You suck at online dating
The Turtle May 2 2010 10:54:31 PM
OK, folks.Most of you who know me in real life know I have been married for a couple of years now. Some of you know that I met my second wife online. Even fewer of you know that I met my first wife through a personal ad.
A very very few of you know just how much effort I put into finding the aforementioned second wife.
Put it this way: I pwn j00.
The stats:
Between September, 2002 and May, 2006, I contacted, or was contacted by, nearly 400 women through online dating systems (and yes, I pretty much tried them all). I had more than 175 first dates, about 40 second dates, had substantial relationships with about ten, and married... one.
I spent about forty thousand dollars on dating during this period. Enough to have my diesel VW rebuilt for the rest of my life.
What I am about to say comes from both that three and half years' worth of experience, that forty thousand dollars' worth of expense, and an anomaly. The anomaly is that I cannot seem to get Yahoo Personals to stop fucking sending me weekly updates about women who are just dying to meet me! My credentials? I married a woman I met online. Nyaaaaaah.
And what I have to say is, you suck at online dating.
Women, mostly. I wasn't much interested in meeting men, obviously. So, what follows applies most intentionally to Caucasian women in the Baltimore/DC area, 36-50 years old. The rest of you, take what you will from it.
Look.
I get these emails from Yahoo every Sunday night, and I just wanna reach into the screen and slap about half of you. Not because I don't find you appealing, but because your presentation of yourselves is so comically bad that when I was meeting women online, not only would I have not contacted you, I would have wanted to reach through the screen and slap y'all.
| IMPORTANT NOTE: THE TURTLE DOES NOT CONDONE ANY TYPE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. HOWEVER, A GOOD WAKE-UP CALL IS THE RIGHT OF ALL PEOPLE, NO MATTER HOW DELIVERED. UNTIL COMPUTERS HAVE BIG, HAIRY ROBOTIC HANDS ATTACHED TO THE SIDE OF THE SCREEN, ALL WAKE-UP SLAPS WILL HAVE TO BE VIRTUAL. PLEASE DO NOT BEAT ON YOUR FELLOW HUMANS. THANK YOU. |
OK, so, y'all pull up a chair a second and listen.
Women, you are terrible at selling yourselves. Part of that may be that you don't realize that online dating is, for everyone involved, not much different than people selling an old lawn mower on Craig's List. The sooner everyone figures that out, the better off everyone will be. Except, maybe, Match.com, eHarmony, and all the other sites whose marketing claims that it isn't like selling an old lawn mower on Craig's List.
But y'all could do better.
Women, here's a chart for you. I've been a guy for a long time, and I think I can speak for what a lot of guys my age, in my area (Washington DC/Baltimore/northern Virginia) might say about your stuff, OK?
| If your profile pictures include... | He will think... |
| Small children | Whose are those? |
| Mostly pictures of you holding domestic lite beer bottles | Ummmm... yeah... |
| Old guys | Oh, shit, is that Dad, Grand-Dad, or her brother? |
| Old women | Mom will h8 my ass |
| Cats | Oh, shit, there goes my couch |
| Big dogs | Oh, shit, there goes the back seat of my H3 |
| Horses | Oh, shit, there goes my 401(k) |
| Other women your age | Hey, that girl next to you is hot! |
| Women older than you | Does she volunteer at a retirement home on Saturdays? |
| You at other women's weddings | Oh, shit |
| You with guns | Oh, shit |
| You with your Harley | Oh, shit, she has more chrome on hers |
| You with celebrities | Oh, fuck, you mean I will have to listen to Tony Orlando/Tom Jones/Julio Iglesias/Justin/Bieber? |
| Your Halloween costume from 2007 | Oh, fuck, maybe it's not a costume |
And those sites where you can choose what your "best feature" is? You have no idea how many profiles I looked at where women said that their "best feature" was their eyes... and every damn picture showed them in sunglasses. Or where they said their "best feature" was their legs, but all they had was bad webcame pictures that made them look like Sigourney Weaver at the end of Aliens.
We won't even talk about the women who, in the DC area, couldn't possibly imagine dating a man who wasn't at least a Ph.D making over $100,000 a year, never mind that they listed themselves as "self-employed," making $20,000 a year or less... which is code for "the other bedroom in my mobile home is jammed with unsold Mary Kay or Tupperware."
But you know what? Fuck all that stuff above here... the single most idiotic thing women in the DC area say is, "I love moonlight walks on the beach."
Have you lost your fucking MIND?????
On all the beaches on the Maryland, Delaware and Virginia coast, "moonlight walks on the beach" means stepping on an assload of ghost crabs. They may not be hostile, but your tender-ass suburban feet will sure enough know when you've stepped on them, OK?
Do you not want to suck at online dating? Keep reading.
1. Show you. Good, bad, or otherwise, people want to see you. Not your bike, your dog, plants you saw in Bermuda when you went there in 2002, your mom, your dad, or your fat sister's kids. They want to see YOU. Any picture that is not you, and the real you, not you 20 years ago, is a #fail. Avoid./
2. Read other people's profiles. The instant you read a phrase in their profile that appears in yours, get rid of yours. You may think you are being original when you're asking for a "partner in crime," but I guarantee that if someone who has recently appeared on C.O.P.S. answers your ad, "partner in crime" will be much less amusing than you thought.
3. Everyone claims to be "fun-loving." Only goths seem to want people who crave misery.
4. If everyone was genuinely "tired of the bar scene," there would be no bars left in America and the economy would crash tomorrow.
5. Please fix your keyboard if the CAPS LOCK is stuck.
6. The next time you go to the bank, say "LOL" verbally to the teller. Yeah. You wouldn't do it in real life, so if you have the urge to put it in your dating profile, please drill holes in your skull the next chance you get.
7. Your dog can find his own dates. Your cat, too. Do not be cute and let them "write their human's profile."
8. Kids. Ditto. Your kid can find more dates than you can, except most of them would lead to Federal indictments.
9. No one looks good in scuba gear
10. There is no Rule 10.
This post might get me more shit than anything else I've written online in years, but again, I say: I met my wife online. She ain't killed me yet, so I regard it as a success. But you still suck at online dating.
Get to work.
Or, for some of you, STFU/GBTW.
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