Well, I lamented leaving high school a virgin. And in just under a month from now I leave college a virgin.
Since I’ve failed completely at meeting (available…or at least interested) women during the window of time in which relationships and sex are supposed at the easiest level of obtainment, I guess that means I’ll have to start looking into the less conventional method of courtship: online dating.
I figure I’ll try OKCupid.com and Chemistry.com. What do I need to know about these applications? How much do they cost? What are the odds of finding a wide community of 21-23 year old single women on these sites?
OKCupid is 100% free, and is teeming with people in the 21-23 range. If you make up an ad and post a link here, people will give you advice. Not me, cause my ad has had like three women respond to it over a couple years, but other people…popular people.
I’m on OKCupid. You will find lots of girls on there who seem terrific and that you will want to date, but invariably they will be either “seeing someone” or single but only looking for friends. OKCupid is not just a dating site, though; it’s also a blogging and general time-wasting site. This may not be to your taste.
There are far more males than females on there. Sometimes it’s hard for a guy, especially if he is a shy or private person, to make himself stand out.
I, or several other Dopers, would be glad to check out your profile and give you feedback if you like. If you have female friends, I’d run it by them too.
I used OkCupid.com and Match.com. OkCupid is free, but my experience was one of very few interesting matches, and nothing that ever turned into an actual date.
Match.com on the other hand, had a lot of people I was interested in, and I met my current girlfriend on there after only about 2 weeks. We’ve been together now…5 months, and the future looks bright. Match.com was the only “pay” site I used and I think it was completely worth it, a lot because the signal/noise ratio was better than the free sites.
If you really really really just want to get laid by any walking orifice, (an action I higly unrecommend), I would go for AdultFriendFinder.com or Craigslist. Both seem teeming with opportunity for fast action of uncertain quality.
About five years ago I was in school in DC and doing a summer associateship in Connecticut. A friend suggested I try Match.com, so on I went a-looking for floozies. That’s all I was really interested in, as I had one more year of school left. About two months of fun into it, and I met the craziest woman on the planet. Batshit insane. I ended up canceling my membership within a week or so, and haven’t been back to online dating since.
We’re married now
I used okCupid and had good results. Downside is that it’s hard to find someone local if you dont live in a major city. Ways to get noticed is to use the online blog feature. The tests are fun.
I met my SO on okCupid & recommend that site over others because I have met some really nice guys. Still have my cupid acct for the blogging and quizzes.
I’ve also used geek2geek but its a paid site and low traffic.
Online dating CAN work, but you may want to honestly examine what’s preventing you from finding women willing to do the noodle dance with you. If people aren’t buying the product because they don’t like it, why spend time marketing?
I’m not being mean, just suggesting you do things in the right order. I found my wife through online dating. But I’d found lots of girlfriends before that, and doing that took me a lot of time learning how to be attractive to women; it ain’t something that’s necessarily easy. Online dating helps winnow the field to the people you’d actually want to spend a lot of time with - but if the field of interested parties is 0, there’s nothing to winnow.
Himself and I met through OkCupid. The weird thing is that we should have met some other way - I know tons of people who are friends with his friends, we just never actually met before. We’ve been together 3 years this month.
Word. Sometimes there is no opportunity, and online dating helps with that.
But sometimes you have to ‘fix’ yourself first and make yourself attractive. Part of this is figuring out why you are unattractive; this can be a surprisingly subtle matter of body language or attitude, for example. It’s not always a matter of having ugly teeth or a spare tire.
As far as which sites to use, try out all suggestions, but be willing to discard recommended sites that do not work for you. OKCupid produced few results for me. PlentyOfFish and CasualKiss were worse than useless, they were actively annoying. Both Match and MatchDoctor, highly recommended, produced one result between the two of them. HurryDate, a really obscure pay site, did great for me.
Not to be a dick (that is to say, I’m not saying it to be malicious even though it may sound like it), but if you can’t attract a girl in person when surounded by thousands of 16-22 year olds, what makes you think you will attract them on the internet? If you don’t know what they find attractive about you in the real world, how are you going to market yourself online? It’s like creating a web site for a company that hasn’t figured out what it’s product is.
Let me ask you this. Why do you think you were unable to meet girls in school? What were you doing thursday, friday and saturday nights when you should have been out at the parties or bars? What do you and your friends do for fun? If you spend every night playing poker or asshole or whatever with the same 5 chumps in your dorm, you aren’t going to meet girls. You aren’t going to meet girls playing Warcraft every night on your computer.
It’s not complicated, but there is a whole set of skills and rules for making yourself appear attractive to the opposite sex and actually getting with them. But really the only way to do it is to get out there and fail a bunch of times and learn.
I agree with the sentiment that online dating isn’t magically going to help you find a date. OkCupid will help you meet people you otherwise wouldn’t be able to, but that’s about it. You also need to be aware that women on dating sites can afford to be a lot pickier than guys can. Sounds crass, but that’s how it is.
This was my experience as well. OK Cupid sucked, Match.com was great. I say, try a bit of each to see what works for you. I was on OKCupid for maybe four or five months, with very little interesting interaction. I was on Match.com for a month and had a respectable number of responses and successful dates (and my current 2+ year relationship stems from that month on Match.) On OKCupid, I think I got one response out of every ten emails I sent. On Match, it was around 50%, and they were quality responses.
I’ve got to disagree with this. There are some people, and I include myself in this group, who have a much easier time in the dating world when people get a chance to know their personality before they end up in face-to-face situations. This is not necessarily about looks, either. Some people aren’t as good at presenting themselves for that first impression.
Yes, it would be helpful to sit back and figure out what might be causing the inability to meet people in person, but he may also be better suited to meeting people online first. It does work better for some folks.
Yes. I’m one of them. And sometimes it’s not about clothes or cleanliness.
Because I have great difficulty recognising people until I’ve known then for a few months, I apparently don’t make a good impression when first meeting people. Furthermore, whenever I do meet someone, I have to figure out who they are by deduction. Usually, this is pretty easy; when meeting someone I know, there’s likely to be only one person resembling them in the general area. Even then, I’m only certain when the other person recognises me.
But, say, meeting a chance acquaintance for a second time in a crowded club when I only met you once before–even though we had a good conversation–and you’ve changed your appearance dramatically since? No. I will NOT recongnise you. It’s not that I’m being standoffish; it’s just the way I’m wired. There’s nothing I can do about it.
Unfortunately, I suspect that this does make me seem standoffish. By the time I know who you are, you’ve quite possibly lost interest. If we are put together in a common environment for a few months, where we can get to know each other, well, that’s a different story. You’ll like me more then.
I see you ventured onto the message boards of POF and CK, tdn. It’s a wonder you’re still able to spell, let alone form a grammatically correct sentence - the discussion there seems to be roughly on par with YouTube comments on most days.
To the OP… I’d recommend avoiding both unless your sole purpose in seeking out online dating is a quick roll in the hay to rid yourself of your cumbersome virginity. Actually, avoid free sites as a rule - by virtue of being free, they attract a lot of people who aren’t particularly serious in pursuing anything beyond an online pen-pal type of relationship.
Honestly, you DO get what you pay for when it comes to online dating.
I’ll back this up. I can’t talk to someone RL unless I already know them. My inihibitions are much lower online, so I can actually carry on a conversation.
I also tend to be singularly minded. When I was in college, if I was on campus, I was there for class. Nothing else. Plenty of cute girls around, but I was only ever thinking about academia. Or once, back in high school, I worked at a niche retail shop next to a Domino’s. A cute girl from the Domino’s came over and was asking stuff about the store, and I answered perfectly professionally. It was only after she left that I realized she might have been gasp flirting.
Online dating sites help with both of these, being both online and a site dedicated to matchmaking. I haven’t been able to take a recent picture I like enough to post, though, so I’ve been staying away for the time being.
Right now I’m pinning my hopes on finding someone through City of Heroes, but of course the odds are rather long…
It’s a wonder you’re still able to spell, let alone form a grammatically correct sentence - the discussion there seems to be roughly on par with YouTube comments on most days.