I was reading a doper thread about personal ads about a month ago so I decided to put one up on a popular service and listed a few pictures and some personal information. I have had several inquiries by (apparently) sincere and interested women in the area, but without fail the personal ads (on the same service) they link to are sans photo and are text descriptions.
I haven’t responded to any of these ads yet and some women have emailed me more than once. I’m probably being a shallow wuss, but I’m a sincere person and I really have a difficult time engaging someone in a potential relationship discussion if I have absolutely no idea what they look like. You’d think if they really wanted me to respond they would give some indication of what they look like. Is the 35-45 age range I’m trolling in not conducive to pics being offered? Is it standard personal net ad protocol by women not to list photos in initial "tell me more about yourself inquiries (by them)?
If the text description interests you, write them back a note and include a request for a photo. I’m assuming you have one on your ad, so they can see what you look like. Many women do not want their photo out on the internet, and so don’t post one; they should however be willing to send one on request. If not, that may be something to think twice about.
Photos are standard, I don’t think I’ve met a girl through a service without seeing a photo first. Just politely say that you do not carry on conversations, or meet, without seeing a photo. You like to know who you’re talking to, and whether or not you’re attracted to them. Since your photo is up, you can also use the “it’s only fair, you’ve seen mine” line.
Don’t take their lack of picture in the ad as an indication of deception. Many women take their pictures off to try and reduce the number of responses, you’d be surprised what they have to deal with. If she refuses to give you a picture, then there’s a problem.
Photos are standard, AFAIK, but personally I don’t own a camera, much less a digital camera, and if I wanted to attach a photo to a personal I’d have two options - go to a chemist and have a passport photo taken, then have someone scan it for me, or to buy a disposable camera, take a photo of myself and have it developed in .jpg format.
Neither would be a photo I’d be entirely happy to send out to someone I was hoping to get involved with.
Ask for a photo - they’d probably have one - but don’t take the fact that they can’t supply one as a guarantee that they’re either pigdog-ugly or a 14-year old boy.
I know you know this, but I wanted to add this to the discussion: what would a photo prove? You know it could be old, of someone else, etc. IF appearance is important to you, meet them.
I’ve never put a photo on an ad, for the reasons listed above; I’ve never specifically requested a photo from a guy I met through an ad, either, and have never been disappointed. (Nor, I thinnk, have the guys; I have had a couple of actual relationships with guys I met through personal ads, and none of them saw a photo of me before meeting. I’ve also found that the guys have not lied about their physical appearance, if that’s any comfort. Of course, I tend to avoid the guys who go on and on about how handsome and “financially secure” they are; it’s a big turnoff. If tehy’re so great, they should say something about who they are as human beings; the rest to me is pretty secondary.)
I don’t see why you’re not willing to swap a couple of e-mails, first, though, so that women get a little bit comfortable about you. After you’ve chatted a bit, though, if things are going comfortably, if you ask for a photo she should provide one somehow.
I think it is important to get the photo out of the way first. I guess there are a lot of people who can have relationships that aren’t at all based on looks, but I’m not one of them. If you are just meeting friends to do things with, pictures are unimportant. But if you are looking for a romantic partner, then it is best to weed out people you know don’t fit into your preference. If you email with someone, make a connection and then see their picture and you know you don’t want to ever have a relationship with them, it would have been best to see the picture up front first. Save everyone some grief (sorry Eve Luna.
I have done the online thing and whenever someone contacted me without a photo I just replied “Hi, you seem to have me at a disadvantage. You have seen my picture, but I haven’t seen yours. Do you have a photo you could send me?”. That always works.
It’s unfortunate, but I always suspect that people who don’t offer their picture are ashamed of something. It’s a bad bias, but there you go.
I have seen alot of photos on match.com with a guy or his arm around the woman. Seems some of them don’t have a recent photo of themselves & maybe not even a digital camera or scanner.
I also know some of them & the photos usually don’t look too much the same as they look now.
If you were going to seriously date someone, wouldn’t you need to be thinking, “This chick is just sooo cute?” If there is no possibility of this happening, then there is no need to proceed. It’s a waste of your time and of hers.
I have tried to have the relationship without the “hubba hubba”, and it doesn’t work.
Some of those women have indeed taken off the photo to reduce the email traffic, but some of them are not confident of their ability to get you to write after you’ve seen the picture. The first type will send you one. The second type probably won’t, and I would think that after that they’d have to be pretty impressive with their written word to warrent further investigation.
I’ve never met anyone through a personal ad of any nature, however I would demand a picture as well. If you are looking for a romantic encounter you have to have that spark. One of my friends has met two or three girls through online ads and I don’t think the attraction has been there even one time.
Yeah, but if they give you a picture that’s not them in the here and now, then they’re also deceptive people (to put it nicely). Regardless of what they may look like otherwise, this is a fairly unattractive quality, IMHO.
That being said, I wonder if there are smart, attractive women who post/send pictures of less attractive women to weed out the pigs among us men. That would be interesting, if possibly counter-productive…
I want to know what you wrote to get so many replies. I have an ad posted and the response has been decidedly underwhelming; I can practically hear the crickets chirping.
Ooh, I love critiquing other people’s personal ads, Robot Arm. Can you link to yours?
As for the picture issue, Dread Pirate Jimbo and I met after exchanging emails and phone calls for a couple of months, and here we are, three years later, married and happy. I don’t think the photos are anywhere near as important as the psychological, emotional, and intellectual connection that you get from someone who suits you. Respond to these women, see if there are any possibilities, and do a meet-and-greet fairly soon. (At a public place, with both of you coming in your own cars, of course.)
If I were to place a personal ad, I would start without a picture. It just feels safer that way–there are weirdos online. If I got to emailing someone, I’d send a picture after one or two messages back and forth.
Now, if my personal ad just didn’t get any responses after a time, I probably would add a picture… albeit, not a close-up one.
It’s not that I’m unsightly, it’s just that I would be concerned about a weirdo recognizing me in real life and bothering me.
I have/had several ads on personals websites, once I was able to so so I put a pic on my ads, it made no difference to the responses I got whatsoever, the only replies i get are from short hairy men …
I trimmed it down considerably from the original ad where I was being too clever and also indicating what I didn’t like (ie people with big chips on their shoulder). Just simple and to the point works best without being too fussy. It still needs work but I’ve left it alone for now.
The sad sack ad’s (ie I been hurt before so I’m looking for etc. etc.) are huge turn offs to me. Some one who has a positive mental attitude (or is at least smart enough to to fake it) are the ones I pay attention to. Spelling counts also. If someone can’t even bother to spell check their ad the opportunities for intelligent conversation are likely to be fairly limited.
It’s interesting how many of the women responding are indicating “sarcasm” as a non-desirable character trait in their profile list and I’m indicating it as a desirable trait for a woman to have in my list of desired traits in an SO.