I started out doing eharmony. However, I wasn't about to pay for it, and since you're not able to communicate without signing up, and you can't post your email address, I had to come up with a riddle for people to solve to get my email address. It's simple enough, but I was amazed at how many people tried to contact me through eharmony's website instead of my email. The riddle was this:
My middle name is Marie, and I share my last name with a boxer that bit someone's ear off. I don't have a paid subscription, so if you want to get in touch with me you'll have to take my first name, middle initial, and last name (all together - no space or comma) and email me through google.
Easy enough, right? Especially since they can see my first name and I gave them my middle name. It was kinda my test to see who was smart (or at least read my entire profile). Many, many people were apparently weeded out by this method.
So a friend of mine suggested Plenty of Fish, a free dating site. Well, what can I say? You get what you pay for. I should've known better, but again, I wasn't really looking for anyone to date - n just to see what's out there.
One of the first people to write me was someone whose screen name was subby99. That right there should've set off alarms in my head, but I was oblivious to the fact that subby meant submissive - until I read the heading of the note they sent me. It was this: *whimper* Please *whimper* make me groan. (Note: the heading was the entire thing - there wasn't anything written in the body of the message) Gah! So I click on his name to look at his profile. (Why? Morbid curiosity, I guess) Up pops a picture that looks a lot like Bob Hoskins (you know - the detective from Who Framed Roger Rabbit). In fact, after showing it to several friends, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't a picture of Bob Hoskins. If that in itself weren't creepy enough, under "Likes" he listed whips, corsets, leather, etc.
Most of the other people who messaged me on that lovely site simply put things like. "Hey cutie, want to chat?" Really? Is that the best opening line you have? Nothing intelligent or remotely witty? One that stood out was a guy who really did try though. Now - so you know - this site has e-gifts that you can send to people and one day I got a message with one of those. Inside, the guy actually wrote a paragraph. He wanted us to meet for coffee sometime. Nice, I suppose, except that he lives in Miami! What, are we going to meet in Orlando for coffee? I don't think so! I'm not driving 3 hours for a coffee date after a single message. The e-gift he sent was a picture of a cute puppy. I probably should've liked it, but all I could think was "What a stupid gift! What if this was real? I would hate someone for giving me a puppy to have to look after! (Unless I specifically asked for one of course)". It was silly, but it actually kinda made me angry.
What really killed it for me are the ones that didn't bother with any kind of punctuation or capitalization in their note or on their profile. There are also the douchebags whose profile picture is them with their shirt off, or my favorite - a picture of them with another woman. Yeah, that'll make me want you - show me a picture of you with an ex-girlfriend (or possibly even current girlfriend). What the hell are people thinking?!
One person that pissed me off the most was some ass that thought he was entitled to some kind of a response to me. His initial message to me was this "You are to talented and to pretty to be in this small town. I bet your a blast to hang out with!". Ok, so strike one was not knowing the difference between "too" and "to" (and probably "your" and "you're", but the message was deleted, so I'm not sure) - and you can't just chalk it up to typing error because he did it twice. Then I looked at his profile, and let's just say he fell out of the ugly tree. So trying to be nice and just drop the hint I wasn't interested, I gave some response along the lines of "Oh- I'm not really a blast. I'm pretty boring in my downtime. I'm so busy usually, that there's nothing I like better than doing absolutely nothing in my free time." He wrote some strange response, so I decided to just ignore him. Well a few days pass, and he writes this angry message about how he thinks he deserves more than just one reply and how could I do that, etc. Where the hell did this sense of entitlement come from?! Dude - it's an internet dating site. I fully expect people not to answer. I even had a couple of guys I had nice conversations with that just stopped writing. Did I message them whining and berating them? No - I shrugged it off and moved on. The best part? He messaged me a week or so ago saying "Hey - how's it going?", like nothing ever happened. Yeah...
What's really bizarre is something similar happened to me on Facebook (original post of this is on blogger). A friend of a friend wanted to add me to their friends list a long time ago, and I allowed it. Well then that person started messaging me - but it was never just normal messages - every time it was like they were hitting on me, which was really awkward and off-putting. There was a good long while where I was signing out of Facebook chat if they were online just so I wouldn't have to talk to them. Well I let my guard down, and then they messaged me again. They said something bizarre like "Sorry I couldn't be your other half for your weekend of joy". I was thoroughly confused and they clarified that they meant about Alice in Wonderland. I explained that I would've had to have been working, and the event was cancelled anyways. They then said they hoped they could be my next proposal (again, what?), and asked my opinion on a certain performer. I gave my honest opinion - "Meh. He's ok", and then got yelled at! They said "that's a bad attitude to have when someone is trying to lay down major game". I didn't realized I was actually being propositioned! And who said I have to be nice?! To quote Elizabeth Bennett "I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration." Actually what I really did was type this:
I'm sorry
I guess I have a bad attitude
I'll save you the trouble of having to talk to me anymore (and I then signed off)
However, I think the last two lines didn't go through because when I signed back in I had a message that said "Maybe we can find something that will amuse us both". So I unfriended them, because I can't deal with this any longer. Please - everyone - don't use Facebook as a dating site! It will only ruin friendships (or at best vague acquaintances)!
Now, I know this has been a very negative post, but I did meet a couple of people I enjoy talking to, so it hasn't been all bad. I have no problem with people meeting online. Amber and Tim did, and so did Caitlin and Sean - one of my best friends for the past 10 years, Chad, and I met online. Lately however, it hasn't really been working out for me, but I'm ok with that. Like I said before, it was a bit of a lark - a social experiment - and as always, I got a good story or two out of it.
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