The absolute worst ad responses are the ones that say “Please read my profile and tell me what you think.”
Lazy. And crass.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
So, tell us what would make some good responses? 
[/QUOTE]
Stoid? Please give examples. Not "Any answer that conveys intelligence and some wit, which covers the third thing, being able to communicate.
"
“Hi, I’m Vinyl, and I read your profile. I can tell you’re really smart and funny, which is not at all the same as having a sense of humor, but we both know that. Haha! Boy, I sure am bored. I think I like Taco Bell, I mean, if you think that’s cool. I can also not like it, if that’s better. I don’t like really like long walks on the beach, but I did once shoot an Arab who tried to stab me. Long story. Anyway, I’m into doing whatever… you want to hang sometime? No trannies, please. Light felching OK. Write back soon!”
[QUOTE=Stoid]
“Your ad is really interesting and unusual, I think I’d love to talk to you. I live in the 213 area, I’m 44, single, just looking for some fun. Let me know if I sound interesting to you.”
[/QUOTE]
That’s three complete sentences, all of which are spelled and punctuated more or less correctly. Is 213 nearby? Is 44 within your age range? If so, I would kill for responses like that.
Instead, I tend to get “u R kul..~…`. LOL..,~~…~” from men who are old enough to be my father and/or live halfway across the country.
In other words, it could be much, much, much worse.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
OMG!!! Captain Amazing, that is all true of me too!! Wow, we have so much in common! 
[/QUOTE]
lol. So, a/s/l/pic?
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
lol. So, a/s/l/pic?
[/QUOTE]
American Sign Language pictograph? :: shrug ::
PS I’m looking for a guy with the exact hair style of the hottie in the link. That’s not a problem 4 U???
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Just out of curiosity, Stoid, what sort of response to your ad would pique your interest? What would show you the respondent is the kind of man you’re looking for?
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps its the romantic in me, I think that she deserves to find her equal in every way.
The trouble is, with the amount of smoke she expects blown up her ass, the only leaves The Rocketeer…
[QUOTE=Projammer]
From Stoid’s SDMB Profile.. (italics mine)
The irony! It burns!!
[/QUOTE]
The only question I’ve got for you is if we’re not worth being funny, why the fuck would you want to be a member? Shouldn’t you hang out with people you like?
You have to realize, OP, that men, on average, send out many, many more initial- contact emails than women. Most of them, I’ve been told, go unanswered, especially if the girl he emails is hot. Those women are often so bombarded with emails that they can’t get back to every one. So the long-timers have learned to make that initial-contact email short and to the point. So I gotta give them that.
The rest of your rants I can mildly agree with, and add my own. Many, many more of my own. I’m on a burn-out from online dating right now- maybe I’ll get back to it some day, but it’s hard.
[QUOTE=SisterCoyote]
So, um, how you doing?
[/QUOTE]
Quite well, though I am terribly lonely… bats eyelashes
I should warn you though: I don’t dance, I don’t play games, and I’m nice, so I guess I should better kill myself while you go have sex with a Hell’s Angel.
I’m not bitter, either. It’s one of my best qualities.
[QUOTE=Gaudere]
Nah, I totally agree with Jodi. I have some sympathy for being awash in poorly-spelled, ungrammatical, thinly veiled requests for sex after posting a personals, but insulting what appears to be perfectly courteous, reasonably intelligent men because their initial email to you is not sufficiently thrilling? Sheesh! Considering that the response rates even to men’s well crafted emails is probably less than 1 in 20 I can’t blame them for not writing a lengthy missive for an initial contact. If they did they’d spend all their time writing rather than cultivating the interesting traits she wants.
[/QUOTE]
I spent a good deal of time over a period of many months crafting and sending out messages that avoided all of the admittedly tired clichés that the o.p. objects to on three popular on-line dating services. I had several of these, at least in the early stages, critiqued by friends who offered unvarnished criticism of that and the profile that I pushed. I also have most of the traits that should look pretty appealing on paper: I don’t smoke or gave substance abuse problems, haven’t been to prison, don’t have dependents, am gainfully employed, have all of my hair, enjoy a wide variety of music and culture, can and do cook, am loved by children and animals, et cetera ad nauseum. I daresay that my spelling and punctuation are at least above the average, and the above mentioned critiques found the content to be at least tolerably amusing and lacking in any red flags or indications of psycho-stalker tendencies. One would think I’d have gotten at least get a modicum of responses from all of the women out there who cry in their Cosmopolitan cocktails about there being “no good men left”, and yet, the response rate was less than 2%. (Actual dates, or at least ones that bothered to show up, were actually an embarrassingly small fraction of those.)
Now, I’ll readily admit that I’ve got a fair amount of flaws, and not just a little baggage although I’d like to think that I mostly manage to keep it on my own cart. I could understand meeting and not being to someone’s taste–in fact, I pretty well expect it, given my propensity to suddenly break into passionate discourse about the benefits of public key encryption and why the life cycle of the fig wasp is so interesting–but not even receiving more than a couple percent response of tepid interest suggests that either these women are actually being flooded with messages from George Clooney’s younger and more attractive brother or that these women are being incredibly picky and flake away anyone who violates some unknown rule. So I can definitely understand why many guys go for the shotgun approach and just send a one line message saying, “boared. ur sexi. call me.”, insofar as it will probably result in an equal number of responses without the tedious effort of trying to find something personal to say. Near the end of my Internet dating travails I pretty much gave up and sent out a (well-written) two or three paragraph form message where I basically plugged in a couple of facts from the recipients profile, and that worked as well as anything.
All that being said, save for the “fine dining” objection, I pretty much agree with the criticisms listed by the o.p. When I read through a profile I’d stop at the third patent bromide unless there was some other compelling reason to remain interested (and no, holding up a copy of Pretty Woman while dressed like a streetwalker isn’t going to do it). But as I’ve been told many times, on-line dating is a “numbers game” and the strategy for success is blasting out as many messages as possible until you get some kind of response, and then use all your best “playa” moves on her until you “neg” her into acquiescing. Or whatever.
I’m going to go pour myself a drink.
Stranger
Oh man. After reading the OP I was really hoping you guys were going to subsequently rip her a new ass. Other than Jodi, no one is really picking up the slack. I mean the entire rant, that color is REALLY not good on you. No matter how adorable you find yourself, this is one of those things that needs to just not not be broadcast. I think just as you say funny is as funny does, so is confidence. While reading the OP talk about how clever she finds herself I caught myself a face like I had something sour in my mouth.
I also think that if someone spends time concocting some wittysexycool response you’re going to be able to smell it a mile away. I’d rather someone just be normal than try to impress me with his offbeat non sequiturs and zany references.
And by the way, why is it so wrong to want to be entertained? I love entertaining people. The OP’s antics have not amused me one bit.
So if the OP can entertain herself for 5 lifetimes (which actually sounds to me like some form of autism) I think she should just have these guys fax her their last years tax returns and buy a vibrator in the meantime.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
I’m going to go pour myself a drink.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]
I just poured myself a glass of wine. Here is ANOTHER toast TO THE END OF IRONY!!! (and the internet smilies that show up in my nightmares)
[QUOTE=amarinth]
That’s three complete sentences, all of which are spelled and punctuated more or less correctly. Is 213 nearby? Is 44 within your age range? If so, I would kill for responses like that.
Instead, I tend to get “u R kul..~…`. LOL..,~~…~” from men who are old enough to be my father and/or live halfway across the country.
In other words, it could be much, much, much worse.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I know all about it, but those get deleted from both my email AND my brain in about the same amount of time.
And as far as examples, the following are all real:
- I ended up getting involved with this man, we are still friends, and he was absolutely amazing in bed and he was great in email. In person and on the phone, kinda nervous. And this was actually a pre-written “spam blast” email he was sending to all the ads that caught his eye in any way. He’s obviously intelligent and has something to contribute to the conversation.
Here’s another…shorter, a little sloppy, but smart and different enough that he got my attention in spite of a picture that was kinda goofy. The clincher was the use of the word “polyglot”, and yes, he turned out to be a hit. Extra yummy on all fronts.
Met this guy, too…wasn’t that big a hit, but I sure loved his response (this is only the seoncd half, the first was telling me more about himself, and I know this was his standard pre-written spiel because he answered a couple of my ads not realizing they were all me. This was Craigslist. All three were, actually.)
Now I figure I should post the ad they were responding to. Which actually went through a few incarnations. I’m posting the last version, which is way more sarcastic and challenging in response to the avalanche of responses I’d gotten and the crappy experiences I’d had, but the main stuff is pretty much the same.
The first guy who answered that I posted above had answered my first version of this, which was mellower. We’d exchanged some email and he’d sent a number, but I had so many responses I completely spaced. Then when I posted this version, he wrote me again to remind me, so I guess it didn’t put him off…(iv’e deleted a few things just for privacy’s sake)
[QUOTE=Bricker]
Most of you what? In fact, there is a contingent that prefers fast food to L’Auberge Chez Francois.
Unless you were not being sarcastic, in which case I have to inform you that’s there’s a contingent that prefers L’Auberge Chez Francois to Taco Bell.
Either way, I don’t get the dismissal of this piece of info. It’s relevant to discover if a potential date likes coat-and-tie dining, or places where your flip-flops and a T-shirt is all the “dressy” needed.
[/QUOTE]
My husband and I are on the opposite ends of this spectrum. It’s not a deal-breaker as long as you play nice and throw each other a bone now and then.
OK, here’s my honest, unfiltered response to that add:
Gee, it’s amazing you don’t have half the males on the planet banging your door down with that invitation. Maybe if you just spend some time being an obviously friendly, outgoing person without all the extra self-congratulatory junk you might not even have to inhabit the online world of internet dating. But as long as you’re there, don’t go out of your way to insult 90% of your audience. You’re going to get a lot of junk replies no matter what you write. Ignore them. That add might even attract more than you’d get otherwise. Trolls are out there all over the place, and that add says: Go ahead, push my buttons (and not in a good way).
Take that for what it’s worth. I’m not trying to be mean, even if this is the Pit.
In the Op’s defense, note that she’s dating in Los Angeles, an experience only slightly more pleasant than hiking in New Guinea with a runny eye infection.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
For some reason this thread reminded me of an earlier discussion today over in Cafe Society. Anyone want to guess the thread I’m talking about?
[/QUOTE]
This?
This thread is making me angry in so many ways that I can’t even express them all without boiling down into a VC03 meltdown of infurious rage.
Oh, what the hell. I’ll reveal the tip of my iceburg. To Stoid, For starters, while I’m sure in person you are sweet and kind and an all around swell person, from your OP and your personal ads you sound like a smug, selfish, hollow shell of a woman whose standards are so high that April 20th is your favorite day of the year. You want somebody who doesn’t describe themselves as funny, yet you describe yourself thusly. Oh yes, it’s not an internet dating site, but doesn’t that go against your notion of letting funny speak for itself . Sadly, this is merely the start of your bitchy douchitude.
Let’s take a second and peek at some quotes from your advertisement:
What the fuck? You talk all about what the man will give to you with nary a word of how you plan on contributing to the relationship. Who is the selfish one again? Well, it doesn’t really matter because I’m pretty sure it’s obvious what you’re looking for:
Yeah, so, tell me again why a man should extoll his time to write a heartfelt missive to you when it’s obvious to a rational reader that you’re only in this for yourself. Obviously the biker/rebel/virgos/hotties/??? are going to message you; they are perfectly happy to fuck your brains out and then fade into the sunset. Hey, maybe I’m offbase, but I dont think I’m crazy in getting that vibe from your posts.
So wait, can you explain how the hypothetical replies to your ad were so atrociously bad that you decided to dismiss them out of hand? Is it because you’re so full of yourself that you make the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man look like Starvin Marvin? What stops you from receiving these benign compliments, at their surface a simple acknowledgment of liking your profile, reading the senders profile, and then deciding whether or not to pursue contact? Why exactly do they have to sweep you off their feet from the initial message? Clearly they are not as funny as you.
Here’s another tidbit from your advertisement, a gem of hateful psychosis:
Who in blue blazes are you talking to? Are you talking to the guy who was almost old enough to be your son? For that matter, why the fuck do you include that kind of baggage in your profile? I dont think it’s some hypothetical reader who needs to ‘hie himself to a therapist.’ You dont come off as witty, self-confident, or sexy in this ad. You come off as a middle-aged, baggage-laden, arrogant behemoth, whose only goal in life is to get laid long enough so she can forget the trail of tears that characterize her pathetic life.
I could go on, but I think I’ll end here. For the record Stoid, I sincerely hope what I wrote above was wrong.