Online dating just gave a loser like me a brand new avenue for rejection.
You and me both, but at least now they can’t say no to our faces and it’s a bit easier to get the nerve up to write an email then ask them out face to face.
My ego is back to a much more manageable size now. Thanks.
You’re both strictly amateurs until you’ve been shot down here on the board, too.
Been there done that too!
And to keep this on track, I joined Plenty O Fish today, it doesn’t seem like my kind of place. Hard to navigate. But I’ll play around on it and see how it turns out.
The one thing that I still hate about all of the searching is that I live in Maryland and Virginia is across the river. I keep getting matches that are 10 miles away as the crow flies, but really an hour by car. I really wish I could just skip getting Virginia people in my searches.
In your defense, SFG is, what 15 years younger and 850 miles away from you. Eharmony would categorize
that as a ‘flex match’.
You could try searching for “10 miles” but chose a zip code that’s 10 miles away from the river.
Are the mods keeping an eye on this thread? Or are they just leaving us alone. I know they don’t like it when people do this…
10,000th post!
Oh, 15? That’s actually my absolute upper limit, so not completely outside the realm of possibility. 850 miles, on the other hand: my boyfriend lives about 800 miles away and I was only willing to give *this *relationship a shot because we’ve known each other for close to a decade.
Congrats!
I totally missed mine; it was probably something really stupid.
Do what? (out of interest)
Psssssssssssst… Scroll down one more post.
Ah gotcha, i’m sure Joey P was referring to his 10,000th post on a dating site and it was entirely on topic, it just happened to coincide with his 10k on the dope. 
I was definitely going to reply. I just wondered if anyone had any insight into it, and appreciate the replies I got. When I re-read my initial message before replying this morning I realized it wasn’t nearly as good as I thought. I think it was thoughtful, and it got me a reply, but there wasn’t as much to respond to as I had imagined there was.
How do you keep a balance between giving the person something to respond to and not coming off like an interview (or worse, an interrogation)? It seems like it’d become pretty natural the more messages you send back and forth, but how about an initial unsolicited message?
I can’t get too mad when someone abandons a message conversation because I’ve done it plenty of times myself. However, anyone who I’ve done that to will be able to gloat as I am now honor-bound to downgrade my body type from “fit”.
One time I got a message chewing me out for looking at someone’s profile while she was online and not saying hi. I had never spoken to this person before-- I don’t even think it’s mandatory to IM people who you have had conversations with just because they’re online. Frankly, I hate the chat function on OKC; if you have two windows open, sometimes they switch places when you load a new page.
So, I see you like It’s Always Sunny, that’s one of my favorite shows, do you watch Tosh.0?
I see you like Skiing, personally, I prefer snowboarding. I used to ski, but one day decided to give snowboarding a shot and loved it. Have you tried it yet. If you haven’t you should give it a try someday.
You said in your profile that you like to cook. What’s your favorite style of cooking?
These would be worked into a larger message, but it’s my SOP. Comment on something he/she says and find something to ask about it. Either by adding your own (benign*) opinion and getting her to comment on it or asking her a question about it (you like traveling, have you been to Australia, I’ve always wanted to go there).
*I like snowboarding over skiing–benign.
I like abortion–not so benign.
Don’t want to scare someone off in the first email.
On the other hand, I’ve had people send me interview style emails.
One person, in her first reply to me, ended her message with:
“So, here are some question for you; Do you have any hobbies? Where do you see yourself in 5 yrs? Have you had any luck on this sight? How old is your daughter? I have a 6 year old mini me. Any plans/traditions for the holiday?”
One girl who I had a few emails back and forth asked me to call her. Her first question was “What brought you to match.com”
In both cases I was kind of caught off guard, but figured, I like the person, if the relationship goes anywhere all these questions would be asked and answered at some point anyways, might as well get them out of the way now.
I could certainly see some people running the other way though.
If someone did that to me, I’d click the “Block from contact” button. I might respond with a “Sorry, not interested” just to be obnoxious.
You know you can turn the IMs off, right?
FTR mookie has been formally warned for this, and was admonished for doing the same sort of post today elsewhere.
ETA: The specific reason is failure to follow moderators’ instructions.
Heh. Wish I had thought of that. I had chat turned off for quite a while after that, but there are some people I talk to somewhat frequently.
“Yes, stranger on the internet–you have convinced me that I was wrong to not reach out to you immediately! I have seen the error of my ways! Please, come marry me, and I will support you in a way to which you are unaccustomed!”
I can’t help but wonder if this tactic has actually worked for this person in the past (what winners they must have snatched up!) or if they really are just completely socially backward.
Sounds like a social butterfly. One of those ditzy type social butterflies. The kind that can’t walk though a room without saying hi to everyone. The one that get’s mad if you walked past her in the mall and didn’t say hi (even though you didn’t see her). The one that’s had a hundred boyfriends since she can’t go two weeks without dating someone and they keep leaving her because she’s clingy and selfish.
I got a message after someone saw me looking, too - I just got a message saying “Yeah, I saw you. My name’s ______, what’s yours?” I replied, she never replied again.
Oh well, no big loss. There was a reason I looked at her profile and didn’t message her of my own accord afterward.