Last Friday, work had a sausage party.
It was awesome.
Basically my office of about 120 people did a giant potluck. We brought sausages, beer, potato salad, sausages, beer, chips, sausages, beer, salad, sausages, beer, condiments, sausages, and beer. At 3:30, we all knocked off to go hang out. Some people set up grills outside, we all chatted and drank, and it was pretty awesome. Most of my coworkers are people I hang out with outside of work, so it’s nice to be able to do that.
However, for about a week, I have been battling an entirely different kind of sausage party.
Allow me to explain. Some of you will read the first half of the next sentence and go ‘Ah-HA’ because you have experienced this yourself. It was sort of my first time.
I decided to try joining a dating website last week…
… it wasn’t awesome.
I went on a geek-oriented one and created a profile. I was feeling pretty okay for the first 23 hours and 58 minutes, and thought ‘Ah, no hits. Well that’s all right maybe it just takes a while.” At 24 hours, I got a notification that my profile was live.
Which was when the messages started.
I spend most of my time alone, not talking to people, and suddenly people were approaching me most aggressively. I can handle catcalling, and have even faced off with inappropriate touchers at the gym, but this was too much. I had a panic attack and closed the account.
The next day I was telling a friend about my experience, and he basically laughed at me and dared me to try again. So I thought – I can handle this! I have run through fire! I have survived suicidal depression! I’ve walked away from five car accidents, and many other defiances of death. I have faced down angry drunks and fallen out of trees. I can totally do this!
I found a different site (not disclosing names just because other people might try them and actually have luck!) and tried again.
NOPE.
My inbox became infested with dudes. Dudes demanding attention, demanding emotional validation, demanding responses. Being a polite kind of person, I tried to respond to as many as I could, even to say ‘We have nothing in common, but thank you!’ which was apparently seen as an invitation to ramble at length about how I should give someone a chance.
I lasted about 5 days before executing a scorched Earth policy and deleting my account. Waking up today to not find dozens of messages in my inbox was bliss. Especially not dozens of messages from people whose usernames included the suffix ‘-backdoorman’. I am relieved to say that I received no dick pics, had a few interesting conversations, and made a very few new friends, but otherwise am done. Several friends I have reported the same findings, of either no attention or way, waaaay too much. Nay, the dumpster fire of the great Social Media Dating Experiment of 2016 is done. I consider it a valuable learning experience!
So now that that distraction is over, I intend to be more disciplined about writing and posting. Also, with Horror Movie Month coming up, I have to start thinking about what I’m going to watch! Plenty of stuff is on Instant Watch, and the Enzian’s got some great selections this year that I’m really looking forward to.
Thanks for sticking around! I really appreciate my readers – without you, I’m just a madwoman chattering to herself in the corner, after all!
EDIT: My friend linked to a very interesting story about a dude who created a female profile on OKCupid, just to see what it was like. His experience basically mirrored mine. Please only read if your faith in humanity is reasonably strong.
Have you ever tried an online dating website? How did it go?
Yeah, it’s nuts. I’m honestly ashamed of what my gender has made of dating websites. It’s not that these guys never existed, they just finally found an easy, public outlet for their crappy behavior. I just can’t fathom the mindset of a guy who bombards a female profile with pictures of their junk or messages that sound like outtakes from the Nicholas Cage movie “8mm” and think to themselves “this will do it! She will be overwhelmed with sweat to write me back and find out more about my obsession with wearing diapers and throwing slices of baloney at her butt…!”
Check out this guy’s story: http://jezebel.com/man-poses-as-woman-on-online-dating-site-barely-lasts-1500707724
I’m willing to believe that there are success stories, but like anything, they cost. Why are so many nutjobs on sites like OkCupid, PlentyofFish, or any other free dating site? Because they don’t want to pay admittedly large amounts of money to relatively legit sites with rigorous vetting policies to send pictures of themselves when they can do it for free. Really, unless you’re ready to make a substantial financial investment in your dating future, as if dating itself isn’t already a substantial financial investment, the free sites are banging your head against a brick wall…a sexually stunted, disgusting brick wall…
Am I on any of these sites? I was on OkCupid, but was disheartened by the lack of responses. Though, I, for some reason, always make like half a profile, the electronic equivalent of keeping one foot out the door in case someone I know notices my profile and decides to make fun of me. I can’t handle that level of ridicule. I tried Match.com, got a few half-hearted responses, but again, even though I paid for it, I just couldn’t follow through with my whole heart. It was just too humiliating to consider; besides, I can go to any bar and get rejected for free, AND there’s beer! I closed that account after a couple months. My OkCupid account is still floating around because I’m too lazy to close it completely, so like that MMORPG where there was one guy still running around a vast, empty computer generated world on dusty servers inexplicably still running, my OKC profile, with my picture from 2009 and current age and all the profile description sections still empty, roams the cyclopean wasteland of dick pics and sad, lonely lives.
I’ll probably have better luck elsewhere.
That Jezebel article is pretty much what happened to me, word for word, including the bad taste about humanity left in one’s mouth. I tried to shrug it off and just flat out couldn’t – it was like Ben Kenobi hearing Alderaan destroyed, except instead of people crying out in terror they’re crying out in pain, terrible loneliness, and dreadful sexual propositions. I found myself dragging that around with me and dreading opening the window.
I thought about upgrading to a paid account where you can browse invisibly, and then it just made me mad that I would have to do that to avoid unwanted attention from shitbags. I don’t think everyone on those sites is some sad loser or anything, but their voices get lost in the clamor of ‘SEND NUDES HUR.’
Anyway, I’m done worrying about all that. It’s too much bullshit to put up with, and I’m busy enough.
Speaking of which, see ya Saturday dude! 😀
Here’s a link to that story about the one guy left in an empty, 20 year old MMORPG: http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/03/29/old-mmo-one-person-still-there-video/
Hairless pets…WEIRD!
Jesus, that’s like a real life version of that Japanese horror movie ‘Pulse.’ D: MOST disturbing! But also fascinating!
It’s been a few years since I’ve been in the online dating world. I had good luck with online dating, but again- I’m a dude. That being said, I generally got one reply back for every ten people I messaged. (And I never did the spam thing, although I did once message the same girl twice, six months apart. I had conversed with her on the first round, and entirely forgot about it when I saw her profile come up again months later. Very embarrassing.)
My experiences are thus:
E-Harmony: The only match I ever got was 250 miles away. I am not their target audience.
OKCupid: Lots of good matches, lots of conversations, many first dates. It’s where I met my current girlfriend, in fact.
match.com: I paid for this one on and off over the years. In 2002, I met and dated someone from the site for a month or so. She and I have been friends ever since, even though the dating didn’t take. In 2008 I tried again, and got a three year relationship out of that one before we also became “just friends.” Apparently match.com is good for making long term friendships. Who knew?
plentyoffish, jdate: never met anyone from these two.
In the early 2000s, nerve.com was the gold standard. Their dating was fantastic and full of people like us, smart and funny and geeky. Then they sold the dating side to the people that run “adultfriendfinder” and it became a steaming pile of shit. I don’t know if they still have dating stuff on the site, I haven’t really poked around there in a while.
One final thought- I started to get more messages initiated by women immediately after I turned 35. I guess it’s harder to find well spoken single unattached guys past a certain age. Or maybe I’m over-thinking it. I also got more messages around the holidays, so maybe it’s just a loneliness thing.
(and, unrelated, I love the hot dog gif up above. I’ve always found that image to be hilarious. I have no idea what it’s from.)
I’ve no idea either! I see it on Imgur now and then and it was TOTALLY apropos for this situation.
I’ve heard different things about different sites, but I think if I were to try again with online site I would get the paid feature where you can browse invisibly. And since I can’t afford to pay for something like that, I don’t have to worry about. Problem solved! 😀
But seriously thanks for your input! The only reason I tried was because a few friends suggested it might be a nice way to meet people. Two days into the experiment I realized that not only do I not want to the attention from strangers, I don’t have the time it takes to wade through the mire. I’m totally fine alone, but I just had that curious ‘I wonder if…?’ and the answer is Dear God No Never Again lol. 😀