Consolidated discussion - Online dating

[spiderowl]

Moderator note:

Since OLD (online dating) is a generally hot topic in the dating forum, I'm consolidating the discussion into one master thread, subject to closing and renewing periodically.

 

When posting, be aware that naming dating sites, linking to dating sites and/or using the verbiage <online dating> can get one caught by the forum's automated moderation software and one's post won't appear until approved by a moderator. Unless you're a spammer, we approve them as quickly as we see them, generally within one to 12 hours of posting time.

 

To start, I'll be merging some recent threads into this one. Take it from there.

 

William

 

I've tried online dating for a while now. I haven't been on many dates during the past year, just didn't like the guys much and didn't trust most. After various unpleasant experiences, I am coming to the conclusion that there are only a minority of decent guys online. Most of the guys drag sex into the conversation from message 2. Most don't seem to want to know the real person, just whether I'll meet or not (when I hardly know them). There are plenty of decidedly weird guys online and I've had unpleasant experiences with some of the few I've met, basically concerning whether they were telling me the truth about their backgrounds and previous relationships. A friend had a scary experience of abuse after meeting a guy online. He was OK initially. Who knows what his true background was? People can move about and hide their backgrounds online. It's true that these guys could be anybody and how can you tell they are decent?

 

The guys I meet socially just don't behave like these guys online. They are better mannered and kinder. They seem interested in me not just sex. They are literate and intelligent. I might not feel attracted to them but that's a different issue. The guys online are self-selecting to a degree. Is it just that guys online behave differently because they can or are the majority really more dodgy than those one meets naturally in the outside world?

Edited June 25, 2013 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
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[USMCHokie]

The question begs to be asked...what kinds of guys are you picking to correspond with online...?

[FightingTheDarkness]

I don't get it. I created an account on one of the free sites about a month ago with 4 or 5 nice pictures (everybody says I am very handsome) and a well written profile that I showed to 4 or 5 people (who all said it was fine) and I haven't gotten 1 response to 13 sent messages by me. This is just simply unbelievable. I'm not sending anything sexual either, I would actually like to meet somebody nice - I have no problem getting laid in my personal life. I'm just engaging the ladies in regular conversation

 

 

How does online dating work? Do the top 1% of guys get 90% of the women while everybody else gets nothing? What is it that women are looking for?

 

 

For god's sake, I used to message girls on Myspace way back in the day and got a way better response rate than this

Edited June 25, 2013 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[FitChick]

I'm willing to bet most of the men you meet socially are also online. I don't know why so many people believe dating was easy and everyone met their future spouse and lived happily ever after in the days before internet dating. People are people.

[FightingTheDarkness]

Basically... but not exactly. Its more like the top 10% of men get 80% of the women. Still pretty crappy.

 

The bottom line is most women on dating sites are overly picky to start. That's why they are on a dating site in the first place. Clearly they are rejecting all the men they meet in person to find some "superman" online.

 

Also, a lot of the more attractive women just go on their for fun and attention. They often get 20 messages a day and don't read the majority of them.

 

Sadly if you want to do well "as a man" with online dating, you're gonna have to lie a little and pretend to me the impossible standard they want. I do ok online but a lot better in person, plus I don't have to lie as much.

 

Out of 20 messages I send I average 2 replies. Its a numbers game. At one point I was doing cut and paste to save time. I figured, why read all the crap on their profiles just to be ignored anyway? Now I just do very short custom messages. Three to five lines max.

 

Don't fall into the trap of becoming the dancing clown where you try to tell jokes and be "unique". If anything, seem like you are interested, but not totally won over yet.

 

The rule of dating sites is: The less you care the better. These sites should not be a primary source of dates for you. I do it for fun, so some of the stuff on my profile is BS. I really have no problem lying to women. Maybe that makes me a jerk. Whatever.

 

 

 

out of those 2 responses you get, how many of them are numbers or dates?

 

 

Also are any of the girls you date actually attractive?

[MrCastle]

It's pretty bad, from my experience and most men I know.

 

The difference in success I experience between online and real life is ridiculously stark and vast.

 

In real life I can spark attraction with most of the women I target. There's always that small percentage that no matter how charming I am, they're not buying what i'm selling, and that's fine.

 

But online is like--I'm better off changing my picture to that forever alone meme, you know, the stick figure with the massive, odd shaped, ugly head.

 

Granted, I don't send out messages rapid fire like some men do to improve their chances. I either 1.) wait to get messaged first (haha, i know right?) or 2.) message a handful of high quality girls

 

So I don't do as much as I could be doing, but ****, the difference in success compared to real life is scary...and a little sad.

[oaks]

and I haven't gotten 1 response to 13 sent messages by me. This is just simply unbelievable.

 

Nope. That's entirely believable.

[FightingTheDarkness]

Nope. That's entirely believable.

 

 

not for me, god I don't think I've been rejected 13 times in my entire life

[FightingTheDarkness]

Well that's Online dating for ya. Its a numbers game. You just have to message tons of women until you get a response.

 

I don't take it all that seriously. Don't let it bruise your ego, its stupid. If you can usually attract an 8 in real life, expect 5's and 6's to reject you online. That's just how it works.

 

But I still managed to pull some attractive women. Just be persistent and don't live or die based on the attention you get from goofs online.

 

 

Did you get any 7s or 8s on there? Also are the payed sites a lot better option than the free sites?

[oaks]

not for me, god I don't think I've been rejected 13 times in my entire life

 

In that case you may be better off finding someone face-to-face rather than on the Internet.

[madjac74]

In that case you may be better off finding someone face-to-face rather than on the Internet.

 

Not true. Some people are far more appealing online

[fishtaco]

13 messages? Try 130.

 

Spam is the game when you're talking about online dating. Have a template ready, skim through their profiles, pick out certain keywords, and insert into your message so it looks like you at least looked at their profiles, and send it out. Spending hours writing a Pulitzer winning message won't increase your chances, you are still shooting internet bits into the black hole. So the less time you waste on each message, the better.

 

I don't do online dating. Some people do have a knack for it. If you do, you'll know, because you'll be getting dates. If not, then don't bother. Online dating is not a male-friendly environment.

[Andy_K]

What are your messages like? For the love of god don't talk about boring rubbish like what the two of you do for a living. Ask at least one question. Make it open ended and about her as a person. "Are you the sort of person that..." is better than "How long have you lived here?"

 

Also, realise that online dating is to a large extent luck and numbers. Even if you message a girl who would normally be interested, she might not bother replying because she's busy getting to know or has just started dating someone else.

 

Write to the new profiles. Many of the girls who have been on for months are either really jaded or not actually trying to meet anyone. Newer profiles are more likely to be responsive and to meet up.

 

Also write to profiles without pictures. You'll get a much higher reply rate, and quite a few of them are actually hot girls who don't want to be judged entirely on their looks.

[ThingsAreComplicated]

when I did OLD a while ago I didn't use a spam approach. Besides hard facts (geographic proximity, age etc.) I only messaged women who clearly have thought about their profile and where I found really unique and interesting (!) things. I didn't really count and don't have the time to recall the exact numbers. Did this a couple of months, wrote message to roughly 20 profiles, 15 responses in general, 10 mildly interested, 5 dates of those 3 with 3 or more dates. 1 of them was possibly the love of my life (^^) but it didn't work out after all. So yeah, it's a numbers game but I don't see it frustrating. At that time I barely had real life options due to extreme amount of work. So it was ok.

[El Brujo]

Unless your stats are Fabio the 6'7" horsehung dark and handsome self made millionaire you're unlikely to get much female attention though online dating

 

Hell, in Los Angeles, a guy like that wouldn't even get much female attention IRL.

[carhill]

I'd suggest using a paid site if dating domestically and experimenting with pictures and profile text regularly. OLD has changed a lot since I started using it back in the mid-90's, mainly in the realm of response rates for men who do average or worse dating in real life. I appeared to get far fewer rejections in OLD (at the time) than in real life, so it was a positive for me. I would expect that to have deteriorated over time, though my most recent experiences haven't borne that expectation out. Then again, 53 is far different than a young person (20's) in the realm of OLD. No easy answers I'm afraid.

[spiderowl]

Unless your stats are Fabio the 6'7" horsehung dark and handsome self made millionaire you're unlikely to get much female attention though online dating, the ones that do can just get straight to the point - want to ****, no? 100 more where you came from.

 

I would dispute that but it does show what guys think women are looking for online. Yes, the guys do go straight to the point (of what they want) and that's not only insulting but depressing. What you've posted confirms that many guys online care nothing about the woman but just want a legover.

[spiderowl]

The question begs to be asked...what kinds of guys are you picking to correspond with online...?

 

I am talking about a representative selection of guys who contact me. It's depressing really. I'm thinking of giving it up as I'd rather meet someone with a soul who knows how to behave. It doesn't look as though it will happen online.

[Sith Apprentice]

For men, dating sites only work if you're extremely good looking or you're willing to lower your standards and date the random fatty who messages you once a month.

 

The vast majority of women on these sites (80-90%) have outrageous standards and won't respond to you unless you're in the top 10% of good looking men. Believe me, these women are single and stuck using dating sites for a reason. They're all holding out for some fantasy guy that doesn't exist. If you're just a regular guy looking to meet a good woman for a relationship you might as well forget it.

 

Sites like POF have an outrageously skewed ratio of men to women. In large metro areas there can often be a 25 to 1 ratio of men to women. An attractive woman can receive thousands of messages a month on a dating site. As an experiment I created a profile of an average looking chubby woman and received 650 messages in the first week! Bottom line, average looking women have tons of options while average looking men have no options.

 

For 90% of men online dating is the equivalent of being in a desert and watching the tumbleweeds roll by while the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly plays in the background..

[Bob_Funk]

As horrible as online dating is, I don't see any other option. Bars and clubs? Girls don't go there to meet strangers. What are you supposed to do - tap them on the shoulder while they're at a table with their friends? Day game? Sure, if you want to get arrested. Salsa class? 6 months of doing something you have no interest in on the off you meet a single girl who's into you... I think I'll pass.

 

I can actually get the odd date with a 5 or 6 after spam messaging 50 girls or so (protip: only contact the ones who "reply often"). It's converting those dates into sex that's the hard part.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Bob_Funk

[USMCHokie]

Overall your points are valid but a little exaggerated. When you do a search on Okcupid it will show you if a woman doesn't respond often, but it will also show you if she has been contacted. I often see decent looking women on there who don't seem to get any messages. It will say under her picture "She has not been contacted this week".

 

So what's really going on is the top 10% of men and the top 10% of women are getting flooded with attention while everyone else is getting scraps. I'm sure it also depends on the area you live in and the site you use.

 

The area you live in is EXTREMELY important in determining how successful you can be. Online dating for men in anything but urban and populated suburban areas is going to be difficult.

 

Now this whole top X% argument is certainly compelling, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. However, there will be naysayers out there...so to preemptively respond to that, let's just ignore the top% concept for the second and focus solely on base numbers. We can safely assume that there are more men on the sites than women, especially with active accounts. Even if we factor in an extremely generous 1.5:1 male/female ratio, out of a 100 people, that breaks down to 67 males and 33 females. If we paired up everyone, you'd still have 33% of the population dateless, all of which are male.

 

And then when you factor in the top% argument and the artificially inflated value of average to below average women, the numbers simply do not play in the favor of the men.

[SJC2008]

Good looking men run OLD. They message women a few points below their league, go on a couple/few dats then pump and dump. These women ignore average men because all of a sudden they can get good looking men and get an ego boost but still don't realize they are punching out of their league and wonder why they're getting pumped and dumped.

 

There are women with realistic expectations out there you just gotta find them. I've met 7 women in 7 months and I'm average/cute and I was only extremely attracted to 1 of them.

[DontWorryBHappy]

I message a cute guy in another city. Yeah, a bit far away but I say what the hell, he is pretty cute and maybe we'll have a convo.

 

Me: liked the brief things you said in your profile and you're cute, too. I'm Kim

Him: U tryin to drive up to get piped real quiiiiick? I'm Doc. :3

Me: Sigh, goodbye.

Him: Sigh, prude :/

 

His profile said he was looking for a relationship too. I'm having crappy luck across the board. Guys will show lots of interest and I get to talking to them over text, and I'm willing to meet pretty quickly, but somehow they just drop off before then. Pretty exhausting..

Edited July 16, 2012 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Consolidate threads

[Teal]

I'd probably brush it off as silliness/very forward flirting unless he started pressing it.

[bobsmith76]

I don't get it. I created an account on one of the free sites about a month ago with 4 or 5 nice pictures (everybody says I am very handsome) and a well written profile that I showed to 4 or 5 people (who all said it was fine) and I haven't gotten 1 response to 13 sent messages by me. This is just simply unbelievable. I'm not sending anything sexual either, I would actually like to meet somebody nice - I have no problem getting laid in my personal life. I'm just engaging the ladies in regular conversation

 

 

How does online dating work? Do the top 1% of guys get 90% of the women while everybody else gets nothing? What is it that women are looking for?

 

 

For god's sake, I used to message girls on Myspace way back in the day and got a way better response rate than this

 

I have the same problem. My stats are from April 2011 until June 2012 I've sent out about 150 messages and they resulted in 2 dates. I received about 2 a month, so that's about 30 emails and went out on a date with two of them. None of the 4 dates made it to a second date. I also get told I'm handsome. My advice is that women don't understand what they're doing. You can't get through to them. One other statistic. I had about 20 women respond positively to my message, then they vanished after the 2nd or 3rd email, probably for no reason. You see, there's no rhyme or reason to it. I also get told I'm handsome and all that.

 

The only advice I would give is suck it up and ignore it and keep trying because you can't catch any fish if you don't go fishing. I used to have a lot of respect for women but I have to admit my experience with online dating and dating in the real world but after numerous rejections I'm starting to grow bitter and disillusioned.