OkCupid (I know, I know, but 98% of my social life is coordinated online, so it seems stupid to say "online dating is for losers!" in light of that--especially if you say that online...) has a feature where it displays how often you reply to messages. You get a little green light if you "reply often," an orange one if you "reply selectively," and a red light if you "reply very selectively."
Roughly ten seconds after opening my account, I had a red light. I Googled "'replies very selectively' + OkCupid", because I was curious where they drew the line. I didn't find a clear answer on that, but I found a huge number of blog and forum posts complaining that girls with a red light are stuck-up picky bitches who expect perfection and won't give guys in their league the time of day.
Well gosh, I'd hate to look like I'm stuck-up. I resolve to truly engage with the gentlemen who give me their time and put themselves out there emotionally!
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "wats up lol"
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "more coushin for the fuckin"
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "I have not had sex in two years and I hate it and I am getting bored with pleasuring myself all the time..."
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "do u do anal?"
(These are not jokes. These are not exaggerations. These are copy-pastes.)
Yeah... I don't think I have the intestinal fortitude to earn myself that green light.
Somehow, despite messages like that, the site claims the overall response rate is around 30 percent.
ReplyDeleteI think you should respond, request naked pictures, and post them to /b/ with their user names.
I swear a few of those I've heard in bars.........
ReplyDeleteOh no wait. That was the charmer who said he wanted to 'smash my back doors in.' Bless his cotton socks.
When I get messages like that there, I tend to reply back with snarky comments, or link them here, hoping they learn something.
ReplyDelete"what up lol" gets "what's so funny?"
"more coushin..." gets "oh look, someone else to add to my hit list if idiots"
and for those guys that are tired of Pleasuring themselves? "oh good, I feel better now that I know I don't have that problem."
it's actually kinda fun to think of snarky lines... Hey everyone needs a hobby.
There are cool people on OkCupid. There are very cool people; that's why I'm still on there! But they don't seem to make up 30% of my messages, that's for damn sure.
ReplyDeleteDorkie - The problem is that if I send out messages to shut guys down, only about 50% will get the hint and go away. 25% will take any response as a signal to continue hitting on me because I'm just giving them a shit test or being hard to get. And 25% will turn into ragemonsters berating me for being a bitch slut cunt whore.
ReplyDeleteIf I simply say nothing when I'm not interested, the percentage that get the hint (or just forget about me and move on) seems to be much higher.
Argh, OKCupid. The worst online dating site, except for all the others.
ReplyDeleteI hate hate HATE the way gender and messaging interact on online dating sites. Women get inundated with social spammers, men (this one anyway) get maybe one message a month that's not a fake-profile scam. This, in turn, sours everyone on the process, meaning that women, after getting one too many annoying emails, tend to either leave or just ignore all messages, and men, after composing one too many emails that get ignored, tend to either leave or just send "wats up lol" type messages to as many women as possible.
Other peeves:
* OKC doesn't understand the difference between "bi" and "looking for partners of both genders on this site." Which means that, since my profile is very poly-friendly, I get a lot of profile matches along the lines of "my boyfriend and I are looking for a girl to play with."
* The age distribution is ridiculously skewed, meaning that I have to either say I'm not interested in 20-somethings at all or have 90% of my matches be 20-somethings. (Nothing wrong with 20-somethings, of course, it's just that most of them seem to be looking for someone closer to their own age. Also, this one may also be a Buffalo thing, because most people my age either get married or move somewhere else.)
Holly,
ReplyDeletePut something in your profile. Along the lines of Sorry about the red light. I'm not *that* picky, but when you get messages like:
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "wats up lol"
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "more coushin for the fuckin"
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "I have not had sex in two years and I hate it and I am getting bored with pleasuring myself all the time..."
NEW MESSAGE FROM OKCUPID: "do u do anal?
It's not worth responding to and avoiding a red light.
=========
Anyone that doesn't understand that wouldn't be someone you want to go out with anyways.
It's true, there are really cool people on OkCupid!
ReplyDeleteBut they are often lost in the sea of jerks, idiots, and entitled assholes.
Those guys that gripe about how the girls that don't respond are all stuck up bitches? They're the guys that in real life talk about how they are SO DAMN NICE so the universe OWES them some VAGINA, but girls don't actually LIKE nice guys so OH WOE.
Yep, dudes you wanna punch, pretty much.
I've pretty much nixed my profile on OkC because it doesn't really seem to lead anywhere useful. I know people who have had AMAZING luck (some of them are in long term serious relationships, one is even getting married later this year!) but that's what it is... luck. Just like with all dating. The downside is that for some reason people think that since you're on a dating site, they no longer have to go through the effort of getting you interested, because clearly you already are. I mean, if you're willing to accept SOME HYPOTHETICAL DUDE then you must be willing to accept ALL dudes, right? That's my best guess, at least.
I've met some really rockin' dudes on OkC (in fact, one of them is responsible for me knowing about your blog!) so I hope you have good luck eventually. :)
My boyfriend and I agree that while men on the site get almost no messages and women get inundated, they both get the same number of good messages.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, guys should stop being all jealous and whiny over the attention we get because it still boils down to one message a month from someone who seems vaguely articulate and cute.
And don't even get me started about the guys who write ranty journal posts about "why don't women at least have the courtesy to write me rejection letters?!?!" because I will fucking froth at the mouth. It's totally true: 70% of guys will take a rejection message as "OMG a girl talked to me!!!" and will keep trying to engage you. 20% will write back to tell you that you're an ugly whore that they didn't want anyway. Only ten percent of rejected internet suitors actually take it gracefully (these percentages are estimates, of course). So don't yell at us, bitter guys. Yell at other guys. They're the ones ruining it for everyone.
Having said that...I did meet a few really good friends, some excellent fuckbuddies, and my boyfriend online. :P
@perversecowgirl: My reason for wanting a rejection notice is that I don't want to hold false hope of getting a positive response. Rejection sucks, but I feel like much more of a loser when I realize I'm waiting for a positive response that will probably never arrive.
ReplyDeleteBut I completely agree about other guys being the problem. Decent guys have to fight the presumption that they're creeps thanks to idiots whose first messages and IMs are "nice tits" or "lick my ass."
I've decided that online dating isn't for me, at least for the time being.
You need to create a fuck off macro. Of course, that'll only work if OKC doesn't regularly change their web page scheme, but still.
ReplyDeleteI think I have to much free time in my hands, sending snarky messages back tends to be my hobby. I've met some super duper awesome people on Okcupid!
ReplyDeleteI have a higher tolerance for dealing with stupid and offensive I'm told.
I once decided to venture into the OkCupid forums, for some reason I have yet to recall. Some guy had made a post about this very thing, whining how no one has the courtesy to send rejection messages, as well as getting in the standard "women don't like nice guys" dig in there.
ReplyDeleteI replied to tell him, like most of the other commenters had, that he was basically a whiny moron and no one owed him anything. Absolutely nothing about what I wrote suggested I would be interested in him, yet within a few minutes he had visited my profile and sent me a message attempting to chat me up and telling me what a nice person he is if people would just give him a chance.
These people are not listening to you whatsoever. Nothing you say is likely to deter them, and like pervercowgirl said, any engagement in conversation only spurs them on. The only way to stop it is to ignore it completely. Don't even put a warning about that kind of thing on your profile if you don't want to encourage it. Any acknowledgement that this kind of thing happens to you, makes it happen more. If you like playing with trolls, though, it's a very good way of attracting them!
See, this is why my online social life (and a significant portion of my overall social life, because I'm kind of a pathetic hermit) is on LJ. I talk to people about things I'm interested in and then go away. It works for me.
ReplyDelete...of course, not wanting to actually meet people in person probably helps, too. I have a very low tolerance for the kind of douchebaggery you find on most online dating sites.
On another note, you should check out this. Not just for the bizarreness of the product, but for the horrified in-depth analysis taking place in the comment section. It's pretty funny.
This is why I only go out with other men even though I prefer women. It's very difficult to put together free time in chunks that are larger than 15-20 minutes long, which is not enough to just get out and meet people. So I reserve that difficulty for occasions when I already have someone to meet. So that means using the smaller "time chunks" to find someone online.
ReplyDeleteBut when I try to find a woman for anything, I write lots of well-crafted ads and responses to other people's ads [or so I think anyway, it's always possible they're not] and get maybe 2 interested responses per month. But it either goes nowhere and I never end up arranging to meet with them, or worse, it does and I do but they stand me up. (One of them apologized afterward, but mostly I never hear from them again.) It's a ton of effort for nothing at all.
And then after a few months of this I just give up and try the m4m ads. I usually find someone in 3-4 days.
Call me crazy, but OKC hasn't presented me with that many creepies. Sure, there was the one fellow who wrote messages from the insane asylum, but most of the guys I've met there are genuinely interested and intelligent creatures looking for philosophical debates, flirting, and genuine conversations. I'd say maybe 1 out of 10 is a real jerk who writes the type messages you're talking about, but 1out of 3 is actually dateable. Leaving lots of dateable men who like me too.
ReplyDeleteI think it has to do with what group to which you're trying to appeal when you write. I've gotten lots of philosophy and adventurely sarcastic types, because I wrote about philosophical and adventurely things.
Also, I have a far better track record with PMs, over IMs. I generally ignore instant message chat things, because a lot of it is either lewd, or mostly idle chit chat I don't have the time or inclination for.
Also, since I find it highly annoying when people talk about others' reactions to something I am not familiar with, my profile is http://www.okcupid.com/profile/Obsidian_moon. Whatever I wrote, that's what decent fellows decide to massage me about, and most of the LOLusexyhehuwannafuck? dont even bother, much to my relief.
My problem with OKC is the design! To be honest, I would like those hearts and pink background to go away...
ReplyDeleteI also found great friends (and two boyfriends) on the site. I also got some silly messages, and some nice conversations. For someone who thought this whole thing was wired and not correct, well, I have to shut up and say that this site at least, brought me lots of fun. =)
Me, I like OkC. And if you have a red icon?
ReplyDeleteI'm MORE likely to write you. Means you're picky, which trust me, is a good thing.
Not so fond of OkC's basic search functionality; rabid objectivist libertarians shouldn't get matched to communalistic hippies. But the advanced search, with some clever application, tends to do a good job.
And I'm not sure about everybody claiming guys don't get any messages; I eventually got annoyed and made my profile frightening to anybody who wouldn't appreciate my sense of humour anyways (which can be horrible). That didn't work, so I made my main picture that of me holding a revolver and a bottle of JD - that DID work.
(Well, it's kind of moot in my case, as I'm in a committed relationship right now, but if that ever changes, I'm going back to OkC, assuming they don't screw everything up while I'm away)