Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Retro Post- The Trouble With Online Dating 3/3/10

(The following below is a 3 year old post. Will have a regular post in a while. Just a mere highlight of my "luck" as it were.)

I have been lurking about on okcupid the past month or so, in the means of finding a friendship connection, and perhaps grow and nurture this into something else. It hasn't gone as well as planned.

Sure, in the beginning, it was peaches and cream. I had clumsily wrote a quick few lines to some vague female stranger and got a reply. A couple of brief conversations turn into a number exchange. The exchange begat a couple of phone conversations and some text messages. It seemed to be stubbornly progressing, at least in my opinion, but this wasn't to met the same way, and despite her request to meet up some venue and some time, 72 hours later, she says personal yadda yadda, and don't contact me again. Add insult to injury, I guess I'm blocked as a security measure.

Now, your humble narrator wasn't playing the whole clingy whiny pathetic motormouth sap card as he is usually prone to do with the opposite sex. It was quick, clever, and brief. Yet, once again, I feel as if I had moved too fast, or something equally trivial to give her the strength to say no. Hmmm, I didn't get forward with her, unless you consider a message of how you're doing forward, or how was your day. I can see the potent forwardness in that question.

So, life lesson learned right? Yeah, and a couple of others as well.

Lesson 1) No matter how much humor is interjected into a site like okcupid, it's still feels slightly creepy to me. I feel all I'm missing is a rustic van with tinted windows and no backseat with shag carpeting, whilst I troll from picture to picture. It's foolish to think you can devise the makeup of one's personality gleaned from a few paragraphs and some photos. There is no instant connection when looking at pictures other than the unchecked feeling of lust that begins to stir. The site was better when I was just taking the occassional quiz or answering some open ended ethics question.

Lesson 2) I may be pretty straight forward and honest when I'm trying to strike up some conversation, but a lot of women and probably guys double stack their page with bullshit. Yeah, I hear you all going "Duhhhh!" collectively reading that statement, but color me either naive or capricious in thinking different. It's a dating site, and the desperation quotient is pretty high for thousands of people putting themselves out there on the internet. You may read how said member is wanting to find a guy who listens and has a sense of humor, and how you will at least get a good friend of the prospective partnership, but alas, it's all for naught. It's contradictory in thinking you will discover that soul mate, or potential good friend or casual sex partner online, and then develop a sense of standard suddenly. All statements made should have subtitles. Like, if you read something about how it matters what a person looks like inside, they are still jonesing for chiseled man candy with the impeccable hair and jaw line, not the lemur looking cat who's trying to get a reply from her. 

Here's another one- It doesn't matter how much money you make, only as long as you are independent. In reality, it really matters what your wealth is, as your credit history is probably combed over once before another conversation.

The best one, the real clincher online is- I like to think of myself as open and honest. I will tell it to you straight and not afraid to do so. Translation- I'm sad and lonely in need of some form of conversation. I cannot swallow my fear or articulate my feelings, so I will merely avoid and ignore you long enough until you get the hint, so I feel as guiltless as an innocent babe, and give you an inferiority complex.

In light of all these recent discoveries, I really wonder if continuing this exercise is beneficial, outside of the humorous aspects of the fumbling about and ego withering shoot downs. I am a glutton for punishment though, a masochist. Chances are, there will probably be a few more posts detailing some new nameless woman without a heart this year. Biological clocks ticking and all.

BTW, if I can maintain a signal, I will try and post more often. Exercise my flabby cortex and weak medulla. Au Revoir!

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