Form letter.
I’m quite tempted to write her back and say “What about my headline made you smile?” and see what she does.
“You know, I find that women are *often *amused by the prospect of me leaving and never coming back.”
I thought about going down that road, just for fun…“What, you’re glad I’m leaving?” But I’m not going to do that. Though I’m still considering asking her why my headline makes her smile. On the one hand, I have no interest in her, so that may be leading her on. OTOOH, WTF do I care, I have no interest in her. OTOOOH, you never know who she knows. I’d hate to send an email to someone and have them think “Wait, that’s that guy that sent that email to my best friend” But that’s a pretty remote chance.
This is what I’d respond with.
Can someone help me understand the fake profiles that aren’t advertising another site?
I’ve seen plenty of profiles that advertise another site. No big deal, I report them, usually send an email to them just for kicks, whatever. But I’m confused about these new ones. A few days ago there was a new user in my area. I read her profile and as soon as I finished it I knew I had read it before, there were a couple of phrases that I remember. There were also some other hallmarks of a fake profile. She wasn’t advertising anything in the profile itself, so I moved on.
Then, yesterday, three new users all at pretty much the same time showed up. All their profiles were different, but all still clearly fake. Very well written, but didn’t really say anything, really really nice pictures, empty “About my date” section and nothing written down the left hand side of the profile. So, I was 99% sure they were fake, but, like I said, they didn’t seem to be advertising anything. I figured I would know for sure if they all started signing on and off at the same time (meaning it’s one person with all three profiles). Well, this morning, two of them were gone, I’m guessing by now the last one is also.
The only thing I can think of is that they are spamming by email, but you have to have a paid membership to send out emails. I can’t imagine a spammer would spend $60 for a one month membership (times at least three people) that he knows is going to be shut down in a matter of hours. Is that really what’s going on or am I missing something?
Come to think of it, there was a forth person missing this morning as well, she didn’t have a picture so she I never looked at her profile, but she was missing out of my “Daily 5”
I used to grumble about not getting any interaction on OKC. Now I’m almost getting too much. I’ve been getting a lot of initial messages from women, which is pretty cool. Means there’s something to like about me after all.
The problem is that nobody’s what I’m looking for. I like to think I’m pretty relaxed about who I’ll find attractive; I’m not looking for world famous bikini supermodel astrophysicists. No out-of-staters, no strongly religious people, no smokers, and while I don’t have anything against tattoos per se, they suggest a lifestyle I may not be compatible with, especially if the person in question likes collecting them rather than just having one or two.
Seems like a reasonable list, right? But every single message I’ve gotten recently has been from someone who hits one or more of those red flags, and the religion and the smoking at least are non-negotiable. I may be lonely, but I’m happier being lonely than if I tried to get together with someone I knew I wasn’t going to like being around.
I really should put that list up front in the profile, but I hate profiles that do that. It smacks of ego and self-centeredness. But I suppose I can see the point behind it as long as it’s not worded bitchy.
Bosstone, I’ve heard many complains that the majority of people on OKC are just…not up to snuff. They’re not your typical cross section of people that dopers would go for. Have you tried or had success with paid sites?
My SO’s mom was getting lots of messages on OKC from guys who hadn’t gone to college (fine with her, but certainly note worthy), didn’t have steady jobs (not because of the economy, but long term), and some didn’t even have cars (in an area where you must have one). She also doesn’t want anyone religious or a smoker. She got rid of her profile within a few weeks. She did learn a lot from it, just no worthwhile dates resulted. She’s now on match or eharmony, I forget which.
Her colleague told her about a guy she’d started chatting with on match. They progressed to telephone calls. On the last telephone call before the colleague was going to consider going to meet him (he’s out of state) he asked her if she had enough food. We’ve had storms recently that knocked out some power lines, so she replied that she had about a week’s worth. He said “but you know the end is coming, right?” Her: “Excuse me?” Him: “The end. You know, the END.” Her: “…you mean in 2012?” Him: “Yep. So why aren’t you prepared???” :smack: Poor gal. People wait a really long time till they reveal the crazy. At least she hadn’t gone to meet him!
Nah, I haven’t tried a paid site yet. Something about them seems skeevy to me, although I suppose eventually I’ll give it a shot. I don’t feel like I’ve exhausted OKC yet.
Skeevy? Sounds like the people on OKC are skeevy to me. I don’t see how a paid site is skeevy; if anything it weeds out people, IMO. It’s old fashioned matchmaking, which has always been a paid for thing, it’s just online (and sans middleman). I think if you’re paying for it, you’re gonna take it all much more seriously (better pictures, better answers, etc).
Having tried both paid sites and free sites I can honestly say that there is not a huge difference between the sorts of people who inhabit either kind of site. I think geography plays a much bigger role in the kind of people who will be on a site, than the fact that people paid or didn’t pay for the service. In one city OKCupid could have a large 30 something population, while in another the 30 somethings are all over at match paying the fee.
You would think that paying would change people’s attitudes towards a site. But, it really doesn’t. The pictures can be just as grainy and the answers just as lazy whether the person paid or got in for free. I have seen OK Cupid profiles that make my head hurt with all of the text speak in the profile (And this is from someone in their 30s with a college education and children) and, on Match I have read profiles that were well written with long paragraphs. I’ve also seen Match profiles with answers like “I’ll tell you in person!” and OK Cupid profiles that have long answers about their life, goals and what they like to do with their weekends. There’s no telling what you will get.
I guess EHarmony is probably the best bet for someone who doesn’t want to deal with nonsense at all. I have never tried it (which might be it’s best selling point.) But, from what I understand you can’t use the site without answering a long questionnaire. And, there is matchmaking algorithms that helps match you up with people you will get along with. I have met a few people who hate it, and one person who moved across the country and got married due to it.
I had my first “lied about my age” online date in a long time the other day. 10 years older. And, this was by an admission not my own guestimation. Why people do that, I am not sure. (This happened to me through OKCupid. But, to go along with the earlier paragraphs a few years ago it happened to me a few times on Match. One person’s response when I asked why she did that was “People wouldn’t meet me if I didn’t.” Yeah.)
From the “I wish I had your problems” department:
What was just another night of bumping around websites and browsing OKC turned into juggling IM sessions from two women who wanted to talk to me at once. …Okay, so maybe it’s kind of sneak-bragging, but man I wasn’t expecting that. It’s been years since I seriously tried to chat someone up, and having to be “on” for two people at once was really damn stressful. But, hey, progress.
I just wish the cuter one wasn’t two states away. 
Not really. Yes, you do have to fill out the amazingly long questionnaire, but that stuff is private and used for the matchmaking algorithm.
You still have to fill out a profile and there are still a shockingly large (considering this isn’t a cheap site) portion of profiles that are incomplete to the point of being a joke.
I met my most recent ex from that site (we’ve been apart for over a year, but are still very good friends) and that was within the first month. I signed up again over the summer and nothing. My ex has been on for the last year with no results - I think eHarmony is going through a dry spell.
I re-joined eH on August 21, and have received 300 matches. Most of them duds, but it does give me something to check every day. On the other hand, a significant piece of that volume are from lookie-loo’s who enter minimal data during one of their promotional free match weekends: I’ll get a match with no picture and very little info, and/or some message like “I’m leaving eH in 6 days”.
I should have been more clear: I received plenty of matches during my summer re-up and my ex receives plenty of matches, I was commenting on the quality of those matches.
After 3 months of dud matches and the “lookie-loo” variety, I elected not to renew again. I’m also not doing anything with OKC either - I’m removing myself from the dating world for awhile. It was bumming me out and, while I’d love to share my life with someone, I am happy on my own.
It is a numbers game, and that’s probably true of all sites. 300 matches, in my experience, equates to 50 that initiate, or reply to, a request for communication, which in turn leads to 10 F2F meetings and 5 second dates. You’ve got to go through a mountain of chaff to find the wheat.
Everyone keeps saying that. I’ve filled it out twice now, it’s a lot of questions but it only took me, what, a half hour maybe. It really wasn’t a big deal.
300??? I’ve been on for not that long. The first few days I was getting maybe 6 or 8 a day, I probably have about 100 archived. Most of them have no picture and aren’t really very well filled out. I’m always surprised when I can tell one of my matches is actively working on their profile and still not putting up any pictures.
Anyways, I haven’t been on that long and I’m already at the point where I get, maybe one match per day, maybe one other person will look at my profile. I feel like I’m doing something wrong. I have a 4 month subscription which I don’t plan to renew at this point. I mean, I understand how it’s supposed to work, you get a few matches per day, so you’re more likely to take them seriously, but I’m only getting one or two per day. I suppose the theory would work better if most of the EH users weren’t also on other dating sites where they can look at all the people they want.
If I could cancel my account and get a pro-rated refund I’d think about doing that after a month or so. For now, I’ll stick with it and see where it goes.
Well, this was odd. I got one of those “somebody chose you on QuickMatch” e-mails from OKCupid, with nine pictures of who it might be. (None of them were in my recent visitors list, but if they were only browsing through QM themselves, I don’t think they show up there.) But, if you mouseover the pictures, you get their usernames. So I looked each of them up. They were all in New York City; I’m not. (Not an instant disqualification, but I rarely get visitors from so far away.)
So I start going through QuickMatch, figuring that whoever shows up there is probably the one who chose me. None of them did. I cycled through thirty or forty profiles. None of the magic nine came up.
I feel lied to and manipulated. I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until after I met someone.
Aren’t you supposed to just, you know, go to *those nine *and rate them or however it works? Not look for them to come up again somewhere else? I remember someone else mentioning something similar upthread.
In today’s batch o’ matches from eHarmony, I had two from the same woman. Same pictures, same name, 90% same profile (one had an additional line). The biggest difference was that one was 6 years older than the other. 