Heh. Do a search on OKC for ‘anywhere’, keyword ‘kayak’. It’s amazing.
This makes you seem like less of an asshole, less of a generic robo-messenger, and shows that you actually read their profile, and are (at least pretending to be) interested in them. I was always more receptive to people who had clearly read my profile than to people who haven’t.
The question thing only works if the person wants to e-mail you back anyway. It’s a good way to start a conversation, but if someone is uninterested in you to begin with, asking a question doesn’t matter either way. It’ll just go unanswered.
Creepy. Don’t do this.
Can’t speak for the soliloquies, but I can tell you why the grunts go unanswered. We receive way too many messages to bother with responding to “Hey, what’s up” or whatever.
They were definitely more than that. And there were references to things within their profiles.
Hey, yo, Robot Arm. This has probably been said before, but it’s a key point and I think it bears repeating. From what you’ve told us, I suspect it speaks to the heart of your problem.
From the OkCupid stats blog:
(Note: The “roomtodance” mentioned above is a woman whose profile picture rates in the top ten percentile for attractiveness. In other words, she’s a “10.”)
As detailed in the rest of the blog entry, unlike men, women tend to message men who are about even with them in attractiveness. If the women you message aren’t even clicking through to your profile, it’s pretty likely because you’re messaging mostly women who are significantly more attractive than your photo indicates you are.
Basically, if you want responses, you’re probably gonna have to lower your standards. Since men seem to have a tendency to overrate their attractiveness, you’ll probably need some help pinning down your options. The “Special Blend” profile search option is designed to give you results in your league, so you might give that a shot.
On a more encouraging note, here’s another fun OKC stats fact: It’s true that less attractive members have a lower first message response rate than more attractive users. However, once they do get messaged back, the average conversation lengths (that is, the total number of messages exchanged between the two users) doesn’t significantly differ. Basically, getting that first response is over half the battle, and once it happens your chances are about as good as Johnny Washboard-Abs’s.
Oh, one more thing. People who claim to be players? Who can’t stop talking up their “game?” I wouldn’t take their advice too seriously. Women don’t like those guys any more than you do.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
That’s an awful lot of words to say “dude, she’s out of your league.”
Can’t polish a turds but you can throw glitter on it!
So to give an Aussie flavour to this thread. I have been on a few sites POF, Blendr, ZOOSK and now RSVP. Paid up member on all of them over the last couple months and have come to the decision that 100% of my efforts are going towards RSVP.
POF, Blendr and Zoosk seem to cater for the well how can I put this nicely? The great unwashed masses, I am not after a super model or billionaire but am not after someone who can’t even be bothered to put a bit of lippy on for a photo or lists interests as well nothing really!
I will initiate contact about 50% of the time and most of the time get a response. I look at the profile and mention something specific that I also have an interest in, don’t just send a generic “Hi you are cute” For the people who take the time to contact me I always send a repsonse back, even if it is no thank you.
Phone number may be offered but only after a few messages.
Met some great people and had some great dates but no one yet who I want to form a long term romantic relationship with although have got some good friends but I have higher hopes for the lady I am taking on a picnic this Sunday. 
What’s funny, is that my best results are from women who contacted me 1st.
So I was out with my aunt today, talking about life and other stuff and the topic of dating came up (she’s in the process of getting divorced). She mentioned that she has a POF profile, I told her I have an OKC profile. She wanted to see my OKC profile so she pulled out her iPhone and quickly set up an OKC username so she could see it. That’s all she had, just a username. No picture, no profile, nothing. Within 5 minutes she had an email from someone. Nothing more then “Hi, how’s it going” but still, kinda weird. I wonder how many people reply to that.
She did told me that my pictures don’t look like me. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s known me for 32 years and only 6 months with a beard or because all the beard pictures are self portraits and just of my face and probably don’t look that good (I thought they looked good though).
She also said ‘go for it’ when I told her I might send off a second email to some of the people I emailed months ago and never heard from*. Not that I needed her to tell me it was okay, but it never hurts to have a little push.
*It should be noted that if I email someone that I’m really interested in and they don’t write back, I usually look at their profile from time to time. Just so on the off chance that if they didn’t reply for a reason other then not liking me (maybe they were already connecting with someone then etc) it shows I’m still interested. I like to think that if they ever change their mind they won’t think “Well, he emailed me 3 months ago, I wonder if it would be rude to reply now”…no, go ahead. If I don’t want to hear from you, I won’t reply back.
Funny thing about that. Over the years I’ve had my own internal rules. I won’t reply to a wink or a one sentence email or an email full of spelling errors or this or that or the other things, but then I realized something. Most of those ‘rules’ are just ways for me to justify not replying to someone that I’m ultimately not interested in to begin with. If someone I was interested in winked at me or sent me an email that was one sentence long, I’d probably write back (a ton of spelling errors or L33t Sp3@k might be a turn off in and off itself though).
The way I see it, if someone is interested in you, unless your email is truly awful, they’ll find a way to write back. If they aren’t interested, an email probably won’t change their mind.
Something else from my discussion with my aunt. She showed me a couple of the guys she was interested in, I showed her a few of the girls I was interested in. A few of the girls I showed her, she looked at and said “The problem with a girl like her is that she’s getting 20 emails a day” I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but I pointed out all the emails she’s getting and mentioned that at least mine are nice, normal, well written emails and hopefully stand out from most of the other crap. “Hi”, “Hey there”, “How’s your nite going”. She agreed that it should help my case. I mean, she got two or three just while we were sitting at the bar. Of course, it didn’t help that at least one of them came from someone that looked like he was ready to murder the next person he saw.
They just want someone who isn’t intimidated by their kayaking skill, and who will respect that they’re an independent kayaker while also being supportive of their kayaking needs. No scrubs who can’t pay for their own kayak need apply, though.
I’ve been on and off OKC for many years, and every time I go back “on” I immediately get a handful of messages like that. I think there are some guys who simply message any woman with a new (or reactivated) profile. I, too, sometimes wonder how many replies they get.
Interesting development on OKC: I found the profile of a girl I had a crush on in college. She was in one of my classes and we studied for the midterm/final together. I’m not even sure she remembers me. Do I dare go for it?
What’s the worse that can happen? That’s the beauty of on line dating, I’d go for it.
She could get creeped out and then coincidentally move to his company where she becomes his immediate supervisor and then fires him because she feels uncomfortable and then he slips and breaks his back the day after his COBRA benefits expire.
Hey, you asked.
I cracked up at both your username and your post.
Go for it, but you might want to hold back on the whole college crush thing at first.
Well this is awfully depressing… I’ve been in contact with a girl on OkCupid since October 15. We were a 96% match, and we seemed to be getting along very well. She was nervous about meeting in person but I didn’t mind that much, since I really enjoyed just talking to her online.
And then suddenly she told me that she feels no attachment towards me, she doesn’t want to ever meet me, and she doesn’t even want to keep talking as friends.
She was very polite about it, but still I think this virtual incident hurt a lot more than my real-life meetings with the three crazy girls I mentioned earlier in this thread. 
This is exactly the reason I try to move from talking on line to talking in real life as quickly as possible. Not that it has to be a day or two, but every time I’ve spent more then a few weeks going back and forth online with someone, it never, ever pans out. Either we run out of stuff to talk about and the conversation just sort of dies out before either person has the nerve to ask the other one out or you end up finding things out about either other and disliking them without giving the other person a chance to defend them.
For example, one girl, over the course of a few weeks slowly starting making more and more grammatical errors and adding more and more flourishes to her writing (using some txt speech, signing her name with -=X X=- on either side of it etc). I wasn’t going to call her on it, but it took away some of my attraction. If we had met after a few days, I never would have noticed that stuff, I would have had a chance to ask her why she lives with her dad at thirty something instead of just inferring it from her emails and most of all, we wouldn’t have been at the point were I was writing my 15th email to her thinking ‘hmmm, what else can I ask her about…maybe I’ll just write this tomorrow’.
You have to be the judge of how your conversation is going, but IMO, 6 weeks is too long. A week or two, a handful of emails back and forth and then go for it. When you’re at the point where you’re waiting for her to write back and sorta kinda hoping she’ll ask you to meet somewhere, there’s a good chance she’s waiting for the same thing. If she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t be replying (just like you wouldn’t be either). If she says no now, she’s going to say no in 6 weeks, so why waste the extra month getting you’re hopes up. Yes, I understand for some people that might be too soon and hopefully they’ll just come out and say that they’re not ready to meet just yet (instead of an outright no that could end the conversation). It’s also a good way to weed out the people that are just replying to be nice or because the reply to everyone.
Also, there’s a question on OKC that says something like “How willing are you to meet another OKC member?” I’ve learned that people that say “Not at all willing” aren’t really worth contacting unless you feel really strongly about them. (I’d be leery of people that answer “Hesitant” as well. That’s one of the questions I try to look for.
I’ve had some pretty long-lasting virtual friendships with people I probably won’t meet in person due to distance, and we never run out of stuff to talk abut.
Well she was hesitant about meeting, yes, and I respected that. I wouldn’t have minded just talking to her online… I foolishly assumed that we both enjoyed it.
She claimed that she initially thought I had potential, but never saw the potential develop, and avoided telling me earlier so she wouldn’t hurt my feelings. Apparently it’s not obvious that the longer she waits, the more my feelings will be hurt.
Oh and just to make it even more fun, this was one of my very few OkCupid conversations which was initiated by the girl.
Gaudere’s Law strikes again.
Well now, that’s just downright rude.
Dammit.