I started using only the picture to vet the profile. Now, I was on dedicated sites of like-minded-religioned people, but after that, what can you really tell from what they’ve written? They like baseball! But they’re not saying that they can’t admit it when they’re wrong. They love kids! But they sulk for a day when you don’t notice the combination of their shoes and purse. Who knows? You have to spend enough time with them to crawl into their heads, and that can’t easily happen through the internet.
OTOH, I have let a number of them go through net interaction. An inattention to good thinking, a revelation of being kind of desperate, etc. have let me know it was time to not IM someone again. But proving that it’s someone to have kids with is probably not possible through the computer.
This would be why I wouldn’t put my pic on a dating site- even if I wasn’t in a relationship, I’d have serious concerns about one of my colleagues or bosses finding my profile and then knowing a lot more personal stuff about me than would really be appropriate in a workplace environment.
It would be a bit weird if your Area Manager knew you were into BDSM or Swinging, for example- especially if they’re conservative or religious.
Still, I can understand why people on dating sites prefer a photo, but I also think it’s only fair that people realise that there may be very legitimate reasons for a member there not to have a photo up as well.
In which case, they should say so in the first correspondence. I’ve included a note in my profile to be sensitive to this, actually, and have said that if you don’t have a photo in your profile, be sure to attach one in your first email.
I think this is quite practical. Cat allergies seem to be commonplace, and people who dislike pets can see upfront that the potential object of their affection comes with pet in tow - love me, love my dog. I can’t imagine that this would be a deal-breaker for everyone, but there are some people who would probably prefer not to get involved with someone if it means that evenings at their home will be accompanied by itchy eyes, irritated nose and throat and so forth.
I hope the next person I get involved with likes cats because my two are (hopefully, touch wood) going to be around for a good many years yet. Not necessarily a deal-maker or a deal-breaker, but certainly something to consider.
That’s more than fair, although I’m pretty sure a lot (if not all) of the Dating Sites are set up so “Free” Members can’t contact “Paid” members on their own initiative. I may be wrong on that, though.
I met someone through a personals site who had actually touched up her photograph. :rolleyes: It made her look super attractive, but unrecognizable from the fairly cute former co-worker that she was.
Or maybe they went to one of those fake photo shops and have never set foot on a mountain. Seems to me that if a person had ‘mountain-climbing’ under ‘hobbies’ in the profile, that ought to be a hint that the person likes to climb mountains, no?
And you can determine that a person has a habitually cheery expression by seeing photos? How do you know the person’s not just smiling for the camera? What if there are smile lines you can’t see because of the resolution?
Replied pulykamell:
Yeah. A lot of people say that. I might’ve said the same when I was younger. But had I not relaxed my ‘standards’, I would have missed out on some really great people. What I found as a corollary is that my ‘standards’ changed drastically because of the people I grew fond of.
That’s great, but not everyone has a photographer’s eye. I just think that people put too much store on photos. But then I’m someone who’s turned on by how a man thinks; a good brain and heart will make a Danny DeVito look like Hunko Hunkarama to me. I’m with Saint-Exupéry; ‘It is only with the mind that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye’.
If it works for you, fine. You know what your standards are and what you’re attracted to and apparently you’re attracted to a wider range of folk than some of us. I simply want to visualize who I’m talking to. I want to have a basic idea, because there are simply certain physical attributes I will never be sexually attracted to, no matter how great the personality is, or how idealistic I’d like to be and claim that looks don’t matter.
I dated one girl because she had a photo of herself smashing a copier with a sledgehammer on it, and another one with a bucket on her head, along with two normal shots. Those first two pictures told me as much about her personality as her description did. I find the types of photos people select to represent them on a dating site to be as valuable an insight into their personality as the text.
I get so tired of the whole “looks don’t matter, and if you think they do it’s because you’re shallow” thing. Some people always have to polarize the issue: you’re either into looks or you’re into personalities, and never the twain shall meet. Which is total crap.
I disagree with your definition of “very legitimate,” but more to the point: if someone is so paranoid about being discovered (by whoever) that he won’t post a photo, we’re probably not a good match. I really can’t think of any legitimate reason for a guy to not have a picture with his profile that doesn’t indicate incompatibility.
I don’t think anyone here has said they they judge a potential mate solely by his/her picture: for me, photos are just another piece of information like knowing his age, location, etc. If he left any of those bits out of his profile, I’d be just as skeptical as if he left out a photo. The presence of a photo says as much to me as the photo itself.
Who is saying that a Danny DeVito would be out of the question? I don’t think anyone has said that the photos have to be of models. When I think that someone has a great photo, I don’t mean that he would rate highly on Hot Or Not: I mean that his looks appeal to me, personally, for reasons that are impossible to put into words. When I skim search results I look at the photos to decide which profiles to read, but all kinds of men catch my eye – cute soccer players, kind of dorky bald guys, etc.
Something else to keep in mind is that online dating is not like the real world. In the real world, of course you can become more attracted to someone the more you spend time with them: also, in the real world I probably wouldn’t automatically reject someone who is outside of my preferred age range or who smokes, etc. But if you apply absolutely no filters to online dating, the choices would be overwhelming: you have to start somewhere. So maybe the guy whose picture didn’t appeal to me would have been attractive if I’d met him in a bar – so what? People talk about “missing out” on opportunities as if dating were some kind of race or competition where the prize is a soulmate. If I worried about every possible “but what if he’s cooler in person than he seems on screen,” I’d wind up in a corner somewhere hugging myself and rocking. So if your picture doesn’t catch me eye, I won’t write to you first. If your profile is boring, I won’t write first. If the profile is interesting but there are a lot of typos, I won’t write first. If everything else is good but you’re 23, I won’t write first. And so on.
When I was in the game, I wouldn’t have introduced myself to anyone who didn’t have a picture. And I have wanted to see one before we met. Internet dating is scary enough without seeing the whites of their eyes. Better to be able to know sort of what you’re dealing with before you get your own and someone else’s hopes up.
My boyfriend, along with a really funny profile, had these incredibly cool pictures of him with his giant pet fish (red-tailed catfish, so big it looks fake), posing ironically like a guitar god, and glaring at the camera. It definitely encouraged me to engage with him despite the fact that we have some very different views on things… also, he’s hot. That didn’t hurt either.
He, OTOH, said he would have met a girl without a picture if she impressed him as being cool personality-wise. So YMMV.
Not my statement, or belief. Rather my position is ‘you can actually fall for people whose looks you don’t initially like so you should at least meet them first and see if you click’.
Didn’t you just in the above paragraph indicate the ‘filters’ you’d apply?
Well, more like because people are so different that the chance of finding many with whom you might be very compatible isn’t that great. IMHO, you don’t want to be weeding out the ones that might actually yield the most satisfactory result.
But as I said before, it’s good that people who insist that photos are critical select for each other.
In My other HO, we get in enough trouble by letting ‘attraction’ rule our judgement. Knowing what we now know about pheromones, oxytocin, etc. I seriously distrust ‘attraction’ and don’t let it govern my choice of who to meet. Then again, as I also said before, it has been my experience to find people I didn’t initially think attractive mega HOT upon knowing them better. But by then my brain was engaged so the perils of following the dictates of biology were somewhat mitigated.
I certainly have seen little evidence that letting attraction sway one’s judgement towards a potential partner results in satisfying long-term relationships in any great proportion.
I think it is a little harsh to call those insisting on photos shallow. However my response rate improved when I finally added a photo of myself. Taken from about 30 feet away, almost indistinguishable, wearing sunglasses driving a Ferrari.
I know you’re new here, so let me give you a tip: unless you were quoted and what someone said was underneath that quote (like this is), that person wasn’t talking specifically to, or about, you.
Um, yeah … and that second sentence you quoted was part of my argument for applying filters. Where did you get confused?
Funny, I tend to think the opposite: because people are so different there’s a good chance of finding lots of people you’re compatible with.
And IMHO, there is no possible way to know who might “yield the most satisfactory result” (is this dating or a science experiment??) unless you date everyone – which I have neither the time, inclination, nor desperation to do.
Ok, a quick search led me to the discovery that tryingtogetbackintoyourpants.com is unclaimed, as are the associated .net and .org sites, and we can get a real deal on registering them all together with the .biz and .info domains.