Frustrations of online dating: part whatever-the-fuck

Rachel L-E @ Confessio Scholastici has written a piece about the "death of dating", and one passage in particular got me thinking and grumbling about certain experiences. She wrote:

Or did you, instead, picture a frustrated, frazzled young woman sitting at home alone, clicking through endless, and endlessly predictable and unimpressive profiles on a dating website, only to go out the next night with her 20-something friends, most of whom are in relationships, missing the guys they want to flirt with, and getting flirted on and felt up by creepers?

Which is so painfully close to my own experience of "dating" that I cannot begin to express it (although as a male-identified tubby bitch, I seem to escape most of the flirting/feeling up by random creepy dudes/girls - it has happened once or twice, though, and it was never pretty).

As the astute reader may have deduced already from the title of this post, I especially wanted to talk about this bit: "clicking through endless, and endlessly predictable and unimpressive profiles on a dating website". (I do my best with my profiles, but I don't have any illusions that I have done particularly well)

I am kind of resigned to the fact that, in the current social norms, it is expected that I should make the first move, whether that's on a dating website or in meatspace or wherever, to indicate a desire. Who knows - maybe the single ladies online actually do send lots of emails to a small minority of men, or even a majority of men that doesn't include me, I don't know. All I know is that approaches to me are rare and social norms seem to tell me, and everyone else, that a man should make the first move. So I have to stump up the courage to write an email to a woman whose profile attracts me, or at least doesn't have anything about it to repel me. And yes, that last little clause does indicate a certain level of desperation and frustration. But more importantly, it indicates that a lot of profiles don't have a whole lot of anything on them. The woman behind the profile may be perfectly nice, or could have all the charm and sex appeal of Lady Thatcher (bear in mind that I am a very left-wing person politically, and think Thatcher is a demon in human form and should be exorcised from this world if at all possible) - it's just impossible to tell.

I get that it's up to me to make the first move. I don't like it, I find it a huge and sometimes insurmountable hurdle (thanks to shyness and introversion and what-have-you), but I get that that is the way things currently are and, much as I can push to change them, in the meantime I am single and want not to be, and that means that, at least to some extent, I have to play according to the rules as they are and write emails to women hoping to get a reply.

My mind goes blank when I am making an approach, whether in meatspace or online. At least with an online profile there is sometimes some hook on which I can hang a sentence or two. If, on the other hand, the woman has entered the bare minimum details (age and location look like they match well for me, and maybe a photo of her at some party with her drunk-looking mates) and then typed something like, "I like going out with my friends or staying in with a dvd, I just need a man to share my life with," - or even less - then what's a guy to do? She could be great company or totally boring, she might be great company, or could be the most annoying person I could ever meet. Even worse is, "Will fill this in later." And they have been on the site for 6 months or whatever!

There's only so many variations on "You meet my absolute basic requirements, but you haven't said anything else to find out if there could ever be a connection, so why not write to me and tell me something about who the fuck you are?" that you can come up with, that don't descend to the level of rudeness and annoyance displayed in that particular formulation that I just typed out! My favourite variant [EDIT TO ADD: in that it appeals most strongly to my inner bitch, not in that I think it in any way a good move], and I have actually sent this email a few times, is:

Brevity, it is said, is the soul of wit. Your admirably brief profile has intrigued me to the point of wanting to find out more about you. Please do write back and tell me more about yourself!

(And yes, that is indeed constructed as a backhanded compliment/"neg" [EDIT TO ADD: not deliberately, but my inner bitch has hir way in this - it's included to show how being frustrated and/or desperate is not a good mindset from which to approach these things!])

I have not had replies to those emails, although to be fair, I don't really expect to get replies because the lack of effort put into the profile tends to mitigate against it. Like I said, there is a certain amount of desperation behind my own actions in all this, I admit it. but when I've written to all the women who have actually said anything worthwhile on their profiles, and none of them wrote back either, then lonely tubby bitch will eventually think it's worth a shot anyway. [NB I usually only send messages on sites that allow free messaging, such as OKCupid, because AIUI pay-membership sites only have about 3% of people on the site are members and therefore able to read and reply to messages - and these days, I am not in the 3%!]

Of course, a lot of men send out generic, copy-pasted, emails to every woman on the sites, emails that are the equivalent or worse of the profiles I am complaining about. I sometimes wonder if a blank or almost-blank profile is an attempt to stop these people from doing it (which seems misguided if it's true - because the generic-email copy-pasters don't even look at the profiles, whereas the men who might actually be of any interest to the women advertising are more likely to walk on by because they don't know if you're desirable - I would walk on by, too, if I didn't feel that desperation every so often...!)

I think sometimes that the whole world of online dating is out to get me - there's the HNGs with their copy-paste emails (and on some sites, of course, photos of their willy) making it harder for a woman to wade through the crap and find any emails from specimens of manhood with a shred of decent potential (I believe I have at least a shred!) There's the women who seem to think that all they need to do to get a superhot boyfriend is to join a site and sit back and wait for emails to roll in, and there's the general expectation that men take the lead in everything. (As a Dom, I want to take the lead in a relationship, sure, but I am not great at taking the lead in starting it, okay?) If it weren't for the fact that meatspace pick-up is so much harder for me, I wouldn't bother (and if it weren't for the fact that, despite my best intentions otherwise, in the end I don't feel fully satisfied unless I have a partner, then I would ditch the whole lot and settle for singlehood for ever and ever!)

Meh, not sure how seriously anyone should take this, I'm just whining and getting stuff off my chest.