Before the days of Facebook there used to be sites where you could just chat to interesting people and get to know them. Now it’s either really dating sites or social media.
I don’t really like social media much and dating sites come with all that baggage of expectation in terms of what people are looking for.
I’m tired of the profiles where they say “looking for the one” and “trying to find my next husband”
Half of them are as mad as a box of frogs and a good percentage of the others have more baggage than what you carry through at Heathrow when you go on holiday.
Out of curiosity I did scroll through one dating site though and I noticed that someone was just advertising for new friends… and I thought, “Yeah, I kind of like that.”
So… I’m conducting a social experiment which is a dating profile that’s not a dating profile.
I’m already getting messages but most of them don’t write very much. Men often get accused of lacking in the art of introductions, in terms of communication on sites like this, but I don’t see much difference from women. It makes me think a lot of them are jaded from all the time on there searching for the next Prince Charming. I blurred out sensitive information because I’m not a complete twat…
I don’t want to go into something with the intentions of dating, I’d rather just get to know someone and not have all that pressure on it of them having to be the next romantic interest.
So that’s the way I’m doing it this time. To be honest with you, I’m not particularly bothered either way. I don’t expect to actually meet the person for me on a dating site anyway.
Should anything more become of this, I will no doubt write a blog post on it in the future.
I think the problem with these dating sites is that people are REALLY looking for something instead of being happy and just happening to meet someone. I wonder if there are any normal people on there.
In the past when I’ve met people, they sort of expect you to be the next one in the line-up and after seeing all the women my cousin went through on them, that is not something I really want to do. He went through tons…
I met one of them and she was as nutty as a box of fruit loops. The funny thing is though, I went to a barbecue and he was drunk on Vodka. He stumbled and fell onto her and this plastic chair she was sitting on just collapsed into tiny bits. I think this embarrassed him as he laughed it off, saying, “She’ll be alright”, but she was still flat on her ass as he walked off.
You had to be there but it was pretty funny as he avoided falling into his mum and another woman before deciding his new girlfriend in the shit plastic chair was the appropriate person to collapse onto. He had no choice, he had to choose one of them as he was already on his way down… and his mum was too fragile, so the brand new shiney girlfriend was the chosen one.
I went to help her up and she yelled, “Don’t touch me” in full drama queen mode, trying to squeeze the last drop of attention that she could out of the incident. Afterwards she got up and nothing was wrong with her. As I said, on balance pretty crazy. You can’t even be a gentleman these days without consequence. “How dare you offer to help me” (chortle).
Later that night he cleared off back to his house and she kept saying to me, “He’s lost a good thing in me there”. I don’t know why she thought it was over just because he’d temporarily squashed her in the garden.
I’d rather meet ‘the one’ whilst browsing the fruit and veg aisle in the supermarket.
Still, it might make for some interesting/stimulating chats which is one thing I miss about the old days of the internet when the likes of MSN Messenger and AOL IM existed.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed on these dating sites is that the less you write in your profile, the more messages you get. WEIRD! You’d think it would be the other way around.
I actually split-tested this in the past as well and the shorter profiles invite more messages. Some do read the longer profiles but by that stage you’re no longer a blank canvas so they have something to say about you before they even know you, just from reading a profile LOL.
So with all that said, I’m signing off this post here and wishing you a great rest of your day.
Let’s play this one out with She’s So High by Tal Bachman. I have a story about this song… some years ago now I went out with this girl who I did happen to meet on such a dating site (except back then it was more like a chat/dating site) and I used to tell her this song reminded me of her when I listened to it. She said to me, “Why do you say that? Do you think you aren’t good enough or something?” and I said no, it just reminds me of you for some reason and it was because I felt so lucky I’d met her.
Loved this back in the day…