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I have never used online dating in my life but what I have seen on this forum and heard in real life; You need thick skin to succeed in it.
It's a pure numbers game until you get the girl on a date/serious about knowing you.
A lot of people says things through email that they would not say IRL.
It's generally a poor ROI for men. On paid sites, you spend hours writing up creative emails when 40% of the women you message are not even paid members. The free sites are loaded with immature girls who got bored with their facebooks. Finally, after messaging 7 girls, you get one girl to respond with a "sup".
It's hard to make things organic even once you do secure an in-person date. Move too slow and they'll forget about you, think you're too soft. Move too fast and you're at risk of just having a hastily scheduled, awkward coffee date or two. You have to walk a fine line between promptly pursuing a girl via messaging to a date while still making things feel as if an organic meeting and potential relationship is happening.
This also goes for a lot of guys, but a lot of girls on dating sites are just sampling, just testing the waters, looking for an internet pen pal, etc. You have to get good at weeding these ones out without wasting your time on them.
As others have mentioned, it is a numbers game.
IMO, it's also all about ego. Many, but not all women on OLD sites will have an occasional man IRL (not on OLD) throw himself at her feet! She'll either friend-zone him, or ignore him completely; in the former, she'll claim "I value our friendship too much...to sleep with you!" Or some such lame truck.
Now, on the OLD sites - and I don't care which site it is - that same woman will have ten men messaging her, wanting to chat, take her out on a date, etc. Anyone can do the math and know the ratio of RL pickups vs. OLD pickups. It's an ego booster for a woman, any woman, to have a stampede of men chasing her. Wouldn't you think?
A sample of my most recent messages before I deactivated my profile"
"sup"
"hry" (which I thought was misspelled "hey" but actually is text speak for "how are you?" which means people are too lazy to even write how are you?
"Nice *******"
"Let me *** in you."
And a variety of cut and paste messages from men who are over 100 miles away from me or in other countries.
So no, no there is nothing ego boosting about this. At all.
One of the last messages I got before I deleted my profile was "nice big eyes." Okay, my eyes are rather squinty and he had larger eyes so I wasn't sure who's he was talking about.
My favorite though was the one on OKC that started with "Hello and thank you for reading my Craigslist ad." If you're going to cut and paste, at least edit the site!
Most of my messages came from 20-somethings in Morocco who wanted to know if I was ever going to come back and visit again.
When I deleted my account, my average profile views per week was down to 6 and the few messages I was getting - one every couple of weeks or so - were filtered to my "other" box because they were out of my age range (35-48), location (within 50 miles) or both. My best friend talked me into deleting it rather than disabling it because he could see what a toll it was taking on me to have had friends pick out pictures for me, help me with my narrative, going through the process of rotating my pictures, answer more questions, message 3-5 men a day, etc and get absolutely no where. I even had an objective, unbiased profile review from a member of this board.
I'm sure there are some that do get 20 messages a day; I think it took me about a month to get that many, including all the "hi how are you" messages and the "oh, she's not getting any action, let's throw her a fake message for encouragement" messages.
A sample of my most recent messages before I deactivated my profile"
"sup"
"hry" (which I thought was misspelled "hey" but actually is text speak for "how are you?" which means people are too lazy to even write how are you?
"Nice *******"
"Let me *** in you."
And a variety of cut and paste messages from men who are over 100 miles away from me or in other countries.
So no, no there is nothing ego boosting about this. At all.
LOL.
Last 3 messages I received:
Guy A: "Finding you really alluring and attractive. I work down South but am in your city each week with work - including this week. Looking for a hot friend to go out with and if we click have some sensual fun/exploration" (my profile clearly states that I'm looking for a relationship. Guy's profile picture is just his naked upper body sporting a beer belly)
Guy A: "Finding you really alluring and attractive. I work down South but am in your city each week with work - including this week. Looking for a hot friend to go out with and if we click have some sensual fun/exploration" (my profile clearly states that I'm looking for a relationship. Guy's profile picture is just his naked upper body sporting a beer belly)
Guy B: "Let's go on a date and get DRUNK"
Guy C: "Hi My Dear. How are you My Dear?"
What an ego boost (NOT)
Oohhh who's wants to see a six pack when you can see a beer belly instead? Sign me up for that ego boost lol!
I noticed this too...and definitely that guys would put their range up to their age (sometimes!) but never above it...but starting waaaaaaaaaaaay younger.
So for instance, a 40-year-old man giving his target range as "22-39." Or even "22-35." (Please note: this was definitely not ALL guys! But a really pretty significant number, from what I had noticed just browsing.)
I heard the same reasoning for putting that maximum age gap on POF. Either this type of restriction doesn't apply to all dating sites or it didn't apply yet back when I was dating. I never tried POF specifically, though.
I feel this sort of thing only encourages guys to lie about their ages, frankly. The 1980s high school yearbook photo is sometimes a giveaway.
On POF men can't message a woman more than 13 years younger than him. Apparently young women were complaining getting messages from men from 40 years old and up.
Guys have all types of negs in their profiles, just because you didn't find them doesn't mean they don't exist.
You going to call women liars because you spent 10 minutes to check a microcosm of the dating pool?
Most women wear make up. That's being deceptive. :P
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