Do You Suck At Online Dating?
Hey men, you wanna see some pathetic shit? Go and set up a fake OkCupid profile as a female, and watch your inbox rapidly fill with the most awful garbage you have ever read. Actually, don’t do that because that’s a little weird, just read this article instead.
I’ve been dabbling in online dating for about 5 years and, just like anything, you learn a lot after doing something for that long. I’ve tried lots of different platforms: eHarmony, Plenty of Fish, match.com, OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, Happn, and Coffee Meets Bagel. I’m not here to tell you which one is best, I’m here to talk about the stupid shit that people do on these sites that totally sabotage their chances of success.
Before I get too into that, let me put this out there first so that things make more sense. Pretty early on in my online dating “career” I entered into a relationship with my current partner. We formed a tight bond with an intention to embrace polyamory from day one. So as part of that, we both joined multiple dating sites in an effort to find additional like-minded partners. Since that time we have come to learn that meeting people the old-fashioned way and becoming friends with them first is a lot cooler, but we still learned tons about the flaws surrounding online dating and now I feel compelled to write about them.
At first it seemed like the men out there were 1000 times worse than the women when it comes to online dating, but upon closer inspection, the women have some work to do in this department as well. So I’m going to highlight several things that both sexes need to improve in order to have success with online dating.
Men
First off, it seems like 90+% of the men out there have zero fucking clue how to interact with a woman on an online dating site, and even less of a clue of how to introduce themselves. When I look at the messages that my partner is inundated with on a daily basis, it makes me sad to be a man. It’s essentially an inbox full of cat-calls. Things like “Hey, you’re hot, wanna fuck?” “Hey, how are you?” “Hey, I would luv to get at dat butt!” “Hey sexy”.
Like, seriously.
Do you not realize that no woman on the planet would ever respond to this approach? Do you also realize that you’ve probably sent dozens of these messages and nothing good has come of it?
You wouldn’t just go up to a woman in real life and say something like this, so why do you think it’s ok to do it in a virtual setting?
Out of 100 messages, she might get one that contains more than two sentences. Men, if you really want to achieve some measure of success with online dating, don’t send shit like this. Take the time to:
read their profile
introduce yourself like a real human
talk about some things you have in common
write in complete sentences
don't use bullshit text abbreviations like “I would luv 2 meet U”
don’t just talk about her physical attributes
In fact, you should avoid that altogether in your initial message. Women hear things like “you’re pretty” all goddamn day on dating sites, and you surely won’t stand out by saying it right out of the gate. Along those same lines, definitely don’t bring up anything sexual at all. Why is this so hard? WHY!? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it, but sadly men are complete fucking idiots when it comes to this.
Also, if a woman doesn’t write you back, or maybe she takes the time to write you back to politely decline your advance, that does not give you license to act like an asshole towards her. She was not put on this earth to like you back, and that’s ok. Respect her, don’t judge her. I have literally seen men get turned down on OkCupid only to respond with “yeah, well you’re a whore anyway.” Seriously?! What the actual fuck? If I ever found out that someone I know ever did something like this, I’d probably punch them in the face. There is no situation ever where something like that is appropriate. It’s completely deplorable on every level. And if you’ve ever done anything like that, you are part of “the problem.”
Next let’s talk about photos. Ok, if your online dating profile contains any photos of you that were taken in front of your bathroom mirror, drop what the fuck you are doing and go delete them right now. ALL of them. Especially the ones of you with no shirt on. Have you not realized yet that that is the #1 biggest turn off for women these days? They also don’t want to see photos of you at the gym or standing next to your sports car either.
It’s like men have no douche-detection system at all, and they don’t realize that that’s exactly what all those pictures make them look like.
So here’s what you should be posting.....
Candid photos taken by someone else are considered to be ideal. These kinds of photos show that:
you have friends
can be fun in social situations
are a real person
Selfies should be kept to a minimum, like one at the most. But don’t go getting some professional photos taken of you either, as those are just as bad as selfies since they also don’t show that you have friends, or are fun in social situations, or are a real person. In short, just be a real fucking person. Guh!
Lastly, don’t come across as desperate or clingy, or jealous or anything like that. Don’t bring up up your ex, don’t talk about shit that has gone wrong for you lately, and don’t make it seem like bad shit just keeps happening to you. No woman wants to go on a date with some guy who only talks about all the bad shit that keeps happening to them. You just come across as a total loser. Which I suppose you might actually be, but the least you can do is to not come across as one. If you don’t have anything good to say about yourself, then maybe instead of trying to get a date, you should be trying to get your shit together first so that you don’t burden some poor woman with your woe-is-me bullshit. There is nothing less sexy than someone who isn’t in control of their life.
Women
I often hear lots of women complaining about all the douchey men online, but I seldom hear from men complaining about the women. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of douchey women too. Here are some things that women can do to spiff up their profiles in hopes of attracting men who are actually worth attracting.
Thankfully in my 5+ years of online dating experience, I have only received about 3 messages from women that are of the one-sentence “hey handsome” variety. Needless to say, I didn’t write them back. I can’t hold myself to such a standard only to succumb to the same thing from the other side. Mostly women who take the time to write me first also take the time to write a long introductory message that includes all the elements mentioned above.
In this regard, women get it and I applaud them.
The biggest problem with women is their photos. As much as they seem to hate bathroom selfies coming from men, many women suffer from the same problem. But at least they manage to keep their shirts on, though perhaps only because it would be against the rules otherwise. The biggest thing that annoys the shit out of me is when I stumble on a woman’s profile, and she has like 6 or so pictures, but every single one of them is a selfie of her in her car making a fucking duck-face expression. Just like I said with the men, if you have 6 (or any) duck-face selfies on your profile, drop what the fuck you are doing right now and go delete them all. One, it just looks stupid, two, it looks like you don’t have any friends since all of your pics are of you by yourself in your car, and three, you’re probably not fun in social situations, because all you seem to know how to do is make a duck-face. It is truly the equivalent of a male bathroom shirtless selfie. When I see that shit, I immediately move on.
Other bad photo ideas:
All your photos are of groups of people - how the hell is anyone supposed to know which one is you?
All your photos are of you drinking or holding large bottles of alcohol - that just has hot-mess written all over it.
Photos of your little dog or cat scrunched up to your face - we get it, you love your dog, but that type of photo is only appealing to your grandma, not men on dating sites.
Kids. Totally fine if you have them, but we don’t want to see 10 different photos of them and only 1 of you(especially on apps like Tinder).
Photos of you hugging up on and kissing other guys. What kind of a message are you trying to send with this? It’s very confusing.
Just plain awful photos (this goes for both sexes). Like they’re either blurry, or pixelated, or sideways, or you look like you just got out of bed, or you’ve been on a 5 day meth binge, or whatever.
The technology isn’t complicated, phone camera’s are pretty good these days, there is really no excuse. Take a nice picture, post the nice picture. You are aware that you are trying to attract someone to you right? What the fuck do you think your awful pictures are going to attract? Probably not the person you are hoping for. I wish so bad I could post some of the bad pics I see, but I’m guessing it’s probably illegal or something.
Besides pictures, the other biggest problem with many women’s profiles is that they are either completely blank or pretty close to it. If your profile is blank, I will almost always swipe left, no matter how good your photos might be. If you can’t take the time to say a few sentences about yourself, I don’t really have time for you either. On sites like OkCupid they at least force you to provide some information, but when I see the bare minimum it’s also a big turn off. Like why do you even bother? Or do you think you’re just so hot in your photos that you don’t need to type anything? That’s lame, fuck off. A real man needs more than just a cute face to be attracted to you, and if you can't eke out even one sentence about yourself, then you don't seem very attractive. Unless of course you are trying to attract 22 year old idiots who only think with their dicks.
So there you have it, what not to do on your online dating sites. I’m sure there are probably a hundred other things out there that bother people, but I feel like this is the bulk of it. If you want more ideas of what doesn’t work, a good idea is to take notes from what you see in profiles. Many people take the time to spell out what they don’t like to see from the opposite sex in their profiles. So if you do any of those things that you see people talking about, go and correct your shit and maybe you’ll finally get a real date.
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