Archive for February 2nd, 2010

Okay, online dating, I want the millions of hours of my life back. Given the right diversion, I can be a pretty epic time-waster. Online dating is the right diversion. I am now horrified at the amount of time I have wasted.

Part of the problem here is the incredible aesthetically pleasing forum that is OKCupid: I highly recommend this website filled with endless diversions and interesting activities aimed at finding you your soul mate. Admittedly, I couldn’t care less about finding my soul mate, but lord knows I like to reflect on how clever I am (it’s probably telling that my profile is ALWAYS in my 6 most recently viewed), so crafting a profile and taking personality tests and generally being analyzed and validated are right up my alley.

Probably 75% of the time I spend signed in on OKCupid, I’m doing things to “find out” what my dating personality is, discover what qualities I should look for in a mate, reaffirm what qualities are great about me, and note where the most matches for me live (Massachusetts… score another point for Boston). Being a hyperanalytical person, these answers are somewhat obvious to me anyway, so it’s not like I’m actually self-actualizing or learning anything new. The supposed advantage to this extensive personality testing is that the site takes all the aggregated information and matches you accordingly, suggesting men who might find me attractive or might be exactly the same. Unfortunately, when I’m left to my own devices, I look for guys that are hot and smart, regardless of their calculated compatibility. So, as with the real world, I’m pretty much stuck in my type-defined crapshoot: maybe I’ll roll an interesting socially-apt stud-muffin, maybe I’ll come up with a Jesus-loving D&D geek. Equal odds.

Validation I also receive: getting ranked highly by a member that I also rank highly generates an email telling me of our mutual interest (I wish this was a feature of real life… someone should create a live social network that could be tapped into by mobile device at a bar that allows you to publicly rate the person across the room, thus cutting to the chase instead of making coy eye contact all night and never initiating the approach). I can see who views my profile excessively and adds me to their favorite list. And I receive awards from other members telling me how brilliant my profile is. This feeds my ego. I like that. All of these little things keep me checking back, rat-at-the-feeder-bar style, for more proof that I’m awesome and everyone ever wants to go on a date with me.

Another chunk of my time is spent searching, which is delightfully like Build-a-Boyfriend—I can literally filter by everything I want (though I wish there were “hot” and “smart” filters). It’s information overload, but the sea of fish is large, and I am ready to swim. I’ll start with a local search, seeing what babes exist around the Denver-Boulder area. I’ll inevitably get frustrated, having thoroughly perused most of those, and I’ll cast a wider net to, like, the world. Then I’ll spend hour upon wasted hour clicking through exotic men in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, and a myriad of other glamorous cities with some sort of hope somewhere that one will think I’m cute, write me a devilishly charming message, keep up a romantic correspondence…. And then probably never talk to me again. Come on, all I really want is an email saying you think I’m cute even though we live thousands of miles apart… is that so hard?

I’m not the initiating type as first online dating emails aren’t my writing forum, so when I do find someone who interests me, I spend several hours excessively clicking on their profile so they’ll see me in their recent viewers and, obviously, get in touch with me. Again, hours. Stalking ain’t easy.

All of these are means to validate me and so constitute the majority of my time on the site (and, arguably, the reason I spend an unhealthy amount of time trolling the web). Letting it come to me doesn’t really help, though, because I still have to sift through all the first communications from dudes to find the ones that might be worthy of a response (namely, the guys I looked at obsessively BEFORE they sent the email). I doubt it’s just me with this problem. I’m sure all women and a lot of men have the same issue. The sheer quantity of communication is stressful—even if there are a couple of people that I’m interested in, I don’t always have the time to wittily respond (and since blatantly ignoring communication is socially acceptable in online dating, I usually don’t). This doesn’t really shave any time off the whole ordeal, though, because with all the crap, I’m living in perpetual fear that I’m going to miss someone really good because I simply get frustrated with all the bad. Therefore, I carefully comb my inbox looking for diamonds in the rough long after the messages have been sent and ignored.

A sampling of my inbox:

1. Hey, how r u?

Seriously? Obvious problems with abbreviations aside, what do you expect to be my response to that? “Fine.” End of conversation.

2. I see you like kids and dogs. Will we have one together? I think you might be my soul mate.

First of all, absolutely not. Second of all, the only reason I said I like kids and dogs is because I’d sound like an ass hole if I didn’t like kids and dogs. Seriously, who doesn’t like kids and dogs? Third of all, if the basic information section of my profile is the only thing you found to talk about, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we don’t have much in common.

3. (Long, convoluted rambling followed by 19 questions I’m supposed to answer to “make conversation”)

I am not your therapist. I am also not your test audience for your experiment with the use of the written word (maybe you should get a blog… I hear then people have to read your convoluted ramblings whether they like it or not). And your 19 “deep” questions demanding paragraphs about everything from my life in Buenos Aires to my thoughts on heart vs. head overwhelm me to the point that I’m just going to ignore this message, no matter how much potential I initially thought we had.

I can only imagine how much MORE exhausting this part is for guys, who probably aren’t on there for all the self-validating reasons I’ve just presented. Like in the real world, the pressure is definitely on the male to initiate. Filtering through a million profiles and then crafting an appropriately witty email that may or may not get a response sounds wretched and degrading. I applaud your motivation and initiative. I’m (a little) sorry I very rarely respond.

If all of this was leading up to something, like me discovering the man of my dreams who’s going to whisk me off into the sunset and warm my stone cold heart, maybe I could justify it. But I’ve already established I couldn’t care less about that, and with my limited time left in Boulder, that’s about as likely as sweeping change in healthcare. So instead I just get the obvious opportunity cost of responding to people when things aren’t going to work out in real life. Several of the meetings I’ve had have been just a case of two nice people with no real chemistry on any level. These range from painfully awkward to pleasantly dull. And in my head, I can’t help thinking, hey, thanks for the lack of climax. Good thing I spent all that time writing clever responses so we could meet in real life and never talk again.

Oh, sure, I’ve had some uncharacteristic success, what with the whole Tyler saga, etc, but seriously, save me from myself. I probably could have discovered the cure for the common cold or solved the world-poverty problem or built a multinational corporation in all the time I’ve spent on OKCupid. That’s depressing. I cannot BELIEVE these are the days of my life.