[QUOTE=Joey P;13142695In my email I mentioned that I had earlier seen her on the news (she had her car and all her photog gear stolen) and I had ran across her website a few weeks before that while looking for something and I recognized her profile picture as being on her website. I even tried to stay away from the questions I assume she always gets. She’s from Bucharest so I assume she gets a lot of emails asking her about that, if she speaks English, if she has an accent etc…and tried to focus on something else. I’m debating sending her a second email that would start off as a typical email, but telling her that I’m guessing she fields a lot of questions about the Romania thing and what does she want people to ask that they never do.
I suppose it’s also possible she never even received the email, but ‘lost emails’ really don’t happen that often anymore.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that might have scared her off, in a stalkerish kinda way Send her a follow-up asking “what do you wish people would ask you”? That sounds friendly and distinguishes you.
As for lost emails…you would be amazed. I used to work in undergrad (just 3 years ago) in a university department that had it’s own email, so instead of @pitt.edu it was @pittspecialdepartment.edu type of thing. For some weird reason they lost emails ALL THE TIME. It was a major problem! They would either 1) not show up ever or 2) go to someone with a similar pitt address or 3) go to spam. They refused to give out a gmail address to important contacts as well. While we usually think of gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail extremely efficient, tons of people only use their work emails (stupid, I know) and as a result have low reliability. I wouldn’t rule it out, let’s just say that.
My uncle, at the ripe age of 60, has decided to join the online universe. He’s had a great imac these past 2 years that gathered dust; since then he’s semi-retired so he has more time on his hands and wants to learn. He’s taken about 5 computer classes and emails my mom regularly. I talk to him on the phone every other day, making sure he’s getting into the classes he wants (he lives in Palm Beach, so the snowbirds have just arrived these past 2 weeks so it’s hard to get into some of the classes!) He’s pretty bright, so he’ll read online news websites daily and is improving his typing skills. He wants to date. He does not currently know about online dating.
Question is: how safe is it to release a relative newbie on the online dating scene? How prone would he be to scams? Other than the obvious stuff (meet in a public place like a coffee shop) what should he be aware of? Or is it best to leave well enough alone for 6 months until he’s more proficient?
He’s pretty shy, and was with my aunt for I think almost 30 years until 18 months ago. But no, he’s not prone to scams of the door to door or coffee shop variety. That said, he’s not terribly clever either, but I’d put him far above average. I wonder how much sway the internet would have in the equation. People fell for scams pre-internet, but for some reason it seems they fall for them (and this could just be the media telling me) at a higher rate online.
I need to know if this would be creepy. One of my top matches on OKC is a guy that used to be on the far peripheral of my social circle when I was in college, and who I still see just about every week around town (I even saw him this weekend). We are only at the “smile and nod at the person I used to know” stage of acquaintanceship these days. That said, according to his profile, our interests are almost identical and I already know he’s cute. If I asked in person if he wanted to hang out sometime, would that be creepy or seem stalkerish (trying to engage conversation about something I read online about you seem weird)?
I haven’t even finished filling out my entire profile yet, and I’m getting a lot of messages that are really long, some really thoughtful. I feel jerkish for ignoring something that someone obviously put time into, but I don’t want to give them the wrong idea. If I just respond to chat, is that leading people on?
Is anyone else having problems with Match? Over the last few days something has gone wrong. My search results show almost no one online (when it should be between 20-70 people). In the search results (be it Who View Me or the regular search results (with Online Now unchecked)), people who I know are online will say "Online with in 24 hours/3 days/5 days/1week) but clicking on their profile will show that they are online now or very recently. I’ve had no new users in my are in the last three day (which is odd). The last person to set up an account, set it up three times (presumably because she thought there was a problem with her account) and lastly, I’m seeing fake users in the search results that had their accounts deleted 3-7 days ago.
Why do people keep using Match and those paying dating sites, I may ask ? While OkCupid (which nonetheless restricts some - useless - features to paying customers ?) is entirely free ?
In a place like mine (in a lost corner of France), where there are barely 4-5 OkC users, I can understand, but in the US ?
OkCupid for my future MIL was really bad. Basically all of the men were unemployed (not because of the recession but…like didn’t have steady income for awhile). Many of them didn’t have cars (she lives in a suburb…you have to have a car). Many of them were just subpar, low quality compared to her as a tenured university professor. She initially was all “oh, I came from a working class background, I’d like to date anyone, college degrees don’t matter” then she quickly realized that they do.
Essentially if you don’t have the money to pay for a dating service you don’t have money for a lot of other things. Most people dip their toes into the whole scene on OKCupid, and lots of young people do it, but I don’t get the impression that quality dating candidates 40+ are all that active on it.
She could certainly set up a free account at Match and see what’s out there. A free account at Match is almost exactly like a subscription account, except that the only thing you can do is wink. No sending or receiving emails. If someone does send you an email or save you as a favorite, it’ll ask you if you want to subscribe to read it.
Oh she’s already on Match for free, she just hasn’t/won’t/is afraid to/claims she’s too busy to set up the paid account and dive in. I think she’s somewhat afraid to actually date at this point (hasn’t gone out on one - and is doing the thing so many guys hate: just not responding to people’s messages if she’s not interested). But yeah, she realizes paid is a much better route.
I just did a quick search on Match.com, and noticed that about a third of the results are highlighted in green? Does that mean those people are paying members? I don’t use the service, but I think if I did, I would only write to other paying members. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same as using the free sites, isn’t it?
It looks pretty common for folks to screw up their answers to those stupid neverending questions on okcupid. For instance, there is a question about spooning, and I just saw someone who answered that she likes to be small spoon, but she had big spoon listed as an unacceptable answer for a guy.
That’s his/her answer. All red means is that it’s different from your answer. To see if he/she thinks that’s unacceptable, you’d have to be able to see what they chose for “Answer’s I’ll accept” and what level of importance they gave it.
Ok it’s not “listed”. If your answer is red, it means that she ascribed some level of importance to the question and that your answer was not one that she listed as acceptable. Make two profiles and try it out.
Yeah but that level could be anything except not important. But even then it could be really important to them or not. I know I’ve screwed up a couple of questions, once a math question and should have known better, but I’ve left it. I hope my dumbness isn’t what’s keeping the women away!
I’ve actually had more luck with OkCupid then Match. I’ve only had one date from Match, and that didn’t work out at all. Then again neither did the few from OkCupid.
Also depends on where you are located. For a while, OKCupid had practically no users in certain areas because Match had more of a presence and history.
At one point in San Francisco, OKC had less than 20,000 users but Match and Plenty of Fish had over 100k users.
Send her a follow-up asking “what do you wish people would ask you”? That sounds friendly and distinguishes you.