The Good - the last part of online dating and a few helpful tips

I’ve shown you the bad and I’ve shown you the ugly, now it’s time for the good side of online dating. Well shit, where do I start? I guess the first good thing is that I survived; I imagine the murder rate involved in online dating is high and I beat the odds. That makes me a winner in my books. How about that I received almost 400 messages from strangers wanting to kidnap or sleep with me? That’s a nice little ego boost. Maybe the best part is that I swam the sea of online fish and I came out just fine. Single, but fine.

The good stories I have are not my own, but they should show you that there’s still virtual hope for an online match based on a state of the art personality test! Or, that there’s still some decent catches when you’re just fishing. Points for me because I have great puns.

I know of two friends who found a husband on the internet; two different dating sites, and two successful marriages. One of them has a whole family now. Another friend met her boyfriend – is he common law now? Probably – and they too are with child. My aunt found her newest love and an old friend recently found the first good guy she’s had in a while – I’m speculating that based on her boyfriend history and the site she met him on, but you get the point. Three of those people used Plenty Of Fish; you found all the good ones and left none for anyone else, selfish bitches. The point I’m making here is there is a good side of online dating, you just have to be really patient, dedicated and keep your standards high. Also, I feel like it helps if you crack open your wallet and pay for someone to weed out all the three-eyed fish in your pond, but then again, where’s the fun in that?

Obviously, I was unsuccessful in my search for a perfect fish. But that’s ok, because who doesn’t want to spend their twenties dating all the men? I did learn some valuable advice though, and I’d like to pass it along to any future adventure seekers who might dive into the trenches of online dating.

1.      Stay away from profiles that are looking for “casual dating/no commitment” or “wants to find someone to marry”. You will get guys who can’t find a one night stand in real life and someone who’s already planning your wedding. And honestly, I don’t know which is worse.

2.      This rule is good for online and real world dating: a man’s favourite line to get you in bed is “I’m not looking for anything serious but I’m open to the possibility of a relationship if things go well”.

3.      Guys who are shirtless in their profile pictures are not worth messaging; you will get that line.

4.      If he asks you how many guys you’ve slept with and how many you’re talking to after ‘knowing’ you for two hours, he is a controlling person. Stay away.

5.      Also goes for online and real world: you don’t have to answer every message and say yes to every date. Who da hell has time for all those dates? A girl’s gotta sleep.

6.      That being said, a girl’s gotta eat. You shouldn’t turn down every guy who asks you out; you might be rejecting a diamond in the rough, and worst case you get free dinner.

7.      If it’s not there, don’t force it. Two dates justifies ‘giving him a chance’, three or four is giving him the benefit of the doubt, and if he hasn’t made a move after that, sleeping with him would just be mean. Use caution and make good choices.

8.      Be firm in your no’s. This goes for break ups, third dates, and stranger danger – unless you know him, drive yourself to the first date. Girls get murdered in men’s cars after dark.

9.      Keep as much of an open as possible. This is especially important for online dating, because how much can you really say about yourself on a profile?

10.  That being said, always keep your standards high. This is especially important for online dating, because how much truth can you really have on a profile?

I hope my stories of horror and humour, borrowed stories of happy endings and ten very true tips have been helpful. If any of you feel like trying out online dating, I wish you all the luck and patience in the world. And I hope you find your perfect fish in the sea of three-eyed losers out there. Live long and prosper.



The Ugly - Online Dating part two

Sure, you can expect the interesting pick-up lines and perhaps a threesome invite or two; you can probably even foresee dick pictures on a few special profiles – which I had the pleasure of stumbling into. Those are the kind of obvious bad sides of online dating. But what you can’t ever predict is the ugly underside of the internet; the really good, juicy stories you collect that usually catch you off guard. This is the ugly part of my social experiment; the stories that don’t necessarily make me laugh but make me cringe, and sometimes knocked me down. But don’t worry, I always picked myself up with confidence when I saw how ugly he was and how many messages I had. Hashtag humble brag – that’s still a thing, right?

The first rule of trying to hit on a girl is simple: insults don’t make friends. It’s generally not a good idea to insult a girl about one of her interests using words that are probably too big for you, especially when she’s smart enough to know that you are calling her stupid. Take ‘smoothoperator’ for example – yes that was his real username, and yes, his face was just as awful. FYI, this is not a good way to start a conversation with someone who lists football as one of their interests: and I quote, “modern professional sports is just a hyper-glamourized form of tribalism that preys on the unenlightened mind of the average layman, for massive private financial gain. Sorry L Steve.” First of all, I know glamorized is spelt wrong but I was quoting, so I didn’t want to change his spelling mistake while he called me stupid – I bolded the part where he did that. Thanks, Steve, I’m sure you’ve had many girls respond to your charming messages and attractive profile. I appreciate that you took the time to apologize for insulting me. Also, you can take your opinions and stick them up your ass, because I’m guessing that’s usually where you talk out of anyway.

Giving POF the benefit of the doubt, maybe you can expect to be insulted once or twice on your virtual travels through the internet dating scene. What I really didn’t expect? A job offer; two, actually. Don’t get too excited, it’s not as great as it sounds. The first time was when ‘generous guy’ asked me to be in a spoiling type friendship. What’s that, you ask? Well he was thinking I could date him and in return he would buy me gifts or take me shopping – or give me money. My first sugar daddy, how romantic. The second guy was a little more to the point. He was a busy guy running his own business and such, and was looking for someone to spend about four hours a week with him – yes, he was that specific. The best part? He was willing to give me $1500 cash to do so; as he put it, to go out for “dinner, drinks, and fun”. Unfortunately, I’m not actually an escort, but I did appreciate the offer. For four hours a week, that could put me through school.

My next story you can probably always assume might happen to someone trying out online dating, but you never actually think you would be one of the girls who falls for it. The ugliest part was that I almost met the catfish I was talking to. For those of you who don’t know, the catfish I’m talking about is not the bottom feeding fish you sometimes catch off a dock. What I’m talking about refers to the bottom feeding people of the internet who pretend to be someone they’re not or give you a very misleading picture of themselves and who they are. For example, when you think you’re talking to a twenty-three year old cute guy who admittedly seems a bit too eager for a relationship sends you a more current picture of himself, he looks maybe thirty-three, and not at all like the cute guy you thought he was. And then you realize why he wants a relationship so badly – because he’s old – and all those little red flags become giant red sirens. Like the wedding he kept inviting me too when we hadn’t even met, the mentioning of us living together and him jokingly saying “marry me”. And of course I thought, being a commitment-phobe and an avid over thinker, that I was looking too much into these little red flags and that it was a good thing he wanted a relationship. Nope, he wanted a marriage because he’s running out of time.

And that’s the uncomfortable, ugly part of this adventure. Luckily, every time one of these creeps knocked me down, I kept on going. For the blog, for the stories, for the never-ending pursuit of comedy, I kept on going. So don’t feel bad for me, this was self-inflicted. I can laugh at myself and these stories now, and so can you.  



The Bad - Online Dating part one

As you can imagine, not everyone who turns to a free dating site is a winner like yours truly. So naturally, I received some very interesting messages over the month. Many of these messages went rightfully unanswered but I should thank the charmers of the internet for providing me with such a great set of stories. So thank you, creepy guys, clingy guys, controlling guys, and just plain weird guys. Without you, my life would probably be better, but not quite as funny. And I’ll trade better for funny any day.

The very first date I went on from POF – yes, the ultra suspicious girl actually went out with a stranger danger – was only three days after I opened my account. Apparently, according to some of the guys I asked, the sea of winning women is shallow on POF but the deep end is full of crazy ones – I know, it’s shocking, isn’t it. So if you are somewhat cute, don’t have kids, and don’t fall in love with every guy after he asks you out, you’re a bona fide catch. Don’t count yourself out just yet ladies. *wink*

So the first date went well except for a few red flags I had noticed, but things really went south when the first pet name was used. FYI, I’m not a huge fan of pet names, especially ones that make me want to throw up, so it’s best to stick to the basics – babe, cutie, hun, and after I get to know you a bit, sexy, sweetheart, and even baby is ok. What’s not ok, you ask? Pookie. The one single word that will have most girls running from you faster than speedy Gonzales – he’s a really fast mouse, right? And if you are one of those couples that actually like to use this one, stop it. It’s gross, and you know it. Safe to say the first date was the only date with pookie.

On the other end of things, while some guys like to say hi and ask you about your interests to get you on a first date, the really special ones like to use clever pick up lines. Some of the best ones I got: “You might want to sit down, because I’m about to pick you up.” Or the always popular “Wanna see how big I am?” No thank you, sir. Based on your duck face in your profile picture I’m sure you’re less than impressive below the belt, and not quite big enough to make up for a male duck face selfie. “Causal hookup?” and “Are you DTF?” got right to the point and I appreciate them side stepping the bullshit of “Hi, how are you, I have a hard enough time finding girls to screw me in real life so I hope your standards are low enough to look past my lack of effort.” But the best one, the line that takes the cake, was something I didn’t even know was a pickup line. I opened that message to see the best three words I’ve seen on that site, “Ride my face.” Ride my face. Yes! Finally! I’ve been looking for a face to ride for quite some time now, and with no luck in the real world I thought just maybe I could find that face on POF. Long pause. I do wonder if anyone actually agreed to that romantic proposal of face riding and led him to believe that it work again. But curiosity killed the cat, so I wasn’t touching that experiment with a ten foot pole.

In the roughly 363 messages I received, I was asked to partake in a few threesomes. The first couple confused me; I got the message and obviously checked out the guy’s profile. He had pictures of him and what I’m assuming is his girlfriend in a bikini. The headline is what really pieced it together though: “Looking for girl to join for some fun.” How the hell do you say no to that? Another man invited to not one, but two threesomes. I must have made quite an impression. After telling him that 32 was slightly out of my age range, he asked me if I had ever thought of two guys at once. I said no thank you. A couple days later he apparently was preparing to negotiate this threesome and asked “what about two girls?” That was thoughtful of him to ask.

The fun thing about guys on the internet is that they’re not that great at hiding their crazy. It makes detecting them easy, but they’re hard to get rid of. At one point, I was dealing with needy, clingy, and controlling. Clingy was annoying and controlling was creepy; he asked me how many guys I had slept with and how many guys I was talking too, the same day we started talking. All three of them took effort to ditch.

So that’s the bad; the funny stories without the hits to my self-confidence. The more or less harmless weirdos of the internet that were essentially just amusing, and creepy. Either way, it makes good story telling.



Online Dating - the good, the bad, and the ugly

Online dating is a new secret trend that is popping up everywhere. We all know at least one person who met their significant other on a dating site, and chances are, most single men and woman have been more than a bit curious about it. The problem is everyone who is on a dating site is so in secrecy. No one wants to admit they turned to Plenty Of Fish (my dating site of choice for this social experiment) to find a relationship until they actually find one. And where does that leave us? How are the rest of the single people supposed to know about the world of online dating if we only ever here the success stories long after you’ve closed your account? That’s where I come in. Being a single person myself and having a slow couple of months in the romance department, after a lot of thought and a little convincing from my best friend, I decided to dive into the world of online dating and get some firsthand experience and stories. And let me tell you, POF did not disappoint.

I had a few simple rules when talking to guys on this site: no phone numbers or personal information until I had met them, I drive myself to the dates, and I pick where we go. Easy, simple, yet surprisingly hard to keep. I broke my first rule a few times, although held my ground many, many more –I believe that makes up for a few lapses in judgment. In my month and a half on POF, I received a grand total of roughly 363 messages. Unfortunately, probably more than half of these messages went unanswered –I have a job and friends and TV to watch, I didn’t have time for that. But of the few dozen that I did, I obtained quite an archive of stories. The main point of said archive, let’s not forget, is to expose the true essence of online dating, in all its glory and hideousness, so that curious and unsuspecting single men and women, like myself, know exactly what they’re getting into. So to protect the privacy of the gems I write about and the integrity of my research, I’m not using any real names, usernames, or anything too specific. I say to people’s weird and questionable quirks to each your own, although some of them should keep their own to themselves.

The adventure that was online dating came with more than a few bumps in the road, a few blows to my ego and –most importantly –a long list of interesting and humorous stories. And if nothing else, I am lover of good comedy. My tales can be split up into three categories: the good, the bad, and the oh so ugly. We’ll talk about the good last, because that’s not really the fun part, now is it? And here’s the difference between the bad and the ugly: the bad is funny, the ugly is funny and kind of insulting –ok, sometimes really insulting. I’m also a lover of organization so I’ve grouped my good, bad, and ugly stories into subcategories to help minimize repetitive tales that, yet different, sometimes sound the same. So sit back, relax, and take the next few weeks to laugh a little more than you should at my trials and tribulations on Plenty Of Fish.

TO BE CONTINUED... don't want to ruin all the fun in just one post, now do I?



The Dating Game

We’ve all been saying for years that women don’t understand men and men sure as hell don’t understand women. We get those mixed signals from the person you’re seeing or want to be seeing, over analyze and confusion ensues. My question is, is all the confusion really just a constant miscommunication or are we all just playing the game? I think it’s a bit of both.

I’d first like to call out everyone who plays the game and tell them to knock it off. I’m also calling bullshit on the theory that it works on anyone over the age of twenty-one. Sure, when you’re playing your tricks on a drunk twenty year old at the bar, she might fall for it. But that same girl will fall for you after your one night stand and you get to play the game of hide and I think we should see other people. Dating is shitty enough; why add a game to the equation and make everyone crazy?

You have the hit on her friend routine, where the guy hits on the friend of the girl he wants to take home. The theory behind this –I’m going to go ahead and assume a bunch of guys unanimously decided this is how most women think –is that the girl you’re not hitting on, even though you were flirting with her before, will wonder why and try to get your attention back. Again, I call bullshit. I’ve had guys do this to me at the bar, and you know what I do? I find another, usually hotter guy to make poor decisions with.

There’s the game that both men and women are frequent players of, the he waited twenty minutes, I’ll wait thirty minutes when texting you’re crush. This is by far the worst, because both parties are just trying to outplay each other in said game, when the end result they both want is to date each other. So why waste all that time not talking to each other when in fact that’s all you want to do? Side note, why are we always trying to prove how much we don’t want that other person in a game designed for people who want each other? I know, it’s ludicrous –I’ve always wanted to use that word in a sentence; point for me.

Then there’s a game I didn’t even know existed, and I refuse to believe that it would ever work. Flirting with a cute guy who comes into your store every morning –this may or may not be a real scenario –but he never asks for your number even though he’s obviously flirting back? Fret not; apparently he’s playing the game. Insert eye roll here. The theory behind this –the part I’m refusing to accept is accurate –is that you will be thinking about him because he didn’t ask for your number. Goal accomplished, you’ll think about him, he’s the one you’ll try to impress to get him to ask you out, etc. First of all, how incredibly cocky of the guy who thinks he can get to the top of your list –some people have a list –because he didn’t ask you out, and therefore you’ll want him more. Second of all, that game is really stupid and y’all should knock it off right now.

With all these games happening all the time, how are we ever supposed to take anything at face value? When he says he’s been busy and can’t go out but is obviously into you, is he playing a game, blowing you off or really just busy? Let the over analyzing begin. In my experience, if a guy isn’t into you or doesn’t want to talk to you, he won’t. So when he is, and he says he’s busy, we should believe him...right? No wonder single people are so crazy. So then we have the game all single people play on their own –the game of trying not to over think everything and, essentially, trying not to care so much when you’re given mixed signals. And how successful are we at this game? Speaking from personal experience, I’m worse than an amateur.