I realized my chances of meeting any males my age decreased significantly when I graduated from my masters program and took a job at a small nonprofit with a 98% female staff. It took the suggestion of my bbf, though, to make me sit down and start a profile on a well known online dating (OD) site. I have too much pride for that and I think the whole thing is a little hokey and weird. It took me nearly a week to finish the pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of questions, but I finally did and the first thing I noticed was the RIDICULOUS amount of emails I started getting. I was getting a shit ton already just from having visited the site, but now I was getting matched with waaaaay too many guys to actually go through all of those profiles. I may or may not have opened a new email account that only gets emails from that OD site. And by that I mean I definitely opened a new email account. I was tired of getting email after email after email and then having to delete 120 emails at once. That's only a slight exaggeration.
So the site itself is not super intuitive and the number of emails is pretty insane. That aside, I have had the chance to view many (many...many...) profiles of men aged 25-34 (with some random 42 year olds thrown in). It was both mind bottling and mind blowing. It was like a mind galaxy imploding and then exploding. I immediately formulated a mental two-step pre-screening system based on trends I saw in their profiles:
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It's not the pudgy puppy
I have a problem with.
It's his fans. |
Round one gets strikes and moves pretty quickly. If they mention college football more than once, one strike. If they mention college football in conjunction with more than two other sports, two strikes. If they mention UGA or the Dawgs specifically, three strikes and they're out. The same goes for the number of pictures they have of themselves holding an alcoholic beverage, number of photos taken of themselves by themselves with their iPhone, and number of pictures of themselves in anything besides shorts above the knee with a polo and deck shoes in a stadium. Essentially any combination of strikes can eliminate someone from the running.
If they pass that triage phase, they move on to round two - the points phase. This phase is a little trickier. It's similar to the grading system of awarding points based on how many desired terms and phrases you have present in a paper; however, for this test, you can also have points taken away for certain words and phrases. Points have been deducted and profiles deleted from my inbox for phrases like "I must have someone who is considered 'very attractive' by most current standards" and "I haven't read any books lately because I don't like to read." Seriously. Guys wrote that. At least lie about the book thing. Otherwise you just sound lame.
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I have no idea what this is. Google images
suggested it when I typed in honesty,
so it must be applicable. |
But points can be won for words like friendship, honesty, and companion (though one guy was disqualified because he mentioned honesty in EVERY SECTION of his profile. Yes, I mean for that part to be yelled). For phrases like, "I just want to get to know someone and spend time with someone." For mentions of humor, kindness, their dogs, and their best friends. When they list a book they've read that is actually a book an adult would read.
At the end of the day, I guess the myriad of questions are kind of useful. You can get a basic sense of whether someone is literate or not, and it's helpful in terms of knowing whether someone smokes or if someone only wants pretty people to apply. It can just get tedious and overwhelming. And how can you really know if you like someone until you meet them?
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