Tag: online dating

 

The all-too-commmon ill communications of online dating

There’s one thing that tops every little caveat you can find ion someone’s profile on a dating site. Communications can top all, though it won’t lead to dating or a romantic relationship in some cases (all those caveats do play in to things that way), but it can be a positive and fulfilling experience for people participating in the shot-in-the-dark known as online dating.

It’s socializing, and it’s a necessity in life as well as trying to make headway with a stranger.

It’s not supposed to be a rare feat or a ungodly challenge, but it seems to be getting that way. In my experience, at least. While I’ve been on a multitude of dating sites oer the years, what has turned into a rarity is actually a back-and-forth message exchange. In fact, right now, I’m on Match.com (the top of the dating site pops… or at least the business leader of the game) and while I’ve been on it since October, I have not had a woman reply to a message I send them. While I’ve had women reach out to me on dating attempts in the past, none have attempted such in yyears.

It’s noteworthy the women who did reach out to me are still in my life (well, all sans one who I had a bad date with). All are friends. That’s an aspect of these dating attempts (or socializing attempts) that people ought to accept: The fact just talking to someone might earn you a friendship with someone who you hadn’t known before.

Yet socializing is a no-no, I guess. Are guys now supposed to come off like horny jerks and just go “Hey, babycakes! I like your smile and your profile piques me! Let’s get together and see how hot we  can make it”? It sure as shit should be more than “Hi, how are you?” which keeps a person blank in the simple socializing attempt.

What would be nice, I not negative, is simply a “No thanks” or reply of some sorts that indicates there is no chatter going to happen after sendcing a message. Is it rude? Not when I compare it to the silence that rules the roost. It’s still socializing, it’s also shutting the door that you’re just trying to crack open.

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Online dating starts with socializing

With online dating, it’s making a connection socially (or things clicking) that ideally starts the ball rolling. Is this a foreign concept in 2016 or just a testament of how people get older and stop chatting?

It’s one thing for a dating site to present to you someone’s picture (and them being appealing) in that area. Image is just one aspect of a person; that’s the book cover to a story. You find out more direct contact. Direct contact too many won’t participate in because they’re sold first on image.

Is dating, in an Internet age where social media is a primary means of social contact with friends and colleagues, anti-social? In my experience, yes.

I’m a guy talking here and yet it is guys whose shtick I most often see women complaining about on online dating sites. Too many are just out for a hook-up and up front with that degree of social contact with women: Playing up image, playing up a date, and then one-and-done. There’s an avenue in living where two people can enjoy life like that, with multiple sexual partners and generally independent living / non ongoing contact. That’s not what people are generally after though, so coming off like an asshole and going that route is garbage.  Yeah, you get laid in the end but people looking for a relationship aren’t looking for a singular relationship encounter.

Women are guilty too, and that comes by way of judgment prior to actually interacting with someone. Judging a profile of someone who contacts you makes sense (it’s part of what profiles are for) but to dismiss contact? Especially contact that isn’t a guy being a scumbag? I’m not trying to glorify those who keep it too simple for their own good (PSA gentlemen: “Hi, how are you?” is not the message to send to a dating site contact), but someone who engages you? Someone who asks about this-or-that from your profile? Heck, someone who points out how they know you / live near you and who brought up day-to-day life? Yes, that kind of conversation is not romance or wooing, it just turns into it if people click…. And having a conversational connection can lead to that.

I didn’t notice such limited responsiveness in the distant past. In fact, being contacted by others and online interaction led to dates and more or less. Having made connections online that actually drew me away from online dating; interaction and social investment made it unnecessary to be on a dating site to try to find someone to be interested in.

It starts with making friends, though, or at least it should. If you start with a warm, positive contact – you at least have a new friend in your life. That alone is a positive, even if it does not develop into a mutual romantic interest.  And if things go south outright? If you don’t get along in online communication with someone? Then too bad, so sad… You move on without having found out in-person that you and your date don’t click / can’t get along.

It starts with communicating. Stop ignoring it

OK Stupid and the joys of social interaction via online dating sites

I’ve done dating sites before. I had remarked on an old-old post here about how much I disliked where I was going with Plenty of Fish (the types of profiles I was exposed to and how there was no positive contact). I’ve made friends and romantic interests through old sites now gone, Match.com and even Plenty of Fish. It’s not all bad out there but the platform for Plenty of Fish keeps me away from it.

With few contacts of recent who have led to a wider social world or romantic promise, I’ve tried two platforms in recent months and both have been dreadful for very different reasons.

Lavalife

An arcane platform out of the late-90’s/early 00’s (at least that’s the way it was in my experience in 2015), Lavalife didn’t feel secure (password size limitations, for example) and being contacted almost outright by spammers/scammers. Pair the clunky, arcane aspect and security issues with the base of the site users being in Canada (that’s not a security flaw, that’s just a distance from each other that prevents actual want to reach out / make contact). All together it just didn’t work. Neither did the brief free trial and then forced paid-subscriber switch to continue.

I do have friends who end up getting married after meeting through the platform and it did remind me of American Singles where I was reached out to and met a friend off the network waaaay in the past. Lavalife trying to stick with that template so-many years after the fact is flawed though. It’s too limited in profile information for it’s users, giving them little reason to stick around before forcing them to pay to continue. I didn’t last on there. My friends who met and forged a relationship did it long before the switch-to-subscriber standard was put into effect.

OK Cupid

This is the dating site I wanted to vent about the most when I started writing this out, as I spent a good length of time on that powerful platform that led to contact from two women total in more than a year of use. Two total contacts after how-many messages sent on my part? Friendly conversation attempts to get things started, not Mr. Pervert antics that are far too common on dating site messages to women (from what I’ve been told by friends). And after investing time in reading profiles, seeking people with high match ratings (more on that in a jiff), no one had responded to a conversation I attempted to start while only one of those two women who contacted me led to a friendly and sustained conversation. It didn’t lead to anything besides some casual and friendly chats, but that’s better than the immediate-social-meeting-because-me-and-my-girlfriend-are-new-to-town antics from the other woman who contacted me.

OK Cupid is a powerhouse platform, as I said, free of charge with solid technology, but it’s flawed deeply. While some users use laptops or PCs to write their profiles and interact on the site, too many others are doing their work (and searches) mobile and won’t make much of an effort to build a profile, let alone communicate. The site tries to extort you into paying a monthly fee to see those who “like” your profile/picture (and a few other bells and whistles), but that’s just an ultra-easy, lazy and stupid means of interaction with someone you take interest in or are aroused by. That “like” system is playing off social media and catering to impulse by mobile users but leaves out the complication of accountability. You like a profile or a photo? Great, congrats, now send a message and break the ice. That’s why a person is on that platform to begin with – to be social. Might as do your part and actually socialize.

OK Cupid also employs a survey/question and answer system that is also a huge flaw. Many, many questions are asked for the topics of ethics, religion, dating, sex, lifestyle and other general shit. They’re all available for you to help set a “match percentage” with other site members. The whole thing is a time occupying sham that defies the basic concept of getting to know someone, let alone finding out things in common or adjusting your habits to suit someone else. It’s possible to click with someone who has different wants / needs / craves that we see as polarizing negatives. The fact that match percentages might be thrown off by the most useless, unimportant differences in opinion (or bolstered by mundane things you don’t care about in a potential friend/date/romantic interest). With that and how so many  members don’t even review that stuff adds to the throw-off aspect of the system.

There’s also the aspect the questions – which are all elective to answer, by the way – have a very wide gray area in reality but are presented as black-or-white, yes-or-no in OK Cupid.  “It Depends” is a truth with certain questions, let alone with how you’d react to certain people you forged a personal connection with regarding their habits, desires or beliefs and what not.

I’ll note here that Match.com owns OK Cupid and now Plenty of Fish. Between how common spam is from people with affiliations to Match, with how bare-bones and weak Plenty of Fish can be, and with how closed off OK Cupid is by way of laziness and anti-social habits from it’s members, I’ve got to search for a better site if I want to try that form of socializing again. At this rate, I have a better chance of meeting someone though Twitter than on an up-front dating site.

Stimulating an inferiority complex

I’ve got a friend who likes to highlight his frustrations and sometimes show off a perpetual defeatist attitude: One where he goes into a situation worried and “a wreck” and comes out worse off with no confidence at all. Usually these are either social situations where he’s trying to make inroads with a virtual stranger / romantic interest or job interviews where he feels like he has to sell himself.

Well, he has to do that in both… Or he’s certain of it. Sell who he is and what he stands for and demonstrate it.

In comparison, my worry is attaining these situations. I’m not fearful, going into it, of screwing up a job interview or a social meeting but I know that afterward I will worry that I did just that. Be it a job interview or a date. I don’t sell myself but I try to be myself.

But like I said, it’s attaining these things that worries me. That challenges me. That makes me a wreck and makes me frustrated. I scan over job listings and I see jobs I could do but then there is one, two, three, maybe a few other details that I know I couldn’t handle or things I cannot fill in because I lack those credentials. On dating sites, it’s seeing someone’s image and knowing that’s just what you want and then not getting a reciprocation of interest when you reach out to them. Or worse, “Thanks but no thanks.” Some dating sites are worse because you find out how “compatible” you are with someone and see you are not nearly their ideal… Or lack one or two key intangibles time and again on every single listing you read and requirements of what the other person wants.

You start doubting yourself and everything about yourself. Do you have skills? Absolutely. Do you have talent? Unquestionably. Do you have something to offer in a relationship? Undoubtedly…

…they just don’t seem to apply to anything you are applying for, though.

It feels like there is a phantom job that is out there just for you. There’s a phantom person that is waiting for you to drop into their lives. I’m not even talking about ideals here, but I am talking about something above bottom-of-the-barrel. I’ve been in both jobs and relationships that I ended up feeling were beneath me. The job didn’t make me feel so bad because I was being productive and I gave my all for my paycheck. You don’t get a “paycheck” in a relationship, so to speak, so you better damn well feel productive and happy with who you are with.

But in the hunt for either a job or a relationship, I end up feeling torn down before I even get a chance to make an attempt. That’s a repeatedly poor situation that just keeps popping up.

An example of how Online Dating Sucks

(NOTE: I know this is one of the most popular posts on Stonegauge but it should be said that it’s also a couple of years old, odds are the links or profiles I link to are no longer working — or maybe they are? Whatever the case, don’t be surprised fif they are not)

I’ve signed up on PlentyOfFish again with hopes of just meeting someone to talk to… Not necessarily a date but someone to talk to. Unlike other dating platforms out there, you are able to talk directly with someone without having to pay a monthly fee on POF which makes it a reason to use it…

The problem is the more I am on there, the less hope I have for civilization.

Come across someone who’s picture looks cute and then head over to her profile (take any of these as examples) and lo and behold what do you find but women lacking any depth or character in how they present themselves. “I like to have fun and go out.” Right, go out and do what? “Have fun!” By doing…? Come on, this isn’t rocket science.

Of course, when you do come across someone who seems interesting and has a bit of depth to themselves, most times they come off above you or have just enough information for you to assess that you and said girl (or guy) would not be an ideal match in any way, shape or form.

Online dating sucks. Meeting people in reality and trying to find out what works and not in person is a lot better… Just doesn’t have a chance of happening much deep in the heart of Suburban Hell.

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Plenty of Fish = a Piece of Shit. Like all online dating sites – it’s great if you are a girl because there are a ton of guys on there. But if you are a guy? Ha… Girls have so many guys to sort through that they don’t really give a damn about trying to talk to someone.