Monday, July 26, 2010

A/S/L?

Many moons ago I made a half-ass attempt at trying online dating. It lead to several AIM conversations with some of the guys I had messaged, 1 actual date and an over a year-old friendship with a chick who I met on the site, non-sexually. The guys seemed normal enough at first: talked about common interests, didn't ask me for nude pictures. So I agreed to meet up with one for dinner in the city. We had a good conversation at dinner and things appeared to be going well until we decided to grab drinks afterwards. As this guy started drinking more, he got progressively obnoxious. He worked at some big network Cable station in their web development/gaming dept. - so clearly was a big video game nerd. I told him that my dream job was to work in the PR/Marketing Dept. at Nintendo. Instead of being like, "Oh wow. That's awesome", my statement was instantly met with "Oh, well, Nintendo only hires within so you need to know someone in order to work there." Strike 1, guy. Just because they rejected your ass when you tried to apply there because you design flash games for a living doesn't mean that no one else can get a job there. Then, as the night was growing later, I had to get back to the train for my ridiculously long trip back to CT - and he knew this. Instead of hailing a cab, he insisted we walk all the way back to Grand Central.... from 9th ave. Strike 2.

Of course I missed my train. He had been persistently trying to convince me to go home with him at the bar, (to his parents house in upper Westchester, the completely wrong direction from my parents house, and on a work night no less.) so this was obviously some kind of plan of his to try and get me to come back with him. Sorry buddy, not happening. Once he realized that I wasn't going to play with his Wii, he went to go catch his train which was leaving in 10 minutes and left me there! My train only ran every hour and wasn't coming for another 40 minutes. Strike 3. Seriously dude? You wanted  to get in my pants so bad but you couldn't do me the courtesy of hanging out with me and entertaining me while I waited for my train after you made me miss one? Well, instead of looking like a bum curled up on the floor of GCT, I decided to take a local train that would eventually connect to my train in order to kill time. At least I could nap comfortably that way - and try to get as far away from any memory of that horrible date as quickly as possible.

Needless to say there was no second date. I blocked him on the dating site and blocked him on AIM.... only to have him IM me from a DIFFERENT SCREEN NAME! (Stalker much?) and ask me why I had blocked him. To which I didn't even respond. I became so frustrated by the failure of this date that I blocked the other guy from the dating site on AIM too - and he ALSO IMed me from a DIFFERENT SCREEN NAME! asking me why I had blocked him. (What is this, High school? I'm gonna go on another screen name to ask you why you blocked me? Is it really that serious?) So at that point I had had enough. I logged into the dating site, found the account settings function and clicked "Delete Account" faster than you could say Norman Bates.

.........

Fast forward to now: I am trying to give this online dating site a second chance. Mostly as a social experiment and possibly fodder for my future PhD in the Social Psychology of Men. I really love the piss-poor attempts at communication that some of these guys give you on this site. Yes, let's not even use actual sentences or complete thoughts or even try to start a conversation with you. Let's cut to the "YO SHAWTY! I LOVE THEM LIPS GURL!" or "Wink! You have sexy eyes!" Do guys seriously think girls are going to respond to them? Or is that the point - to try and push people's buttons and send those same generic messages to as many "hot chicks" on the site as possible and see who takes the bait? I guess if I really wanted to take it further and instigate for scientific purposes, I could create a fake account and see what the responses are like then; But I really don't have the time or patience for that until I start writing my thesis.

For now though, I have had several normal conversations with a few somewhat attractive guys who seem to be genuinely interested in me. And I even have a date for Friday. Will round 2 of online dating go a lot better than round 1? I guess you guys will find out on Saturday.

3 comments:

  1. Keep me updated. I secretly love online dating and e-flirting!

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  2. YO SHAWTY, THEM TITS IS BANGIN'

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  3. i know it's hard to not think that all guys are complete morons on the internet after meeting one jerk, but yeah, i'd give it another go if i were you.

    granted, i never had much luck with online dating back home, but in Japan, it's been getting a 50/50 success rate so it's not so bad.

    also, if it helps to further your research, i accidentally set up two profiles on the same website, and one of them has a sexy-ish party picture as the profile pic, whereas the other one has a cutsey, more demure one. granted this is japan and men are weird and like their girls to be "kawaii" and all, but the demure pic is getting WAY more mail and attention than the other one... interesting....

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