Man, life must be so hard for nice women on the internet. Thank god I’m abrasive.
Looks like you have to be an OKC member to do so. If that’s what you want, no big deal, I just clicked and saw that.
Amen.
So, future MIL asked if I knew anyone “on the internet” (she knows of the thread, this is how she references it :smack:) who had done a matchmaking service locally. She’s really only gotten a couple guys who are college educated, which is definitely a must for her, so she’s thinking of doing a matchmaking service. I think she thought she’d have more problems with the fact she has kids at home (ETA: most have kids in college or older; she’s early 50’s) but that hasn’t arisen at all.
She’s had the litany of his-picture-is-15-years-old or his-paunch-wasn’t-showing-in-the-picture type nonsense. I took her photos and I’m pretty proud of them; she looks good but she looks herself. I insisted on doing a 10 minute “photo shoot” because normally in pictures she looks like she’s pooping, whereas in real life she smiles and grins and lights up the room. I’m no master photographer by any stretch of the imagination but they’re better than anyone who has messaged her or who she’s messaged, which makes me scratch my head.
Has anyone had any experience with a service? Good, bad, ugly? Expensive?
Two quick notes.
In the ‘boyfriend picture’ tell us who the guy is. Without an explanation, as far as we’re concerned, it’s an ex-boyfriend and we don’t want to see that. If it’s your best friend, or a regular friend or your brother or some random guy you met at the event, whatever, but we need to know it’s not your ex. If, however, it is your ex, get rid of the picture.
Next, a few grammatical things.
“I’m intellectual, an introvert, and a metalhead.” No comma after introvert.
“In my bosses’ garage” I’m almost positive it should be boss’, but I think this is one case where it’s acceptable to say boss’s. Either way, I’m 100% sure it’s not bosses’ unless the garage belonged to multiple bosses (<– see why). Anyways, I’ll let Guns weigh in on this. She’s the dating thread’s resident chief of the Grammar Gestapo*
*Sometimes Grammar Nazi just doesn’t cut it.
Give me an Oxford comma, or give me death!
Leave the comma 
I remember some time around middle school they made us stop using it…like a big grammatical rule had been changed. We just did what we were told, no questions asked. I know now people are saying to only use a single space after a period but that’s not happening for me. My thumb just can’t not do that. In fact, if I accidentally only put in one space my hands will backspace what I typed and add another space just like any other typo.
So, we can leave that open for debate, but even so, unless the garage was owned by multiple bosses, I’m still certain it’s not bosses’, but I’ll let Guns decide if it’s boss’s or boss’, that could go either way.
Exactly this 
I am still a double-spacer (laughed that you backspace to add one bit of nothing, I do the same), but I leave the comma.
What the hell, I guess I’m in. http://www.okcupid.com/profile/vtmsix_eight
Not looking for hard-core critique, nor fishing for compliments. If you see something that sounds really dumb or doesn’t make sense, that is what I’m interested in fixing.
Now that I’ve taken the leap, I guess I need to help out those who have already put themselves out there!
Okay, here we go, just a few things.
First of all, I’m not a big fan of things that date a profile. Meaning, I’d get rid of “Well, I guess I can no longer say that I’m just getting my profile started, since it’s fleshed out quite a bit since I began!” because when someone sees that and thinks “boy, he’s been around for a while” it just makes the profile seem really old. Same goes for the next like that says you just did a race this morning 6/18. That’s all well and good, but in 3 months when it’s still there…
“and [del]anymore[/del] the only time that I run on pavement is when I am pushing my son in the stroller” Maybe change anymore to ‘now’ or just get rid of it. Either way, I assume that sentence started out as something else and “anymore” got left behind.
Lastly, IMHO, you’re “message me if” section is kind of a train wreck. In my mind the first sentence says “I’m looking for anything from hooking up to LTR (but not marriage)” but I’m a math guy. I think a lot of people are going to stumble over that, it took me one or two tries. But then your next sentence says you’re not looking for a booty call, which contradicts your first sentence…Oh, wait, just got that. Excluding marriage AND hooking up. See, confusing. Here’s the thing then, if you’re not looking for a booty call/hook up…don’t even mention it.* Also, I’d leave out the part about slowing down for her (running partner) kinda sound like sneak bragging, and it’s a little condescending. I mean, I think most people will get that you’re like 11 feet tall and can probably run faster then them, but still. I think if they’ll just assume if you run together you’ll go at the same speed.
*One of the golden rules of dating profiles is not to bring up the things you’re not interested in. That is, if you mention 4 or 5 times that you have no interest in NSA sex, the only people that are going to contact you are people looking for NSA sex. And the girl that says she hates drama, she doesn’t want any drama in her life, she has no use for liars, she doesn’t tolerate cheaters…yeah, she’s a drama queen. Does that make sense. IOW, I’d just leave the booty call thing out.
Should have said lurking in the -thread-! Lurked SDMB for awhile and I’ve been participating since springs some time.
Thanks, Joey P! Exactly the kind of stuff I’m looking for. You’re right about the ‘dating the profile’ thing…haha…dating a dating profile. I probably would have updated that, but including a date in the first place is probably unnecessary.
Ok, I totally get not saying what you’re NOT interested in. I guess if I was interested in casual sex, I would have checked that box, right? Good point.
And actually, I’m a terrible runner, even taking into consideration how tall I am 
There are a boatload of women runners out there who can easily outrun me! I suppose I was trying to temper any enthusiasm I displayed in paragraph 1…which I am now going to tone down as well.
Thanks again! Editing…
Personally, I like some of your other photos better than your main. I would switch with one of them. Have you used My Best Face?
I guess it’s been decided almost unanimously that I shouldn’t change my height, but heels and wedges are different than regular shoes.
I don’t find you abrasive; I find you charming, witty and full of awesome.
I would move the bit about being separated to the top. I think that is vital information and people tend to skim these things.
I included it in my profile because it is indeed vital information. If someone just skims my profile before they decide to contact me, they’re probably not someone I’m interested in.
I do appreciate that you actually looked though
IMHO, everybody skims. Vital information goes up top like a newspaper article.
I just had a woman visit me for at least the fourth time. When I first reactivated my account, I browsed anonymously. I took that off for about a day and this woman was my only visitor. I took off anonymous browsing permanently about three weeks ago. She visits about once a week. She’s my only visitor today.
As far as I know, she’s never favorited or rated me. She’s never winked at me or sent me a message. Is this a passive way to get my attention or does she keep forgetting she’s already visited me? Does she keep clicking on my profile by accident or can she just not resist my sexiness?
What is the most effective, but passive way of getting someone’s attention? What’s the most annoying? I hate winks, but repeated visits are ambiguous. I find rating me four or five stars the most flattering.
Personally if I’ve visited someone’s profile more than once it could mean a number of things:
- I’ve forgotten I’ve visited you (the general you), because you’ve changed your profile pic since I looked last time, or it’s just been a while (and a while can be anything over a week. My memory’s not great)
- You’ve popped up in my activity feed with something that’s piqued my interest, or the activity feed has shown a fraction of your update and I want to read the whole thing
- I’ve followed a link from here or another site, not realising I’ve looked at you before
- I do find you intriguing and interesting, and I’m arguing with myself about whether to break my own self-imposed moratorium on contacting people who are outside my state, because I’m really, really, really not about to do the long distance thing again.
That is absolutely not an ex! It’s the actor who played The Punisher in Philadelphia’s *Superheroes Who Are Super *production (which is hysterically funny, btw). I don’t have many ‘smiley’ photos, as I tend to look utterly freaky when I fake-smile for photographs, so this is a rare one with a real grin. Many people have pointed out my lack of smiling in my pictures, so I try and try to find decent photos with smiles.
As a matter of fact, the garage was owned by my two bosses. The apostrophe is not misplaced.
Well, it reads kinda bitchy in spots, to be honest. I’m not a big fan of people who complain about other people in their profiles, it sounds too shrill and demanding to me. Then again, we’d never get along, what with you not into fun things like booze and whores Which is too bad, because I’d definitely get Hot Girl Syndrome (stammering and saying inane things) around you for sure. I’d cut the NOTES down to single sentences so the halfwits can read them without skipping it.
Dude, who gives a shit why, just write her already! She’s looking at you more than once, if you write her she’ll either write you back, or stop looking. Either way you win, sorta. I always look over my visitors on OKC and if any of them pique the slightest interest in me I write her back. Just make sure the stink of desperation is gone first. When I reply, I like to start a conversation about something I read in their profile. I used to send huge blocks of texts about me, but after reading them later my eyes glazed over and figured women were doing the same.
As for skimming info, I always skip the “favorite books, movies, TV” section because I don’t care. Those change so much for me it doesn’t matter what your favorites are.
I find favourite books, movies and TV to be invaluable. Mostly because if the words “Harry Potter” or “Twilight” appear in there, then I know for certain we’re not going to match and I may, in fact, want to set them on fire 
Hey! I like the Harry Potter books! :mad: I just don’t go on and on about them; I read them, they were nice, that’s it.
I think that’s the case. There are two groups of people that I’ll look at several times without having made contact. 1)Back when I was new to OKC/Match and really didn’t know what I was doing, if there was someone I liked I would go and ‘check’ there profile constantly, always making sure I was right at the top of their visitors list. I would do this for a few days in hopes that they would look at my profile and send me an email.
2)If there’s someone I’m on the fence about. That is, I’m not sure if I want to send them an email yet for whatever reason, in the mean time I might check their profile one or three times to help make up my mind (and if they happen to check my profile and send me an email first, that would be a nice bonus…that I was a sort of hoping for).
So yeah, my vote for someone checking your profile several times is that she’s trying to get you to send her an email. It’s her way of winking at you.
But, every single guy who looks at your profile thinks it is, and for some of them, it’s a huge turn off to see you with the guy you used to be with. You have to understand what goes through a guys head when he reads your profile. When he looks at what you enjoy doing, he’s imagining himself doing it with you (or saying “Okay, see you later” if it’s not something he likes). When he reads things that you dislike, he pictures himself ‘disliking’ them with you. When he looks at pictures, he imagines himself there with you…then he sees a picture of a guy hugging you…it’s a bit jarring.
Also, I’d take out all the stuff about not looking for casual sex. Personally I HATE HATE HATE seeing that in someone’s profile. Most of us (guys) aren’t looking for that and when you do get messages about that, just delete them. Honestly, does putting that in your profile really stop the messages? I’m guessing the guys that send you that stuff aren’t reading your profile anyways.
Like I said to Sicks, if you aren’t looking for casual sex, you didn’t need to write that four times across your profile. That’s going to wind up having the opposite effect. I think, and I could be wrong, that when people spend that much time saying they don’t want casual sex* it makes other people who aren’t looking for casual sex look at their profile and say “Wow, she’s REALLY not looking for casual sex, she’s probably had a lot of casual sex in the past…next profile”
*this goes for anything people mention over and over that they don’t want, not just CS. I’m a big believer that if there’s something you don’t want, just don’t bring it up. Remember, the whole “I really not looking for _____” might be on the tip of your tongue the entire time you’re writing your profile, but the people who are reading it aren’t thinking about it. If you take the casual sex references out, no one (well, most people) aren’t reading your profile thinking “hmmm, I wonder what her thoughts are on casual sex”