Hi there. So, I went to grad school for three years and just
finished in December. Let’s say that’s the only reason I haven’t been writing
at all, and that sloth and inertia didn’t play any part. Cool? Cool.
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A few years ago, my roommate Petunia gave in to her
grandma’s repeated suggestions and signed up for an online dating site. I
decided to do it too, for moral support—though the buddy system doesn’t really
work on the internet. Unlike when you persuade your friend to come with you to
a party, you can’t just stand in a corner and talk only to each other.
Petunia was willing to pay for a membership to one of the
classier sites. I was not, and I ended up on Plenty of Fish for free. I can
affirm that this is not the skeeviest dating site possible, though. I know this
because of the other sites that advertise in its sidebar. Here are some helpful
screenshots to prove that I am not making these up:
For some reason these sites do not advertise the number of
lasting relationships they have enabled.
Plenty of Fish allows you to craft a description of
yourself, thoughtfully answer questions and prompts about your personality,
provide information on your interests and the qualities you are seeking in a
match, and then receive insistent messages from people who have read none of
these things.
I was not prepared for this attention, and at first I
applied the same flawed strategy I had used for college mail. After taking the
PSAT in high school, I received mail from a number of colleges that had no
immediate appeal or connection to my future plans.
They all included a tear-off postcard to send in for further
information, and it seemed reasonable to collect as much information as
possible before making such a big decision. Even if the initial pamphlet looked
unpromising, how could I be sure from first impressions that I wasn’t passing
up the perfect opportunity?
I eventually compared notes with friends and realized my
mistake. Unfortunately, I did not learn the lesson in a lasting way.
When it came to online dating, I initially assumed that it
was only proper to reply to everyone who sent me a message—especially those who
wrote more than just “Hi.” That’s how I got myself into the following mess:
This sounded to me like a reasonable and fairly self-aware
request. Also, I had one clear reason in mind, and it was something he should
be able to fix pretty easily in order to improve his future prospects.
Providing this sort of advice—when someone specifically asks for it—is clearly
the kindest and most helpful thing to do, right?
To my surprise, he did not appear to consider this a helpful
response.
By this point, I still had not begun to suspect that he was
not actually interested in my suggestions for improving his approach. I
helpfully tried to explain.
Having learned a lot about the norms of online dating
messages from this exchange, I then wisely…repeated almost exactly the same
conversation with a different guy the next week. Optimism and stupidity often
share surface characteristics.
In the end, I deleted my profile after reaching my limit for
people coming on way, way too strong.
Whatever approach Petunia took worked noticeably better. She
steered clear of Well-Meaning Pedantry traps and managed to avoid the fecally
inclined, and I got to be part of her wedding last summer.
As for me, I'm thinking of starting my own site:
Extra credit:
