they really said this.
April 13, 2014 8:29 AM Subscribe

It Happened to Me: I am the Most Popular Woman on OKCupid, and by most popular, I mean the "most messaged."
posted by and they trembled before her fury (202 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite

Years ago, a guy was putting me through some head-gamey shit. A couple I knew had just started dating, and were kind of confidants about the situation. One night I met them for a drink, right after the latest round of nonsense from the dude, and I told them the whole story. The guy sat there, astounded at what the guy I'd been coping with had done - and then the girl grabbed his shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, "do you see now? This is why women are like that."

"This is women are like that" is a phrase that comes to mind a lot when reading these.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on April 13, 2014 [54 favorites]

From the last link:

I had a dream last night that a grilled cheese sandwich was eating me. What do you think that means?

If this is a Mefite, he needs therapy.
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:45 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

These are New Yorkers messaging her, presumably. IME, they all need therapy.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 8:47 AM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

The common theme in articles about online dating (OkC, Tinder, etc) is that it's hard. It's obviously a lot harder for women; I've been on and off OkC for a long time - I joined around 7 years ago and met my girlfriend there 2 years ago, so I'm no longer on there - and I never had a single interaction that was creepy, whereas every single woman I know who has been on OkC had to soldier through a whole bunch of creepy shit to get to normal, not-awful people.

I feel for the woman who's the most popular. OkC is a great resource, and it works (I met a lot of great people there), but it is also a lot of work, especially if you're constantly getting a nonstop stream of garbage dudes. There's a disjunction between what online dating seems like (oh my god so many people to choose from! I can date them all!) and what it actually is: the same old social interactions but in a new setting. If you approach it like a job, where you log an hour or two when you get the chance, it'll pay off. But, just like dating in the real world, constant exposure shaves off bits of your soul.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 8:54 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

They're all pretty hot. I think they deserve a television show.
posted by oceanjesse at 8:54 AM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: If this is a MeFite, he needs therapy.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:57 AM on April 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

They're all pretty hot.

Interestingly, I wouldn't expect the hottest straight guy and girl to be into each other, based on reading the interviews with them. They seem like they're in very different circles.

It would be interesting to see who the most popular people are in other cities.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:00 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

It would be interesting to see who the most popular people are in other cities.

The Internet Dating Hunger Games.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:01 AM on April 13, 2014 [13 favorites]

Interestingly, I wouldn't expect the hottest straight guy and girl to be into each other, based on reading the interviews with them.

To be honest, he sounds like a gamefying douche, while she comes off as relatively normal.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:05 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

To be honest, he sounds like a gamefying douche, while she comes off as relatively normal.

Yes. There is so much that one could read into heterosexual relationships based on this extremely small sample.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:07 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

God, these are always so hilarious.

A few choice messages I have received in the past week:

"please tell me you didnt back that butt up onto my glasses because now i cant find them"

"Let me avoid the usual Hi's and make it a little more interesting.. Let's say tomorrow we have a Jurassic apocalypse dinosaurs come back somehow and start trolling the cities, accidentally damaging a lot of property and even killing people .You were put in charge of saving the world ...you call for an all important meeting as you have only 48 hours to save the world .... ..so my question to you is ..I find you really cute and would like to know if i can take youu out for coffee :) .."

"This one time I rode a laser eye t-Rex into battle with chainsaw arms against an army of 10,000 pigs riding bears in golf carts. There was much bacon to be had out of bears skulls."

"So do u have a name?"

posted by phunniemee at 9:08 AM on April 13, 2014 [11 favorites]

Well yes, but just by being a guy on OKC you get an automatic -10 Probably A Disturbing Creep penalty, so it mostly cancels out.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:10 AM on April 13, 2014 [11 favorites]

The Internet Dating Hunger Games.
The Thirsty Games ?
posted by arsey at 9:14 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

every single woman I know who has been on OkC had to soldier through a whole bunch of creepy shit to get to normal, not-awful people.

That pre-dates OkC. I know that my wife said that she had to put up with a stream of creepy messages from men on dating sites back in the '90s/early '00 before we started dating. Her profile clearly said that she was looking for a LTR but she got lots of married men looking for hookups messaging her. I got instant points for actually reading her profile and responding to the content instead of ignoring it completely and sending her a generic "hey baby" message.
posted by octothorpe at 9:14 AM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Reading this makes me SOOOOOOOOO glad that I'm happily monogamously married. But if I were still single, I would totally go out with that dinosaur apocalypse scenario guy.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:16 AM on April 13, 2014 [11 favorites]

Frobenius Twist: But, just like dating in the real world, constant exposure shaves off bits of your soul.

Christ yes.
posted by oflinkey at 9:23 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is it just me or does it seem that as time goes on and more people illustrate their interactions with anonymous, semi-anonymous, and completely non-anonymous men, that there are some extremely major issues with men in society?
posted by gucci mane at 9:27 AM on April 13, 2014 [92 favorites]

I'll confess, when I used dating sites years and years ago, I was one of those guys with the mindset of, "Women have it so great on here, having their choice of multiple men to date based on the dozens and dozens of messages I'm sure they receive daily". This in contrast to the few messages a week at best (and lots and lots of proactive messages sent into the ether) that was my own experience and I figured was typical of most men. I credit essays like this (and many, many Metafilter threads on the subject) with correcting my "the grass is always greener" assumptions.
posted by The Gooch at 9:28 AM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

there are some extremely major issues with ~~men in~~ society
posted by crazy_yeti at 9:31 AM on April 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

Is it just me or does it seem that as time goes on and more people illustrate their interactions with anonymous, semi-anonymous, and completely non-anonymous men, that there are some extremely major issues with men in society?

This is just occurring to you now?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:36 AM on April 13, 2014 [25 favorites]

I have been on dating sites in the past and I have even got a profile up on one now. Back then, when I was willing to lie more and put up a professionally-done photo, I got maybe three messages in three months. Now that I have a straight up selfie and I confess to things like being 'chunky', and most importantly I am over 40, I fully expect to get ZERO messages and I am only doing it to shove in the faces of those people who say "you should try online dating! There's people out there who WILL be attracted to the real you!"

OKCupid, with their special category for only the prettiest people, and people like this who bitch about their #prettypeopleproblems, are clearly from another planet than I am. The only time I've ever gotten creepy messages was when I didn't include a photo.
posted by The otter lady at 9:38 AM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

there are some extremely major issues with ~~men in~~ society

No. Specifically men. I mean, yes, there are problems with society, but these are gendered, as it is primarily men who do them and primarily women who are the recipients.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:40 AM on April 13, 2014 [59 favorites]

I am only doing it to shove in the faces of those people who say "you should try online dating! There's people out there who WILL be attracted to the real you!"

this seems like a waste of your time.

OKCupid, with their special category for only the prettiest people

what?
posted by sweetkid at 9:40 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'll also share this depressing one, which, among all the boring "heyyy" messages I get was by far the worst. This is, in 3 messages, a perfect example of how not to date.

Sent March 28

Hi. I read your profile and noticed quite a few things I liked about it. I don't mind if someone drinks, but I don't at all either and some people look at us weird in that aspect. I go to bars with friends every now and then but always water. I also noticed you didn't want kids either. You would surprised how hard it is to find people who don't want them either. I am sure our reasons are similar.

Anyway, I am not in a rush for anything serious but I am on this site to try to meet someone. You seem nice and established. In addition, it looks like you have experienced a lot. Which states haven't you been to yet? I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

I didn't respond. The message was boring and I'm not terribly interested in talking to someone who presumes to know why I don't want kids.

Sent April 4

Hi. I sent a message to you about a week ago and was wondering if you received it? You might have had a lot of messages so it probably was lost in the shuffle. Just let me know. Thank you.

Again, no response.

Sent yesterday

If you don't want to talk to somebody, just say so. I sent two messages to you with the last one asking if you received. I only am sending this because in my activity feed, it said you were active and answering questions.

I read your profile, sent a nice message and was respectful. A bunch of other guys on here send one-liners and pictures of their dicks. Those ones don't deserve a response. I have never done either and have always been kind in messages. I don't care if you aren't interested because you think I am ugly or that you are shallow and not interested because I watch different TV shows, for example. Just take the extra 30 seconds to reply back.

I am sick and tired of this crap. I am not expecting my soulmate by any means but the fact that I can't even have a consistent conversation with anyone on here pathetic. So many women bitch about guys treating them like shit. Here I am actually trying to meet someone. I just remember back in September when I was at a show and I was coming back from the bathroom when a woman was yelling at her boyfriend, "I am not going out with you when you're drinking again". I almost wanted to go up to her and say she could do better.

Anyway, you probably won't respond to this either and that's fine. I am just saying, it's rude and annoying when someone takes the time to send you something genuine just to have you ignore it. I'm better than this.

Anyone who's curious about the "nice guy" problem? That's it. Right there.
posted by phunniemee at 9:44 AM on April 13, 2014 [160 favorites]

I recently got back on OKCupid and, for the first time, I am getting multiple identical messages from different men. Presumably these are coming from some sort of message board. For your consideration:

Twice- "Hey, you are cute like a little mouse. Wanna play a game? And no, it’s not sexual before you think that’s what I’m insinuating you perv."

Thrice- "I will arrive at your door with a bouquet of flowers and I will escort you to a white stretch limo as our chauffeur throws rose petals at your feet... scratch that, I just checked my bank balance, let's just meet for drinks instead!? ;)"

This is over the course of less than a month, too. I also of course get a lot of "hi" "hey" yo," and as a bi woman I get a lot of tasteless threesome requests.

It is worth pointing out that, with the exception of the threesome requests, every message I've gotten from a woman has been thoughtful and non-creepy. (I've gotten many thoughtful and non-creepy messages from men as well, but they are a distinct minority.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:46 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

OKCupid, with their special category for only the prettiest people

what?

It's kind of a thing.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:49 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

The "little mouse" thing reads like a classic neg, TBH. I wouldn't be surprised if they come from PUA boards.
posted by sukeban at 9:50 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's not a waste of my time. I'm open (oh, so open) to being proved wrong. But I freely admit to being a bit cynical at this point.

OKCupid, with their special category for only the prettiest people

what?

We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid's most attractive users. and, (Mefi)
posted by The otter lady at 9:50 AM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

From what I'm seeing above and from what I've heard elsewhere, I'm confirmed in my decision to avoid online dating.
posted by mistersquid at 9:55 AM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

I assumed that most attractive thing went to everyone. After answering no questions, sending or receiving no messages and being on the site about a day I got a message telling me I was in that group. Im not sure but I don't think I even had a picture up at that point.
posted by vbfg at 9:56 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

The "little mouse" thing reads like a classic neg, TBH. I wouldn't be surprised if they come from PUA boards.

Oh yeah. Whenever I get a message that contains a backhanded complement, I now immediately google it. Same for messages that are very elaborately written yet don't make reference to anything in my profile.

Then I reply to the messages with a link to the google results.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:57 AM on April 13, 2014 [116 favorites]

For some reason, most (or at least half) of the messages I receive are at least kind/decent, if generally lacking in effort. I'm not sure how I filter out the majority of assholes, except maybe with nerdy glasses. Here are a few choice ones I've received in the past couple months, though:

"hey cutie (c; what's up? think u'd be up for hooking up sometime??"

"You're cute who are you & how come you're not my girlfriend?"

"Hey there. I'm in Chicago for the night. I'm a doctor and just passing through on some travels. I'm disease, drama free and a good, charming companion. I'm just looking to hook up for tonight. If your looking for that tall, dark, handsome fantasy to come true, hit me up. Drinks and conversation first. I'm staying at the intercontinental hotel near O'Hare" (Oh yes, I will come way the hell out to O'Hare for a one-night stand with you. How tempting.)

The most offensive one I must have deleted, but it managed to be both insulting and seeking of sex at the same time.

What I wonder is: what is going on in these dudes' minds? Do they honestly think offers like these will be considered, or are they just entertaining themselves?
posted by aintthattheway at 9:58 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

The "cute little mouse" line looks like it's definitely a PUA thing - there's another creep using it to try and neg the woman interviewed in the article linked up top. (Link goes to her tumblr)
posted by pharm at 9:59 AM on April 13, 2014

I actually received "You're cute who are you & how come you're not my girlfriend?" multiple times and assumed it was the same dude being weird and creating different accounts (or spam).

But apparently...
posted by aintthattheway at 10:04 AM on April 13, 2014

Hey all,

Posting private emails to a public forum is kind of a crap thing to do. Whether or not "the most messaged woman" thinks it's okay to do that on her blog, could we please at least not do it here?
posted by evil otto at 10:05 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

ur cute like a little mouse

a mouse that i want to have sex with

i want sex with a mouse
posted by threeants at 10:07 AM on April 13, 2014 [65 favorites]

Is this an optical mouse or the kind with balls?
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:08 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Her tumblr blog is really funny, but a bit stereotypical of the boorish sex-crazed male. I wonder if there is a corresponding blog from a guy full of stupid stuff women say? Or is it only men who are boorish lsex-crazed louts?
posted by three blind mice at 10:11 AM on April 13, 2014

Posting private emails to a public forum is kind of a crap thing to do. Whether or not "the most messaged woman" thinks it's okay to do that on her blog, could we please at least not do it here?

Given that none of the ones posted here are associated with user names or in any way matchable to a person, I don't think anyone's privacy is being violated. Particularly given that much many of the examples are being received from (allegedly) different accounts, so it's not like we're exposing anyone's innermost thoughts that they didn't get from a how-do-I-pick-up-women-on-OKCupid message board.
posted by Etrigan at 10:12 AM on April 13, 2014 [47 favorites]

Or is it only men who are boorish lsex-crazed louts?

From my admittedly relatively small sample of straight/bi men and gay/bi women... well, yes. In the specific arena of OKCupid messages, anyway.

Although, if anyone wants to post creepy messages from women, I think we'd all appreciate it.

(PS: this is a cultural problem, not a "men are naturally creeps" problem. I actually have some empathy for these guys, since I highly doubt they were raised to respect women and then just decided to ignore it, and it's going to result in a lot of unhappiness for them. Smash the patriarchy etc.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:15 AM on April 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

Once I got an OKC message from a woman asking what my race was and admitting her location was a lie. That's not for equivalency, just to marvel at the beauty of humanity.
posted by threeants at 10:19 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Prettiest people thing not actually a big deal.
posted by gsh at 10:23 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I want to be her friend.

Phunniemee, after ending my engagement and giving myself a few months to chill out, I decided to try match.com.

My first 24 hours on the site, no lie, I had this exchange:

8:57 am: "Hey kinetic, your profile made me laugh out loud. So thanks for nothing now you owe me a new keyboard."

I don't respond.

12:24 pm: "Wanna get together? Springis here and I can get those kayaks on your car."

I don't respond.

4:25: "Why the fuck do you even go on match if your not going to answer?? Stop wasting my time."

I deactivated my account.
posted by kinetic at 10:25 AM on April 13, 2014 [18 favorites]

Although, if anyone wants to post creepy messages from women, I think we'd all appreciate it.

Agreeing with Greg Nog here - I exchanged a lot of messages with women during my time on OkC and every time (except for once) when a woman initiated the conversation, she always did so by referring to something in my profile in a clever way. The one single strange message I got from a woman was an initial message saying "what's your favorite sexual position?" (I didn't respond.) As weird messages go, that's tame. So yeah, I think you'd have to work really hard to start a Creepy Messages From Women of OkC tumblr.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 10:25 AM on April 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Although, if anyone wants to post creepy messages from women, I think we'd all appreciate it.

I get women contacting me first on occasion, and I've never had a creepy one that I can think of.

The way online dating sucks for men is well known - you put in a fair bit of effort and all you get is crickets. Not only does that not make material for a blog, it's not the sort of thing people in this culture are interested in, whereas dick pics, sexual desperation, and creepy married men are perfect for social media age outrage.
posted by MillMan at 10:26 AM on April 13, 2014 [16 favorites]

Sometimes when I hate my house, I'll look at house listings to remind myself how miserable buying a house and moving is.

Same with OKC.
posted by dotgirl at 10:27 AM on April 13, 2014 [13 favorites]

Sometimes when you hate your significant other you browse OKC and realize how miserable dating is?
posted by Dynex at 10:28 AM on April 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

The counterpoint is that at least the dudes that message women with the "ur hawt wanna fuck?" type messages show you who they are up front. Seems better in a weird way than the dudes who pour on the charm, string you along until they are bored of fucking of you and toss you aside.

Also, some of those messages from the last link are totally gross and horrible - but some of them are just awkward dudes being awkward and I'm not totally sure doing the point and laugh thing is all that awesome.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:34 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

I remember, back in the day, that one of the big unspoken selling points of the web was that'd make it easier to hook up. Guess not. Glad I'm married and old.
posted by jonmc at 10:36 AM on April 13, 2014

Sometimes when you hate your significant other you browse OKC and realize how miserable dating is?
posted by Dynex at 1:28 PM on April 13

Tell me about it. I'm thinking of contacting my ex and begging him to take me back, no matter how much he ignored me and my kids, never looked for a job, played computer games all day and rarely bathed, it must have been better than this online dating shit.

I.just.can't.do.this.
posted by kinetic at 10:37 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

I doubt we'd get anyone on MF who would admit to sending those creepy messages, if anyone who posts here has actually done that, but is there someone who has had a conversation with a friend or relative that is like that? Is there any sort of reasoning or justification for it? Or are these men just so clouded by culturally imprinted misogyny they can't even clearly look at their own behaviour?

I've asked every guy I've met on OKC if they've ever had a strange experience with a woman on the site, and it tends to mostly be in the category of women who aren't actually single, just out testing the waters during a bad spell. One guy had a story of a girl he was chatting with ask to do a video skype and then showed up topless, but when I checked out her profile she was very clearly a web cam girl (her favourite hobbies were all sexual positions) and I stopped talking to the guy as he was clearly an idiot.

Asking women about the bad messages and experiences they've had is far far more "entertaining". I know someone who had a pimp try to recruit her.
posted by Dynex at 10:39 AM on April 13, 2014

Hey folks, just a note, maybe let's not be posting the longer messages from dating-site correspondence? Paraphrase is fine, short ones seem fine to me especially where they turn out to be copy-pasted from lists of pickup lines.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:40 AM on April 13, 2014

One of the things I hate about these things that point out how creepy dudes are (and don't get me wrong I empathize tremendously), is that it gives a false impression that being decent is enough. And no, I am not "nice-guying" it (no matter how much I insist sometimes I feel like I'm one of them, all my female friends are content to tell me that I am not, in fact, a "nice guy" of that ilk, I suppose the fact I *have* female friends is a big clue?) BUT...

It's hard sometimes to not get the impression that, hey guys, just don't be a dick and you have a chance. No, there's a lot more to it than that. I'm not complaining, per se, that it's hard, because nobody should ever settle for anything than what they actually want or someone that seems interesting to them, but it's really hard to craft something that gets someone's attention without being too wordy or too non-wordy. Too eager and you seem creepy. Too silent and why bother if you're not going to communicate? Too happy? Umm, ok, yeah, sure... Too intellectual? Well, I like to go out and have fun, not stay inside all the time! Too much a partier? I don't like bros. Too fat? No, I want someone who's built. I dunno. I guess I just suck, but it certainly doesn't help when I hear stories about how creepy guys are and I feel like "OK, I'm not a creep, I stand a chance" (which technically is true, it's not a 100% crossed off the list because I'm a creep... but that doesn't mean I'm not 98% crossed off the list, and this is despite 80-99% matches...)

And why did they remove the "friend" match and now only have "enemy" or "match" :\
posted by symbioid at 10:45 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Then I reply to the messages with a link to the google results."

Then what do they say back after that? I HAVE TO KNOW.

op pls!
posted by Jacqueline at 10:45 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

I am a ladyperson who generally does not get a lot of OKC messages of any flavor, and it's kind of a strange feeling to simultaneously be relieved that I am avoiding the creepers and kind of bummed that I do not have any entertaining creeper messages to share.
posted by pemberkins at 10:48 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

There is a really simple solution for this: OKC allows women to disable messaging, so no guy can cold message them. These women then browse and make the first move. You only talk with people whose profiles you like, which are pulled from the entire population rather than heavily weighed towards spammers. Those spammers get shut down. I'm not sure why this isn't already an option.
posted by cman at 10:50 AM on April 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

How many "date/escort" scams are on OKCupid? Seems like rich pickings with that many creepers.
posted by benzenedream at 10:54 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Though actually I guess I would probably laugh pretty hard if one random woman had been like SUP BB HOW IS YR THICKNESS with an unfocused close-up of her labia

.... SO going to try this next.
posted by The otter lady at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

I dunno what in the brain causes one to want to seek out people with specific disabilities to have sex with, but, as long as my OKC account exists, I will continue to know that those people are out there, popping up in various parts of country. I've never had the emotional investment necessary to message back WHY ARE MY HEALTH PROBLEMS SEXY but maybe someday I will
posted by angrycat at 10:57 AM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Dynex: Several years ago, a friend of mine got a place with a few roommates. I don't think he knew any of them very well when they moved in together, and one of the guys was definitely an internet creeper. Every time I came by, he would ask me if I knew any girls who "Just want to hook up", and he trawled his friends' Facebook friends to message along with being on one of the dating sites. To him it was just a numbers game; send out 100 messages just saying "What's up?", and maybe he'd get a couple of responses. Remarkably, it seemed to have worked fairly well for him, since as creepy as he came off, my friend said that the guy had different girls over on a regular basis.
posted by KGMoney at 10:58 AM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Then what do they say back after that? I HAVE TO KNOW.

Usually nothing, honestly. One guy replied "have you gotten this one before, or do you google every message you get that's not 'hey'?*" I told him I only google the ones which sound like regurgitated PUA bullshit, he said he wasn't a PUA, honest, and then I blocked him because baiting these guys is really no fun for me.

He was only 22, so maybe he'll learn...

*Note the assumption that the only alternative to unoriginal pickup lines is to say 'hey'.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

I've never gotten any creepy messages from women on dating sites, but this situation has happened so many times that I don't use dating sites anymore...

1. Conversation starts.
2. We get along via email, text, and phone calls. She seems both interesting and interested.
3. We meet and she tells me she just wants to f**k. This is usually blurted after a couple of glasses of wine, typically on the second date.

I'm in my early 40s, and they usually are too. The stories are typically the same, their ex-husbands ignored them sexually. I know it's my obligation as a man to love these scenarios, but it turns out to be a let down when I think I've potentially found someone I connect with and they just want to use me, to feel wanted again.

I don't say this as a counter to the 'men are creepy' point, it's just another data point. Dating is difficult.
posted by SafetyPirate at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2014 [20 favorites]

The negative side of having so many options is having so many options. I have gone on first dates where at the end of the night I'm unsure if I would go on a second. Maybe I would choose to go on a second date if I didn't have new offers every day. That person could be the love of my life if I let the relationship develop further, but I don't necessarily have a reason to go on a second date if I'm not blown away by the first.

And this, in a nutshell, is why we stay lonely. There's always someone brighter and shinier waiting for us just around the corner. We never realize it's a mirage. It's FOMO. And for all her popularity, it sounds like Most Messaged Woman is still single.
posted by evil otto at 11:07 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

What I wonder is: what is going on in these dudes' minds? Do they honestly think offers like these will be considered

There seems to be a big assumption that crass sex-request messages sent by men don't get them laid. I think it's much more likely that online dating is flooded with them precisely because they do work. Just enough to be viable.

Looking at Craigslist (which doesn't have okcupid's dating-scene expectations built into the interface) looking past the bots and spam there does seem to exist a small casual hookup scene with it's own lingo where spelling, long term prospects, marital status, etc just isn't the driving factor.
posted by anonymisc at 11:10 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

And why did they remove the "friend" match and now only have "enemy" or "match" :\

everyone u meet should be someone u want to FIGHT or someone u want to FUCK

its a dog eat dog world
posted by threeants at 11:10 AM on April 13, 2014 [13 favorites]

I've quit using OKCupid. It was a great source of entertainment to share screen shots of creepy messages. Thinks like "dayum girl, let me objectified (sic) you for a minute" and "not to be offensive, but I'd really like to go down on you."

Now a friend of mine has joined match and is filling that gap for me. She's in her early 50s and a 47 year old man messaged her last week to say that he wants to have sex with an older woman. She replied that she doesn't have sex with strangers. He then told her to lighten up because she's not getting any younger and she's so lucky that he's seducing her. We were both baffled. Where did he get this definition of seduction?

She got another message from a mid twenties guy, who also wants to have sex with older women. Plural. She replied to him that it's best sometimes not to state the obvious. We laughed and laughed, but really, it's hard and it sucks to be considered no more than something to fuck.

So rare were the messages that took into account anything I actually said in my profile. Guys who are just stating "I like your profile and think we have a lot in commo,n" though from reading his profile I can't imagine what, and he doesn't illuminate his claim. Huge gaffes regarding sexuality, hobbies, location, his marital status (one guy claimed that he was in a miserable marriage because his wife is barren and considers it a sin to have sex with him. But he can't divorce her because she won't let him. I replied that he should try the "she's sick with cancer, so I stay married because she needs my awesome health insurance to have a chance to live. I told him that calling his wife a crazy religious nut wasn't going to get him the sympathy he hoped for. Then I realized it's not sympathy he wants. He's looking for an idiot who wont' ask too many questions. It's like the dating version of the Nigerian Prince scams...If you send a hundred copy pastes in a week and you get a 1% positive response rate, then you're getting laid every week by a new woman...they're doing this because it works for them.)
posted by bilabial at 11:14 AM on April 13, 2014 [13 favorites]

Older guy here (64) travel a lot. Whilest not asking women to come to the airport hotel for a fuck I have had some great dates through OKC and made a couple of truely excellent long term friends.
I have also received a couple of strange messages which I guess were spammers or kids playing around. One was two twenty somethings about 3000 miles away showing a lot of cleavage and asking if I would like to see more of them tonight. Others occasionally are from people who seem lonely and desperate and don´t read one word of a profile.
The people that I can´t work out are the ones that answer the question as to whether they are prepared to physically meet anyone with a negative.
I can only remember one plea for money but it was nicely done with an interesting story but still a hustle. I ignored it and moved on.
Older people have more difficulty dating because the pool is much smaller.
Interesting comments on this guardian post.
posted by adamvasco at 11:20 AM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

There seems to be a big assumption that crass sex-request messages sent by men don't get them laid. I think it's much more likely that online dating is flooded with them precisely because they do work. Just enough to be viable.

I vaguely remember a Reiser comic strip about this, where the guy explains his strategy is to stand on a street corner and straight out proposition passing women: he got ignored, called names, spit on, had the police called on him, but he also got laid.
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:22 AM on April 13, 2014

Soooo, I'm a volunteer mod on OKC. Previous training from rape crisis lines was very helpful. It's that bad. Some of the reasons I stay a mod are it helps keep the site safer for others, and also keeps me on the site in spite of being reported fairly frequently (based on my photos) as being a man posing as a ...transgendered queer.
We see about, mmm, 3000+ bot/sexcam/escort attempts a day in English. Many of them are romance scams similar to Nigerian 419, where photos and profile filler are scraped from FB and other social media. I've even seen my own photos scraped from OKC and re-used for a male ID scam!
We also evaluate around 10-25k Google Image Search (GIS)/Tineye match photos, which we usually assume are not the user (NTU) and delete, in addition to the usual pics of pets, tattoos, kids, genitalia, and unidentifiable other pics.
Revenge or other bullying ads, maybe 500 a day?
Paid staff evaluate the text material - profile wording, reported PMs and IMs. The language, particularly in PMs and IMs, was so disturbing that volunteers simply could not deal. 98% of the reported problem users were male and the vast majority of them were strangers to their reporter users. The approx 2% reported women usually (more than half the time) knew their reporter in person or were replying in kind to crude, derogatory, or violent language. Many of the items posted to theyreallysaidthis are the kind of thing reported to OKC moderation. It takes 3-5 reported problems to delete an account, so OKC somewhat facilitates serial abusers.
OKC allows queer people to avoid het people - we can neither see het ads nor can they see ours with this option. Doesn't help bi folks, and it's probably more helpful for gay females (as OKC puts it) who get a lot of traffic from straight men (surprise surprise) than gay men, who unfortunately get a lot of homophobic verbal abuse from guys whose pics they might find attractive.

In total, as EmpressCallipygos says "This is why women are like that."
posted by Dreidl at 11:54 AM on April 13, 2014 [126 favorites]

For those desparing of finding anything of worth on OkCupid.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:08 PM on April 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

"This one time I rode a laser eye t-Rex into battle with chainsaw arms against an army of 10,000 pigs riding bears in golf carts. There was much bacon to be had out of bears skulls."

Did that guy just put a bunch of Oatmeal comics in a blender and send you the result? Is he 17? Jeez.
posted by emjaybee at 12:11 PM on April 13, 2014 [19 favorites]

Sup MetaFilter u lookn hawt lol
posted by univac at 12:14 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

heya MetaFilter i left comment other day u didn't respond, u see it? Prolly get lots if comments any way hit me back babe ;)
posted by univac at 12:18 PM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

hey MetaFilter u wanna meet up? Here selfie lol

B------D
posted by univac at 12:23 PM on April 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

hey MetaFilter why u even here if your not going to answer?
posted by kinetic at 12:25 PM on April 13, 2014 [26 favorites]

I wonder if there is a corresponding blog from a guy full of stupid stuff women say?

No idea, but it would far more difficult in terms of volume of messages.

Haven't been on a dating site in years but some friends and I were just discussing horrible messages men send yesterday. It was pointed out that from women (supposedly, you can't really know can you) some people got a couple of messages like:

"You're ugly. You have no chance. Why are you on this site?"

"Why don't you smoke?"

So one nasty and one just a little strange. No one could recall any other comments from women like that.

One thing we did discuss are women who are very specific in their profiles. Such as you my ideal man is:

Vegan
Romantic
Compassionate
Athletic
Well read (citation and non-fiction)
Loves galleries and museums
etc.

It's great to telegraph what you prefer and don't prefer, especially if you assume you're dealing with reasonable, mature individuals, but in the online dating sphere, you have to be careful you don't give men the script that they can use to attempt to seduce you. Also, stay away from guys who have to tell you about themselves (i.e. I'm great, I'm moral, I'm a concerned citizen, I care about puppies, etc.) rather than those that just let you get to know them, and you them, through communicating with each other.

The catalogue nature of a dating site does somewhat encourage selling yourself as a product however.
posted by juiceCake at 12:36 PM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

One note "great listener" does not equal "great conversationalist". And "great conversationalist" doesn't necessarily mean "great conversationalist" but might mean "I talk a lot and never let you get a word in"...

Which kinda sucks when you are trying to find someone who can actually carry on a pleasant conversation and allow space for people to ebb and flow. There needs to be a term/code/phrase we can use for real conversationalists to use.
posted by symbioid at 12:42 PM on April 13, 2014

EmpressCallipygos: This is just occurring to you now?

Yeah, because now that I am a guy in their mid-20's I am keeping myself more aware of what is going on, whereas before I was younger and was someone who thought "oh it's the internet there are a lot of shitty people out there, duhhhh" or "yeah this is what happens when people can post anonymously on the internet". I don't think that's such an excuse now and it doesn't get to the root of the issue.
posted by gucci mane at 12:47 PM on April 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

My wife and I (separately, before we met) spent many years on dating sites with no luck. Then we both gave up and decided to just follow our own interests online and ended up meeting (from opposite sides of a large continent) through a non-dating, shared interest site. It's been 5 wonderful years and counting. I don't know if it would work for others but following our own shared loves created a stronger bond when the expectation of a relationship - be it sex, dating or marriage - wasn't the stated goal. I know our story isn't the norm - but I wish it was.
posted by acroyear at 12:51 PM on April 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

Vegan
Romantic
Compassionate
Athletic
Well read (citation and non-fiction)
Loves galleries and museums

ah, the much-besought VRCAWL. gonna snag me a VRCAWL
posted by threeants at 1:21 PM on April 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

I've never gotten any creepy messages from women during my online dating experiences. The majority of my conversations, either initiated by me or by the woman, have been just fine. I've met a couple of benignly loony women (not weird or scary, just kind of head-in-the-clouds and very self-absorbed), and one who was really only looking for a dom/sub sexual relationship (no mention of that in her profile). Also, I've gotten a few brief single messages that amounted to "Great profile!" from women who didn't respond when I replied...I can only assume they weren't actually interested in me but just wanted to voice their appreciation that I'd put some effort into it and knew how to spell? I dunno.

But yeah, that'd make for a pretty boring blog.

I've always assumed women get more "traffic" on dating sites than men, but I had no idea it was this bad!
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:24 PM on April 13, 2014

Probably the most confounding thing women do on dating sites is respond to your message without asking any questions. So it's not really clear whether or not they actually want to continue the conversation. Whether they do it out of some twisted sense of politeness or some other reason, I cannot say.

But yeah, not really blog material.
posted by evil otto at 1:41 PM on April 13, 2014

For those desparing of finding anything of worth on OkCupid.

I had never seen that before. She's freaking awesome. Was that in an FPP before?

To not ignore the FPP, guys are stupid. It's guys fault, guys choose to follow this stupid script guys seem to have created, and other guys reinforce that, and the cycles continue. There are lots of permutations of things that happen as a result.
posted by cashman at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, and the other thing women do, which I just find hilarious, is neglect to have even one profile picture where they're by themselves. I've joked that Tinder isn't really a dating app, it's more like an intelligence test to see if you can pick out which woman is in all 7 photos. And sometimes they make it really tricky for you and have the same friends in multiple pictures! I'm always a little proud of myself when I can figure out which woman the profile actually belongs to.

Someday, someone's going to use female Tinder profiles to power an absolutely unbeatable CAPTCHA implementation.
posted by evil otto at 1:45 PM on April 13, 2014 [19 favorites]

While this doesn't compare with what the most-messaged women have to wade through in either quantity or degree, I've gotten a bunch of no-effort and/or weird messages from women. A few unsolicited messages I've received:

"sup"

"Hey, how are you?"

"Hi :) my name is Jessica"

"You're a cutie."

"I'm here for a conference
How well can you fuck?"

"Sick bod. Does it come with the drink?"

"youre the first guy ive wanted to objectify on hurr"

"I'm usually a good girl, or woman. I don't consider myself a girl anymore. Too grown up to be calling myself that. I was wondering if you would want to fuck me?"

So at least a few women out there are taking their message-writing cues from the dudes. Most women seem to prefer using star ratings and waiting for men to message them, though.
posted by ludwig_van at 1:46 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

I refuse to online date. I attract the occasional creep enough IRL that I don't want to be bait in Creep Creek having to read all of that shit directed at me. The folks who suggest it to me obviously aren't online enough to know better, so I just ignore it.

"I don't know if it would work for others but following our own shared loves created a stronger bond when the expectation of a relationship - be it sex, dating or marriage - wasn't the stated goal."

Yeah, see, this is how I wish it was too. I do not actively want to be around Other Singles Wookin' Pa Nub because of this crap. Happy to die single, thanks.

You read these things and think, "There was some man out there who GENUINELY THOUGHT that saying that would make a woman roll over and spread her legs for you?" And the horrifying thing is that it's not one man, it's 98% OF THEM that genuinely think saying that will get you to fuck them. Which now makes me wonder: is this how gay male dating goes? Not that I know about the joys of the male-only hookup sites, but this is making me think that if a guy says that crap to another guy, he thinks or knows it's going to make that guy suck his dick. Because I guess that's ...okay?... in testosterone-based culture?

So, gay men of Metafilter, I ask you the following:
(a) Do you get messages like this on online dating sites?
(b) Would you fuck some guy who sent you comments like these?
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:47 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

..... I would probably agree to a "wanna fuck" message if I got one, if it wasn't for the fact that I am sure the guy would run away screaming at some point at the first meeting. Either that or it would turn out he only wanted me for my skin to make into a suit.

Guys do this because there ARE women out there who are as desperate as they are.
posted by The otter lady at 1:55 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Which now makes me wonder: is this how gay male dating goes? Not that I know about the joys of the male-only hookup sites, but this is making me think that if a guy says that crap to another guy, he thinks or knows it's going to make that guy suck his dick.

[NSFW] Real women read real messages from Grindr, SCRUFF, and GROWLr [NSFW]
posted by cashman at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, and the other thing women do, which I just find hilarious, is neglect to have even one profile picture where they're by themselves. I've joked that Tinder isn't really a dating app, it's more like an intelligence test to see if you can pick out which woman is in all 7 photos. And sometimes they make it really tricky for you and have the same friends in multiple pictures! I'm always a little proud of myself when I can figure out which woman the profile actually belongs to.

My brother was explaining this exact thing about checking out women on Tinder.
posted by sweetkid at 2:31 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Man oh man oh MAN. The subjects of those articles have now linked their real-life names to their dating site noms de net, and have shared specifics about how certain people have been creepy to them on those dating sites. They've just opened themselves up to some DEFCON 2 level of potential harassment. All so the sites hosting the articles could get more clicks and sell more ads.

What's in it for the people who just stuck their necks out there like that? More unwanted attention?
posted by nacho fries at 2:35 PM on April 13, 2014

What's in it for the people who just stuck their necks out there like that? More unwanted attention?

Calling attention to the problem? Conversations like this one where people say "No, wait, seriously, that's actually what's happening? I hadn't realized. Thank you for telling me."? The fact that something requires bravery and carries risks doesn't mean it's never worth doing.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:42 PM on April 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

I like this tumblr. I hope she doesn't get bullied out.
posted by Omnomnom at 2:44 PM on April 13, 2014

I'm not seeing the bravery in publicly name-checking a bunch of chumps from OKC. I'm seeing folly.
posted by nacho fries at 2:52 PM on April 13, 2014

why the hell doesn't OKC hire and pay moderators for this?

And does a volunteer have more leeway in doxing egregious OKC site abusers than an employee would? Would a volunteer mod have to worry less about getting sued compared to an employee? I am pretty ignorant about that sort of thing.
posted by oceanjesse at 3:01 PM on April 13, 2014

I'm not seeing the bravery in publicly name-checking a bunch of chumps from OKC. I'm seeing folly.

There are plenty of kind, good, thoughtful, understanding men who actually do not know what it's like to be a woman and the things with which women deal because no one has ever told them. There are plenty of men who don't understand why women don't want to do on-line dating or act difficult or rude when approached. Letting men know about women's actual lived experiences, including specific direct quotes, helps men understand where women are coming from. There's value to that and I think doing something valuable when there's a high risk of retaliation is brave.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 3:21 PM on April 13, 2014 [45 favorites]

In a similar vein, the CreepyPMs subreddit is busy as ever.
posted by andythebean at 3:36 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

folks, responding to over-the-top sarcastic hyperbole is not as helpful as flagging. Several comments removed.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:52 PM on April 13, 2014

I met my S.O. on OkCupid. She messaged me. (I am male.) She later told me she and her friends had all been doing online dating and had reluctantly come to the conclusion that anyone who messaged them was likely to be a creep, so they stopped responding to messages from men entirely, and decided to only go on dates with guys who they messaged first.

I met the guy I'm dating now on OKCupid; I also messaged him first. He was nothing but sweet and wonderful in all our online interactions, which went a long way towards making me want to meet him (and the one time we did find ourselves discussing something with naughty overtones, it was him describing an awesome-sounding burlesque act and he acknowledged that "I know it's weird to be talking about this when we basically only just met"). So I'm kind of on an "OKC has redeemed itself" high right now.

But that came after a solid 5 years of guys emailing me with nothing much to say except for "s'up", guys who stated flat out that they were gonna ignore my (kinda generous) age preferences and hoped I would too, or guys I messaged first who after a couple emails asked me if I was into one or another kind of kink, and when I stated that unfortunately was not, they dropped me altogether. And then I also got a couple messages from a guy with an admirable variety of references to cunnilingus in the text of his profile.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:54 PM on April 13, 2014

(P.S. to the mods - sorry for the deja-vu; that was the comment I made before, with the one deraily line cut out.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 PM on April 13, 2014

So, gay men of Metafilter, I ask you the following:
(a) Do you get messages like this on online dating sites?

On dating sites? Nope, nothing like that. It was usually silence. Guys did call me ugly to my face however. Hookup sites are usually more blunt, and usually tend toward " married guys going after Younger ones who they think they can "get" " or " lots of people wanting supermodels to appear and beg to fuck them and then getting all huffy when that doesn't happen and storming away."
posted by The Whelk at 4:05 PM on April 13, 2014

The CreepyPM's has a collection of PUA lines, including the "little mouse" one. Which reminds me of The Gruffalo in a really disturbing way.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:09 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

"as Lauren writes on the blog: “The majority of the messages I get ARE decent. The scum bag idiots are a small percentage.”

Well that explains some things. Still though, guys really need to get it together. Online and off. I've witnessed guys saying so many ridiculous things about and to women, it's unreal.
posted by cashman at 4:28 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

I doubt we'd get anyone on MF who would admit to sending those creepy messages, if anyone who posts here has actually done that, but is there someone who has had a conversation with a friend or relative that is like that? Is there any sort of reasoning or justification for it? Or are these men just so clouded by culturally imprinted misogyny they can't even clearly look at their own behaviour?

A guy I know is really good looking in a muscled, square jaw, all American kind of way (in a movie he'd be "Firefighter #4" in the firehouse locker room shot), and is the polar opposite of an intellectual. He is super successful at online dating with broadcast messages that are basically "hey sup ur hot, wanna hook up?" -- there are evidently a ton of women out there who are, in fact, DTF a cute but almost subliterate dude with good biceps. He's not in the category of the creepers quoted above, but he skips the profile details and just sends his copy/paste messages to anyone he finds cute, which is shitty except that it demonstrably works for him.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:51 PM on April 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

Soooo, I'm a volunteer mod on OKC.

Maybe you could answer this then, but why doesn't OKC offer the "block incoming messages" idea as mentioned above? It seems kind of an obvious way to deal with this kind of stuff. Just give everyone a box that says "only receive messages from people I've liked" and that'd be it.
posted by heathkit at 5:52 PM on April 13, 2014

It would be interesting if that information was transparent.

"Given the number of people who have liked you, there is a .01% chance this message will be received. Do you wish to continue? Yes / No / Maybe"
posted by ifandonlyif at 6:05 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

He's not in the category of the creepers quoted above

Why?
posted by rr at 6:19 PM on April 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Because the word creepy really ought to mean something like "weirdo" rather than "interacts on a hookup website in a way that I disapprove of"?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:06 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm still baffled by the guy trying to get a date here: What I learned in my first year as a female CEO
posted by homunculus at 7:08 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Because the word creepy really ought to mean something like "weirdo" rather than "interacts on a hookup website in a way that I disapprove of"?

Yes, the former is ever so much more objective and definable.
posted by Etrigan at 7:10 PM on April 13, 2014

I'm still baffled by the guy trying to get a date here: What I learned in my first year as a female CEO

Unprofessional I know but I wish she hadn't blurred out his name in the email.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 7:26 PM on April 13, 2014

Dip Flash: Exactly. I've known guys like this too. The trouble comes when 1) they meet a woman who simply isn't interested in them and they can't "believe" it, and then you have the "high school football star rapist" scenario or 2) when guys around them who aren't as attractive emulate the behavior and then are confused as to why it's not really working for them. Also, women don't want to hear that shit from men they find unattractive, so guys who aren't at the top end of the bell curve should have some self-awareness and just not act like that.

Some people might say that the fact that guys like Firefighter #4 are even sending one line messages like that is a problem; but clearly, in his case SOMEONE is going for it.
posted by wuwei at 7:28 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

there are evidently a ton of women out there who are, in fact, DTF a cute but almost subliterate dude with good biceps. He's not in the category of the creepers quoted above, but he skips the profile details and just sends his copy/paste messages to anyone he finds cute, which is shitty except that it demonstrably works for him.

Yes, people with conventional good looks who offer to have hookup sex with other people are often successful at getting a yes. Am I supposed to take something else from this story?

Because I kind of get the feeling that I am supposed to laugh and admit that women only find non-hot men's approaches creepy or something, haha we're all hypocrites. I don't see any mention that he stalked people, sent them disturbing messages or even that the women who responded had already said they didn't want a quick hookup but changed their minds because OMG Hotness.

Also "DTF" I assume is "desperate to fuck" which is kinda...ugh.
posted by emjaybee at 7:33 PM on April 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

No it means "Down To Fuck"
posted by sweetkid at 7:37 PM on April 13, 2014

Ah, well, ok then. Thanks sweetkid.
posted by emjaybee at 7:44 PM on April 13, 2014

Maybe you could answer this then, but why doesn't OKC offer the "block incoming messages" idea as mentioned above? It seems kind of an obvious way to deal with this kind of stuff. Just give everyone a box that says "only receive messages from people I've liked" and that'd be it.

I don't even work there and i can answer this. For the same reason a lot of awful shit is allowed to go down online, including most of the awful offensive and abusive stuff on reddit. They want lots of users, lots of users make them money. If men knew they could be blocked, they wouldn't use the site as much... and the site wouldn't generate as much money.

Basically, they care more about making money than letting users opt out of abuse.
posted by emptythought at 7:49 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't think I'd describe "allowing men to message women" as forcing women to bear abuse, especially since they do seem to take flagging seriously. I take your point, and I've gotten my fair share of gross horrible messages, but I think your proposed solution would both break the site and also not contribute to positive forward movement on this issue. I want men to stop being assholes, not stop speaking to women entirely.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:31 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

(Also, I could be mistaken but I believe there are some sites that require both parties to mutely express interest before messaging is allowed. Maybe Match?)
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:34 PM on April 13, 2014

Tinder requires both parties to express mutual 'like' before allowing messaging to take place.
posted by fragmede at 8:55 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Can someone spell out the "nice guy" problem in the three messages Phunniemee posted? I don't get what's sooo bad about them.
posted by mpark at 9:21 PM on April 13, 2014

Can someone spell out the "nice guy" problem in the three messages Phunniemee posted? I don't get what's sooo bad about them.

The idea that the guy thinks he is "owed" a response by virtue of having been minimally decent enough to have not sent a dick pic or a "What's up, cutie?" message.
posted by The Gooch at 9:28 PM on April 13, 2014 [12 favorites]

The guy thinks he's entitled to a response because he took the trouble to write a couple of coherent, literate messages. When he doesn't get one he becomes aggressive and thinks he's not getting attention because women prefer aggressive assholes over polite nice guys.

FWIW, I think part of it is that he's probably new to online dating, and hasn't realized it is considered totaly ok and completely not rude to not answer back if you are not interested: in a non-online scenario, it would be rude not to answer anything, even if it's just a turn down.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:31 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Here's a pretty perceptive post about the broader context of Nice Guy Problem.
posted by Greenie at 9:40 PM on April 13, 2014

Of course they aren't entitled to a response.
posted by wuwei at 9:47 PM on April 13, 2014

FWIW, I think part of it is that he's probably new to online dating, and hasn't realized it is considered totaly ok and completely not rude to not answer back if you are not interested.

Plus, in a lot of cases if women reply graciously to say "thanks but no thanks" the guy will often write back to plead with them, argue, or insult them. It's definitely worth being aware of this as a guy, and not getting upset at a lack of response. (Or hell, get upset privately that someone you were interested in wasn't interested back, but definitely don't send a whiny rant like the third message that phunieemee received).
posted by Pink Frost at 9:49 PM on April 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

Back when I was single and internet dating, I'd bury something in the text of my profile along the lines of "To show me that you've actually read my profile, please use the phrase 'neomercantilist competitive devaluation' in the subject line of your message" and then I'd just delete any messages that didn't contain that phrase. It was a pretty good screening tactic.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:53 PM on April 13, 2014 [29 favorites]

From the last link:
I had a dream last night that a grilled cheese sandwich was eating me. What do you think that means?
If this is a Mefite, he needs therapy.

Dunno, I think this is all part of the well known Jungian archetype about being consumed by "Vagina Burrata".
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:33 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Am I supposed to take something else from this story?

You can take anything you want from it. Someone asked about creeper messages, and I brought up the guy I know who writes messages that look a lot like the messages that the FPP is calling creeper, and yet they are "working" (in the sense of he gets lots and lots of weekend hookups, which seems to be what all the parties involved want). Creeper is as creeper does, I guess, and for all his faults he apparently just sends the one "DTF?" message and moves on, skipping the step of sending multiple entitled messages, trying to stalk or threaten women, or anything else unpleasant that would clearly cross a line.

Whether or not it's ok that he is sending dozens or hundreds of women ungrammatical messages telling them they are hot and inviting them to an evening of fornication is a different question -- for a lot of women, this is a major impediment to using and enjoying dating sites, but at the same time it's clearly working for other women. I honestly don't know what the right answer is on this question.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:33 PM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

A guy I know is ... super successful at online dating with broadcast messages that are basically "hey sup ur hot, wanna hook up?" -- there are evidently a ton of women out there who are, in fact, DTF a cute but almost subliterate dude with good biceps. He's not in the category of the creepers quoted above, but he skips the profile details and just sends his copy/paste messages to anyone he finds cute, which is shitty except that it demonstrably works for him.

Someone out there responds to Nigerian prince and penis enlargement e-mails, too - it doesn't counter the point that the vast majority of people view spam as an irritating nuisance.
posted by gingerest at 11:15 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

The difference is that people replying to Nigerian princes are not looking to get scammed, while people who reply to crude hookup messages are actually looking for a hookup.
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:47 PM on April 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Your friendly neighborhood OKC mod here again.
As I said, there are paid staff now handling the text-based moderation, and from what no longer crosses my screen, most of the dick/pussy pics as well. I think that change happened when OKC was acquired by Match.com/IAC (Barry Diller's entertainment media conglomerate). I assume paid moderation happened because there was finally the money to do so. I have no idea why all uploaded pics aren't automatically machine checked; many of our GIS/Tineye hits are Shutterstock, Getty Images, and so on, not just re-used porn and FB pics.
As far as I know there's no "block all incoming messages option"; why not just delete all messages before reading? There are two ways to view others anonymously; either block access to one's own visitor list and in turn not show up on anyone else's, or become a paid "A-List" member and view anonymously but access one's own visitor population.
What the OKC management has not told us volunteer mods is whether IP addresses or CCID numbers are tracked (and who at OKC has access, if so). That makes it almost impossible to block repeat offenders, and in the past, when volunteer mods felt something needed to go to law enforcement (this happened multiple times a *day* - invariably to women and occasionally to gay men or people of color), we were told to suggest the site members contact the cops on their own, that the site couldn't track individual users. I think this cost OKC female members for a while - and since men seeking women are what makes the site $$$, if there aren't enough women, the site loses revenue. Something changed with the Match.com deal, and OKC is retaining female users better than previously.
Honestly, with queer folk making less than 6% of the site's users, we're only valuable to them as diversity PR props. If we're offended bcse OKC doesn't have enough gender/sex/sexual preference/relationship status fields... OKC hasn't changed their sex/gender/sexual preference options since they were founded over a decade ago. I'm forced to assume the income from the changes would be less than the changes might cost in staff time. There's also the cost of further confusing the same obnoxious-but-pay-the-site-bills straight men who still can't understand that "gay" means Not Interested In Straight Men
As a volunteer, I'm not privy to current OKC paid staff user safety policies.
To continue the theme here, women (and some other perceived-as-low-status folks) are having to endure the usual barrage of micro- and macro- aggressions simply to find companionship. Yes, OKC is one of the better online dating options for many people, but as for perpetuating the same tired old oppressions - fuck that, it's a turn off.
posted by Dreidl at 12:15 AM on April 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Not that I got a lot out of it, but I still miss OKCupid now that I'm back in Germany. You'll get creeps anywhere, but at least its format and presentation allowed you to say something about you that's beyond the usual "height/weight/job" that you get on old-fashioned dating sites. (And, hey, can't beat the price.)
posted by pseudocode at 2:57 AM on April 14, 2014

OK cupid has always been a weird website to me because I made a profile mainly to do all the fun quizzes on it, back when it was just starting and the whole "dating" part felt less vital. I ended up making a vague online friend (who I have long since lost touch with) through it despite our profiles having very little in common.

Its weird to me because I sort of associate it with the goofy internet sites I'd go to a decade ago and now its like this huge behemothic thing that is full of creepy arseholes.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 3:27 AM on April 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Can someone spell out the "nice guy" problem in the three messages Phunniemee posted? I don't get what's sooo bad about them.

Not only is he not entitled to a response, not only is it pretty damn petulant to be all "I noticed you, how dare you not acknowledge that" (like, in a bar, if a guy says "hey you seem nice" do I have to have a drink with him?), but the last message contains all of the following:

I only am sending this because in my activity feed, it said you were active and answering questions.
If you're on this site, you need to be talking to me. I don't care how many valid reasons you may have for not wanting to do that right now. Are you having a nice convo with someone else, or helping a friend with her profile, or you don't have the energy for replies and are just answering match questions? Not fucking ok. Talk to me.

I read your profile, sent a nice message and was respectful. A bunch of other guys on here send one-liners and pictures of their dicks. Those ones don't deserve a response. I have never done either and have always been kind in messages.
I meet the bare minimum of socially acceptable, I'm not one of the worst kinds of people on the entire internet, therefore you should reply to me. Literally NO ONE else is doing anything but sending you cocks, and I certainly can't conceive of a scenario where you have enough messages from men who you like more than me that I fall below the messaging threshold. There are only two kinds of men: asshole jocks, and guys like me me me.

I don't care if you aren't interested because you think I am ugly or that you are shallow and not interested because I watch different TV shows, for example.
You're shallow.

So many women bitch about guys treating them like shit.
You're too stupid to understand that I'm a great guy, you dumb woman. Every woman is just as irrational and I'm sooooo tired of it! Why won't they wise up and date me, the idiots?

I am just saying, it's rude and annoying when someone takes the time to send you something genuine just to have you ignore it.
In the "definitely not rude" category is insulting, hectoring and belittling a woman for the crime of not talking to you.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:20 AM on April 14, 2014 [34 favorites]

I received a 419 message and ended up married to a Nigerian prince. We're still together and enjoying the fruits of a once-in-a-lifetime financial opportunity.
posted by longbaugh at 5:39 AM on April 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

showbiz_liz just hit all the salient points, yes.
posted by phunniemee at 5:48 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

One minor edit to showbiz_liz'z excellent translation:

There are only two kinds of men: asshole jocks, and guys like me me me.
More precisely, there are only two kinds of men: asshole jocks and me. There certainly aren't a significant number of other guys who are being not-assholes to you, to the point that you're able to winnow them down further based on mutual interests or proximity or hell, even just straight-up attractiveness. I am literally the only person who is not an asshole jock, or possibly just the most attractive and compatible with you, based on my own perception of you informed entirely by your profile.
posted by Etrigan at 6:23 AM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Another "nice guy" tell is that when you read their match questions, they rarely reflect the opinions of a kind, thoughtful person. Example (same guy).
posted by phunniemee at 6:36 AM on April 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Yes-- it was love. It came time to meet her family, so I saved up and took a trip with her to China or Brazil or whatever"
posted by threeants at 6:43 AM on April 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

One thing MeFi should never implement is a dating service. Based on the favouries system The Whelk would be very busy indeed (being as he is our Ryan Gosling).
posted by longbaugh at 6:58 AM on April 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

What he said was completely shitty. It certainly isn't unfamiliar. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hears lots of stories of people who are privileged who just seem to think they can say and do whatever without being challenged. I just marvel at the things people say to other people these days. There is a wealth of education, virtually free, at your fingertips, and you feel no desire to at least get up to speed on where things are in 2014? Sadly, many people are able to putt right along in their bubbles and not have to worry about treating other human beings like they are human beings instead of monetary units, tools or digits.
posted by cashman at 7:04 AM on April 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

One thing MeFi should never implement is a dating service.

The mods will initially think it was a good idea, as the site will go quiet for a couple of weeks while everybody is busy with the hot sexing, but then we will have RelationshipFilter Armageddon.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:14 AM on April 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

The mods will initially think it was a good idea, as the site will go quiet for a couple of weeks while everybody is busy with the hot sexing, but then we will have RelationshipFilter Armageddon.

DTMFA = Ditch The Meta Filter Already!
posted by longbaugh at 7:40 AM on April 14, 2014

So Fake Nice Guy.

Actually, yeah. There's a difference between actual nice guys, who are guys who are genuinely nice, and "Nice Guys," which are the ones that do this whole "I was polite therefore you owe me a date" kind of thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:13 AM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

For me, I feel like when guys are around other guys, they just get worse and worse. Some of the most convoluted thought processes get replicated and at the end of it things have reached peak crassness. And then the hand picked reports of success coupled with the ridiculous terminology and resultant posturing has a good number of guys wanting to emulate the nonsense. And then some of the guys desperately seem to want the nonsense to be real rather than an anomaly, that they try to escalate the nonsense to the level of acceptable culture. And it just never is. Or perhaps rather we need to keep working to make sure it never is.
posted by cashman at 8:32 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

One thing MeFi should never implement is a dating service.

As a developer, I have had the "I want to develop a dating site, but better" (with implied "I need you to code it for me for free") pitched to me far too many times.

If there's one thing MeFi should not do, it's a dating service.
posted by DreamerFi at 8:44 AM on April 14, 2014

So the other day I'm coming back from the Motörhead concert in downtown Los Angeles, with a friend who happens to be a woman. We are waiting for the Goldline train at Union Station at 1am, and a younger well-dressed white guy with a cigarette comes up and invades our space; he steps very close to her, and starts nodding in response to something I said, as if he is part of the conversation.

He then wanders away. She and I laugh about this briefly then go back to our conversation. Moments later he walks up to us, facing us this time, and begins telling us a story, unprompted, about being strapped to a bed covered in motor oil. This is obviously some kind of conversational gambit, but possibly the clumsiest one I've ever experienced in all my days. I am struck by his intense eye contact, and how clear headed he seems to be despite his massive awkwardness. Finally I look at him, interrupting, I say: "I am not nearly drunk enough for this. " it works, and he immediately leaves.

Over the next half hour or so, first while waiting for the train, then while on the train, then while leaving the train (the three of us got off at the same station) he awkwardly -- but clearheadedly -- proceeds to annoy everybody in remarkably confrontational ways, such as asking everyone on the train if they mind if he smokes, and when the collective negative response comes back, proceeding to heighten it by asking if anyone minds if he smokes crack, and making fun of the voices of the people telling him that they in fact do mind.

As the three of us are leaving the station -- him behind us -- he heads off in another direction; I cannot escape the idea that he just wants attention from somebody, anybody, but has absolutely no idea whatsoever how to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, my friend expresses her gratitude that I am present, as she has been at the stop in the middle of the night alone before, and if that guy had been there without my presence, she would have felt extremely threatened.

This is, I imagine, what online dating must be like most of the time for women: hounded constantly by seemingly normal people who turn out to be desperate for attention but have no idea how to go about getting it in a healthy way, and so end up behaving in hostile and aggressive ways towards those whose favor they are trying to curry.
posted by davejay at 8:57 AM on April 14, 2014 [13 favorites]

As a disgustingly happy partnered-off person, when I read shit like this, it makes me want to give each of you a big hug and set you up with one of my brothers (if that's your bag).

Let's see... there's the born-again divorced Promise Keeper one, the fedora one with the hygiene issues who only recently moved out of my basement, and the mumbling one I strongly suspect is sending messages exactly like these right now. Er, uh...

OHMYGOD, I AM SO SORRY. HANG IN THERE.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:24 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another "nice guy" tell is that when you read their match questions, they rarely reflect the opinions of a kind, thoughtful person. Example (same guy).

"Yes-- it was love. It came time to meet her family, so I saved up and took a trip with her to China or Brazil or whatever"

That's a line from Anchorman. But yeah, it reads poorly to someone unfamiliar with the context of that quote.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:28 AM on April 14, 2014

Any dude who quotes Anchorman in his dating profile is an auto-rejection for me, anyway

Yes we've all seen and enjoyed Anchorman

and Holy Grail

but like

are you capable of producing your own humor
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:30 AM on April 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

Judd Apatow sighs and goes back to the drawing board.
posted by griphus at 9:37 AM on April 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

Hey maybe the guy is looking for an Anchorman nerd and this is his shibboleth, he's not necessarily trying to make you laugh.

(I have a uh friend who does this a lot with question explanations)
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:38 AM on April 14, 2014

Dudes on OKCupid (lyrics taken from actual OKC profiles)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:39 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Didn't OKC used to have a setting that blocked contact from users who: were below a specified match % threshold; and/or had "Casual Sex" ticked; and/or weren't within your specified age range? I'm not seeing that now (maybe it's been moved?).

I do see that they recently added a feature where people can define themselves/search for others based on monogamy vs. non-monogamy. ABOUT DAMN TIME.
posted by nacho fries at 9:44 AM on April 14, 2014

As a VRCAWL I can say that veganism is not something I would include in a dating profile. Similarly, museum and art gallery visiting and reading non fiction. Generally the aim is to appeal to as many people as possible. Later if there is a conversation and it is relevant these things might come up.
posted by asok at 9:44 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

So Fake Nice Guy.

"Nice Guy" has meant "fake nice guy" for a while now, and the meaning is usually clear from context. The only objection anyone has to real nice guys is that if "real nice guy" is all they are, then they're only meeting the barest minimum of human decency.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:22 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

And the horrifying thing is that it's not one man, it's 98% OF THEM that genuinely think saying that will get you to fuck them. Which now makes me wonder: is this how gay male dating goes? Not that I know about the joys of the male-only hookup sites, but this is making me think that if a guy says that crap to another guy, he thinks or knows it's going to make that guy suck his dick.

I didn't spend a lot of time on Grindr (primarily hookup-oriented app) because I'm squeamish and prudish, et cetera--all I can say is usually if one person is DTF and the other one is being coy/doesn't show interest, the one who is in pursuit blocks the one who's not. So it's kind of a reversal from straight life, I suppose.

I was on OKC as a gay man and I messaged/was messaged by a lot of guys (and went on a lot of first dates). Since we have things like Grindr and Scruff to skim off the let's-do-it-now contingent, gay OKC was a lot more dating-oriented. As I recall:

There were a lot of "sup" and "hey" messages, which I generally ignored. I think a few may have followed up, but not with much malice or zeal.
Basically after you've started chatting, it'll be a fairly quick process of determining whether to meet up in person. There may be some innuendo, but not as much as you'd think.
Most first dates are duds. Which, whatever, is fine. It's often not either guy's fault that there's not a spark. Or sometimes I thought we got along well (maybe there was even a kiss at the end of the date!) and I'd never hear from the other guy again.
The only one that still leaves me shaking my head is a guy who was an obnoxious ass and thought it would be cool to show me pictures he snapped of random FUPAs (look it up if you must; don't if you want to be happy later today) in the Dallas airport. When I later communicated that I wasn't interested in meeting him again, he responded with, "Well, you wanna at least have sex sometime?" (Nope.)

So as The Whelk pointed out above, it can be unpleasant in terms of self-esteem, but men on gay dating sites usually don't present the same sense of danger or threat that straight women encounter. If anything, there's a lot more shyness and circumspection.
posted by psoas at 10:26 AM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

if you want to date a vegan, it seems like a waste of everyone's time to not mention it in your profile.
posted by garlic at 10:28 AM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think veganism IS something that definitely belongs in a dating profile, as it directly relates both to a lerson's core beliefs and the lifestyle that expectations that go along with potentially dating that person. It really is something that a non-vegan (even a vegetarian) has to organize their life around when dating that person, so it is best to be up front about it immediately.
posted by deanc at 10:28 AM on April 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

I seriously doubt that I would be capable of dating a vegan, and I'd be a bit annoyed if it wasn't stated outright. I am very passionate about food and will eat literally anything, and I also keep bees.

I currently live with two vegans and even though they have never said a word about me eating meat, it complicates our relationship. They can't eat my cooking, or the honey I produce. We can't go to 95% of restaurants. They have to look at my bloody animal flesh in our fridge. And these are just people I happen to live with.

Unlike vegetarianism, pretty much no one is a vegan for reasons other than "I think eating animals is wrong." Well, I eat animals. I plan to continue eating animals. And I don't want to be in an intimate relationship with someone who thinks that part of me is bad or wrong or even deeply misguided.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM on April 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

pretty much no one is a vegan for reasons other than "I think eating animals is wrong."
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:34 PM on April 14

Hi, I'm a vegan for health reasons. (I eat meat and dairy occasionally but they are "cheats" not allowed for in my doctor-prescribed diet.) We exist, but I expect we're probably pretty rare. That said, I agree, I'd expect anybody who was pretty hardcore about their veganism to mention it, if I were looking at a dating profile.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:06 AM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

If someone is the type of vegan that doesn't bring it up every ten minutes or judge everyone around him or her audibly every chance he or she gets, then I don't see any need to put it in a dating profile. That kind of vegan does actually exist, right?

I have a fair number of friends who are vegans and none of them are all holy joe about it (I've not ever met a vegan who was, actually). Nonetheless it does take some adjustments to where you eat together and cooking for them and eating at their house*. I can believe that if people are really into meat it's probably something they'd want to know up front.

*a vegan Thanksgiving is definitely a different sort of celebration. Cranberry relish is vegan, at least. Pretty much nothing else is.
posted by winna at 1:27 PM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Didn't OKC used to have a setting that blocked contact from users who: were below a specified match % threshold; and/or had "Casual Sex" ticked; and/or weren't within your specified age range? I'm not seeing that now (maybe it's been moved?).

I realize i'm engaging in a bit of horsebeating here, but see my response above. I'm pretty sure that's gone, and i'm also pretty sure that's because it's the kind of thing that swims upstream against the type of Nice Guy that feels entitled to responses from females.

I'm having trouble finding the article(on preview, here), but there was a long piece some time last year from a guy who had worked at i believe, zynga. It went on to describe how the only thing anyone in management cared about was daily active users, and the right kind of users. People lower down in the organization would complain that a lot of people were leaving because of the tactics employed to drive short term gains on this and game the rules and orders handed down to look like they were doing their jobs, but no one would listen

Basically, it's entirely my personal opinion, but i think they care about just attracting as many straight men as possibly in a completely emotionless robotic way. They'll do the bare minimum to keep straight women on the site since that's one of the factors that attracts the men. But anything that would improve the experience of the women while pissing off the men is shitcanned or removed as a roadblock to the ultimate goal of just having max users.

I think the whole thing is operated by the worst of the silicon valley pump and dump assholes. Unfortunately, it's entirely possible and in fact not even that hard once you have a certain critical mass to have a website that's popular, and full of people, but also completely full of assholes and bullshit behavior. I don't see them realizing that "there's no such thing as a bad customer" is a farce any time soon though. They do lip service by culling the most egregious abusers, people who actually need to be forwarded to the cops, etc but the general toxic feeling as described above about 98% of the men is just left to do its thing because it makes money.

I'm sure there's some good social commentary to be had here about the parallels to society at large, and it just being like an ant colony of a lot of the bullshit that exists a lot of other places/everywhere at large... but yea, you get what i'm saying.
posted by emptythought at 2:46 PM on April 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think I may have mentioned this somewhere on MeFi already, but I recently got a message saying that I look like one of the members of the Trailer Park Boys comedy troupe.

Yes, I am wearing silly novelty glasses in one of my profile photos, and that photo is meant to be a joke. So it's not like I felt insulted or anything.

But really? Like how is that a compliment meant to get someone to go out with you?

It wasn't even like, "Haha is that one photo an homage to the Trailer Park Boys? I love them! You seem funny. Want to have a drink sometime?" It was just one sentence, "You look like someone in the Trailer Park Boys."
posted by Sara C. at 3:14 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: To show me that you've actually read my post, please remove the brown M&Ms from your comment before replying.
posted by benbenson at 3:35 PM on April 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

I was on OKC, and a nice looking, seemingly normal (from her profile) woman messaged me.

We chatted a while, and after a while I decided to ask her out for a drink. She said she'd like to, but before we met she had a few questions.

Seems that she has some special requirements. Specifically, she had rape fantasies, and liked to be beaten up during sex. "Being abused to me is a sign of love". And really liked being beaten with rubber hoses ("Google it, there are books on it"). After I said that's not really my thing, we ended the chat amicably and went our own way.

About a week later she messages me again. She was very frustrated. "I just can't seem to meet anybody here". Gee, ya think?

Do I win anything?
posted by paullu at 5:21 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey, it ain't my kink, but I've heard weirder. At least she was polite about it!
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:43 PM on April 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

The other true tell of the "Nice Guy" is that you can't win.
If you politely tell them no, they will tell you you're a bitch for responding when the polite thing to do is not respond. Cue NG rant.
If you ignore the message, they will message a few more times and then call you a bitch for not responding, because it is only polite to respond. Cue NG rant.
The same exact thing happens IRL- basically you eventually reach a point where if you make any move other than complete capitulation: you're a bitch, cue NG rant.
It just becomes background noise.

Soooo... That thing on meta recently where the ladies of mefi were going to live together and raise alpacas? Think it's too late to sign up for that? I really hope I'm not allergic to alpacas.
posted by susiswimmer at 5:48 PM on April 14, 2014 [14 favorites]

Paullu: I would have sent her a link to fetlife, just to be nice.
posted by bswinburn at 7:31 PM on April 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Paulu, if you still are in contact I can maybe pass on the name of a guy who would be right up her alley. (I went through a weird phase last year where right when I got to the point when a okc guy and I were finally about to meet, he would say, "uh, before we do, I should probably ask if you're into [schmeh] first....")
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:51 PM on April 14, 2014

No longer in contact, sorry.
posted by paullu at 8:08 PM on April 14, 2014

Stumbled onto the tinder spot at reddit a few minutes ago, thought this was interesting reading.
posted by cashman at 9:38 PM on April 14, 2014

garlic - if you want to date a vegan, it seems like a waste of everyone's time to not mention it in your profile.

Agreed.

Most people think they have never met a vegan. That might be true, but how would they know? Subsequently they can be a bit intimidated by their own construction of what veganism entails. That might be via hearsay, or if they are very unlucky via the mainstream media.

Etrigan - If someone is the type of vegan that doesn't bring it up every ten minutes or judge everyone around him or her audibly every chance he or she gets, then I don't see any need to put it in a dating profile. That kind of vegan does actually exist, right?

That describes all of my vegan friends. Personally I have never met any pushy, evangelising vegans. I have met some very dismissive and churlish meat eaters who seem to find the existence of happy, healthy, foody vegans to be very unsettling and perceived as a personal attack on their ethics and morals. Maybe such people exist regardless of their dietary choices?

showbiz_liz - I know vegans who will eat honey and most will keep pets, YMMV. I find it hard to believe that everything you cook has to include animal products. Maybe it's easy for me to say as I don't make food with animal products in it, but it isn't really a challenge. Feel free to Memail me if you have any questions about cooking vegan food and I'll do my best to answer them.

I find most restaurants can accommodate a vegan or two, especially if you call ahead and get them to check with the chef.

I remember cooking a meal for a family from Bosnia, the elderly patriarch was adamant that he would have a meal afterwards as I was only serving vegetable based dishes. On the way home he said he wouldn't have believed it was possible to have a meal without meat and enjoy it. This was all reported to me later, he didn't speak English.

I have done the same in Italy. Three courses in to the meal they declared they were full, there were four courses left! Maybe I shouldn't have served the insalata after the antipasto, that might have confused them. Some serious left overs that week.

Personally I have dated people who are very into food and omnivorous, that has never been a barrier between us. I am pretty flexible though, and will try cheese and egg foods if the occasion demands, but I can't digest lactose or red meat and I don't like egg, so vegan is my safe space.

Anyway, I should get my OKCupid game sorted so that I can become popular and then reveal the veganism as an experiment, or something.
posted by asok at 3:26 AM on April 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

showbiz_liz - I know vegans who will eat honey and most will keep pets, YMMV. I find it hard to believe that everything you cook has to include animal products. Maybe it's easy for me to say as I don't make food with animal products in it, but it isn't really a challenge. Feel free to Memail me if you have any questions about cooking vegan food and I'll do my best to answer them.

This is precisely the kind of thing I don't want to deal with hearing on a constant basis from someone I'm dating.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:24 AM on April 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

What I mean is... so, I REALLY like TV. I always have. I don't just watch the shows I like, I spend a lot of time reading about them and thinking about them and talking with other fans about them. If I were to date a person who, for whatever reason, NEVER wanted to watch or hear about TV shows because they think TV is a pox on society, and said "I find it hard to believe that you HAVE to watch Game of Thrones," I would feel stifled in that relationship, even though it's just fucking TV and who really cares? But, I do care. I don't need a partner to care as much as I do, but I couldn't date anyone who would completely dismiss my interest in TV as something they never wanna hear about because it disgusts them. If I was just a casual fan, it would be fine to date a person like that, but I'm NOT a casual fan and I have no plans to change that.

Same with food. You can say "ugh, you don't HAVE to cook with butter" or whatever, but I am a person who will make a 2 hour journey specifically to try a cut of pig I've never tried before, because I genuinely LOVE to do that. I LOVE to experiment with new recipes from every cuisine I can find, many of which include animal products. To me, the primary reason to travel is to try as much of the local food as I can. I have a checklist of offal that I haven't tried yet, and I can't wait until I find a place that makes a really good brains dish. If I could find a place that served balut I would try it. When I was in China I went to great lengths to obtain cheese, and when I finally got my hands on it, it was orgasmic.

Not only would I not have fun dating a vegan, a vegan would not have fun dating me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:48 AM on April 15, 2014 [11 favorites]

showbiz_liz, I control for this by mentioning animal-eating (not just eating meat, but specifically the nomming of tasty animals) in at least 4 different sections of my profile. And early dates are always taken to the taqueria down the street from my apartment where they don't have any vegetarian options. And then I make them eat the tripa taco because it's the best.
posted by phunniemee at 8:11 AM on April 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

especially if you call ahead and get them to check with the chef

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm not that interested in doing all the damn time, though.

I have lots of vegan friends. They're all great people. But I wouldn't want to be married to any of them. Most of the vegans I know that are coupled off have partners who are also vegan, or they are slightly more flexible and sometimes eat certain non-vegan things outside their vegan partner's presence.

That's just not something I'm interested in. I dated a vegan for a while. The food issue was definitely one that loomed large in the relationship. Larger than any particular issue really should loom when you've just met someone. I shouldn't have to call up and talk to chefs for us to grab dinner out.

I'm not saying this to be like, "eeeeewwwww why would anyone want to fuck a vegan, icccckkkkkk", but just, like, compatibility is important. Just like I want to know if you're religious, if you have a kid, if you smoke, if your politics are the diametric opposite of mine, etc. There's nothing wrong with veganism, but it's also fine for me to decide that veganism is not compatible with my lifestyle.
posted by Sara C. at 9:19 AM on April 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

Feel free to Memail me if you have any questions about cooking vegan food and I'll do my best to answer them.

See, here's the thing: I actually know all about cooking vegan food. I'm good at it and I have a repertoire of vegan recipes I cook regularly. I have tried a few vegan banana bread recipes to figure out which are the best vegan substitutes for milk and eggs (soy milk and applesauce). Part of this is for health reasons and partially for religious reasons, and for that latter reason, like I believe with vegans, I am quite up front about my religious background if I am dating someone.

But here is the thing between me and someone who's a vegan: I don't HAVE to eat vegan food all the time (and mostly do not). When I want to go out to brunch, I don't have to stress over whether a brunch place has enough vegan options. I can do things spur of the moment without worrying about whether the place has vegan specialties. If it's too much trouble to find a vegan option on the menu, I'll go for a vegetarian option without thinking twice and be happy about it. If there are 10 of us going out together, I don't have to worry about a vegan being the "veto point" on whatever place we want to go.

For similar reasons, a roommate situation with someone who was very strict about keeping kosher would probably not work out. A teetotaler who repeatedly reminded me that, "you know, you don't need alcohol to have a good time" would not work out either.

Veganism is not so much a personal choice (like, say, a preference for clothes with bright colors or an affection for romantic comedies) as something that crosses over into a "way of life" that any personal relationship is going to have to orbit around. That is why questions of diet have their own entry in OkCupid.
posted by deanc at 9:21 AM on April 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

cashman: "To not ignore the FPP, guys are stupid. It's guys fault, guys choose to follow this stupid script guys seem to have created, and other guys reinforce that, and the cycles continue."

The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don't be a guy.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:42 AM on April 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Showbiz_liz, now I wish we could meet up and eat ALL THE THINGS.
posted by Omnomnom at 4:28 AM on April 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Actually now that I think about it, the vegans that I know who are in long term relationships/married/have children are with partners who are not vegan, or even vegetarian for the most part. All of them were vegan when they met their partners.

It's nice that some of you seem concerned that you would have to look out for a vegan if you were going out for a meal with them, I often feel the same. However in my experience vegans are used to living in the same world as non vegans, they don't want to be worried about. They will find something to eat, or the restaurant will make something.

One of my vegan friends never calls ahead, it just doesn't cross her mind. When she was taken out by the family to a French restaurant to celebrate her graduation it transpired that they didn't have anything vegan on the menu. So she asked if the chef could put something together for her and she got a pile of vegetables. She said it was one of the best meals she had ever had! She is an amazing cook, literally a genius in the kitchen, so that is high praise indeed.

I agree that common ground is helpful in a relationship, but in my experience people who like food have more in common with other people who like food than people who think of food as fuel, regardless of any dietry specifics.
posted by asok at 2:23 AM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well, this thread has somehow made me sympathetic to vegans. Must be hard to live in a world where people are so concerned about your dietary choices that they won't date you for fear of having to work at a relationship.
posted by Etrigan at 4:33 AM on April 17, 2014

Ugh, I just thought of this thread because I received a message from a guy telling me he just wanted to give me "free profile feedback" and that my profile is too masculine and a major turn off because I mentioned that I drink beer. You know how much I mention beer? Once. To say "you should message me if: you want to meet up for coffee or a beer." That's it. Ugh.
posted by pril at 10:27 AM on April 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

I wonder if it is possible to find all the men who fell for that negging bullshit and just burn out that little piece of their brain that has gone bad.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:32 AM on April 17, 2014

Oh no we set their whole head on fire what a shame
posted by The Whelk at 10:34 AM on April 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

Etrigan, it's worth noting that, with online dating, you don't know this person at all. It's sort of presumptuous to expect that you'll have to "work at" a relationship before you even meet in person. The solution is simple. Tell people you're a vegan. They can decide whether that's compatible with their life or not.

The alternative, I suppose, would be to center early dates on non-food outings, or for the vegan to get out in front of the issue and volunteer to be the Food Figure Outer at the outset. Going from zero to "let me call ahead and talk to a chef so I'll know whether you can eat the food on our first date" is really a lot to ask from a total stranger.

I say this as someone who is very flexible about food, and who has dated a few vegans and a Raw Food person. Food is really complicated in those situations (even though I'm happy to eat at a vegan place), and because sharing food is such an elemental part of establishing a bond with someone, this can be a pretty serious obstacle long before you get to the point where "working at a relationship" is a thing.
posted by Sara C. at 10:49 AM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Etrigan, it's worth noting that, with online dating, you don't know this person at all. It's sort of presumptuous to expect that you'll have to "work at" a relationship before you even meet in person.

I think it's pretty naive to expect that you'll never have to "work at" any relationship, regardless of how compatible you think you are with someone based on an OKCupid profile.
posted by Etrigan at 11:58 AM on April 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ok, but why make things even harder for myself by picking a person who hates something I love, or vice versa? I wouldn't date a very religious person either, or a conservative person. Not because I'm lazy and don't want to work on a relationship, but because experience has shown me that it's a really damn bad idea and will not work out well.

There are plenty of other fish in the sea who will happily go eat fish with me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:09 PM on April 17, 2014

Statements like "I think veganism IS something that definitely belongs in a dating profile" were the ones I was arguing against. I'm not saying that you (or anyone else) can't choose people based on certain criteria. I just think that it's incumbent on you to lay out those criteria and not demand that everyone else advertise whether they meet your criteria.
posted by Etrigan at 12:15 PM on April 17, 2014

Oof, you're right. I totally changed my own point in that one, lalex. I apologize. I started out that comment by complaining about concern-trolling on the part of people who were arguing that vegans should be forthright, and then I took that part out.
posted by Etrigan at 12:22 PM on April 17, 2014

I don't think saying it in a dating profile should be required, at all.

But I do think it's something good to throw in there, in the sense that a dating profile is a tool for finding people you would realistically date.

If you're the type of vegan who prefers to date non-vegans and is fine with getting out in front of the food issue in the beginning, great! But if there is any chance at all that, on our first date, the sentence "I can't eat anything here" is going to be uttered, you might as well throw "hey btw I'm a vegan" into your profile to avoid that sort of thing.

I think on my end it's a general preference for people to act like adults about their food choices. "I can't eat..." where the next word doesn't have to do with food allergies is an immediate turn off for me, period. Not sure how others feel about it or what their particular skin in the Dating A Vegan game is.
posted by Sara C. at 12:22 PM on April 17, 2014

Not just focusing on veganism specifically, I think this is an interesting general side-discussion (what is important information to include in a dating profile, what is ok to leave out). I can understand to a degree the mindset of wanting to cast one's dating net as wide as possible, and thus, leaving out information you fear may be a potential turn off to others (when I had an online dating profile I didn't necessarily feel it vital, for example, to mention the degree to which I was a fan of professional wrestling, since it wasn't an activity I expected to be shared with anyone I dated).

But it seems to me that one of the unique advantages of online dating compared to other methods is that your profile allows you to lay any important information on the table upfront and filtering out obvious conflicts before wasting time on a relationship that is essentially doomed from the start. It was never all that important to me that I marry a Jewish woman (and as it turns out my wife is not Jewish) and I am almost totally non-observant myself, but I always mentioned I was Jewish (if there was such a checkbox) in any online dating profile I had so any woman who was an observant Christian who preferred to date a fellow devout church goer would know right off the bat I was probably a terrible match. I wouldn't consider any woman who chose not to date me based on this information an anti-Semite or any other sort of horrific person. To the contrary, it is the system working as intended.

I don't know exactly where veganism falls on this scale (certainly well below something like having kids and failing to mention that in your profile?), but I can see no downside to including it in one's profile, and several potential issues with leaving it out.
posted by The Gooch at 1:02 PM on April 17, 2014

Nonetheless it does take some adjustments to where you eat together and cooking for them and eating at their house.

As it may well be for anyone you date, be they vegan, vegetarian, raw, standard, different culture, etc.

dating someone with a vegan diet would involve a huge, unwanted lifestyle change and perhaps indicate a major difference in ethical beliefs.

Possibly, and possibly not. You really don't know until you know the person. If they specify you have to be vegan then yeah, they're specifying it's an issue for them and will be for you if you're not, but if they say they are vegan, it doesn't neccessarily indicate that you should be too, and that there will be large issues because they are.

A potential problem for a woman mentioning their veganism given the nature of these sites is guys can then lie about something very specific for a time, but that is true of basically any criteria you attempt to establish I suppose.
posted by juiceCake at 11:46 PM on April 20, 2014

I don't know exactly where veganism falls on this scale (certainly well below something like having kids and failing to mention that in your profile?), but I can see no downside to including it in one's profile, and several potential issues with leaving it out.

In the end people only have so much time to dedicate to this, especially people who have other things going on.

So basically online dating turned out to not work at all like people naively thought it would in the beginning: a chance for people to learn that their personalities mesh in a way that goes beyond shallow impressions and initial attractiveness. Instead, anything you list can and will be used to either hide your profile as if you don't even exist or select you. The number of negative field values quite obviously exceeds the number of positive field values. There are certain very well studied examples of this pretty much all of which are heavily influenced by gender (income level, being a single parent, height, weight, hair or not, etc.).

Since online dating is entirely a numbers game for men based on the actual research, anything which is more likely to filter you out than filter you in is probably unwise to include in your profile, in reality you're not doing the selection anyway. Anything that might filter you out but is navigable or negotiable in some way should not be there if actually getting dates so that you can work out what really matters is one of the goals.

This is all painfully obvious from watching any of my friends who are still single for more than 5 minutes, on either side of the equation. I note without humor that yes, I have actually had to note to someone that their search which only allowed men 6'+ might actually be limiting their options.

I am thankful I am an old.
posted by rr at 3:13 PM on April 21, 2014

But why would you want to be "filtered in" to people who won't want to go out with you anyway? The goal of online dating is to date people, not to get eyeballs on your profile.
posted by Sara C. at 3:39 PM on April 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I put all kinds of shit in my profile to DELIBERATELY filter people out. When I recently asked for advice on my profile here, I got some responses along the lines of "you come off too hyper/Portlandia for me" and "you use 'fuck' too much" and "you might not want to imply drug use." But the fact is I am a hyper, foul-mouthed casual drug user! The people who gave me those replies basically served to show me that my profile was working as intended. I don't WANT them to message me. I have dated enough completely incompatible people in my time, and I'd rather be single than do it again.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:48 PM on April 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

FWIW, I can see there being a gendered angle to this.

Straight women typically act as message receivers, and our profiles are typically initiation points for messages, viewed by men with an eye towards "should I initiate contact with this person?" Where the default answer is "yes" and the profile attempts to act as a deterrent.

Straight men typically act as message senders, and their profiles are typically supplementary information, viewed by women the men have already contacted with an eye towards "should I respond to this person's message?" Where the default answer is "no" and the profile attempts to make a case for response.

So I can see strategizing a man's profile differently than a woman's profile on the question of whether to emphasize inclusiveness or exclusiveness.

But I still think that certain potential dealbreakers which are going to become immediately apparent are probably worth stipulating even from the male "inclusive" perspective. Because A) it would be odd if all the information on your profile was calculated to have a broad general appeal hiding anything that implies incompatibility, and B) regardless of gender, bottom line, you're looking for someone to date. You want to increase your response rate, but responses from women you can't share a meal with are useless.
posted by Sara C. at 4:02 PM on April 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

But I still think that certain potential dealbreakers which are going to become immediately apparent are probably worth stipulating even from the male "inclusive" perspective. Because A) it would be odd if all the information on your profile was calculated to have a broad general appeal hiding anything that implies incompatibility, and B) regardless of gender, bottom line, you're looking for someone to date. You want to increase your response rate, but responses from women you can't share a meal with are useless.

The reality of human relationships is that many of these things in fact turn out to be irrelevant. It is not actually the case that vegans only date vegans or that extremely liberal, politically active types do not date conservatives, and so on. Most of these things are not in fact deal breakers, although when creating filters people often think they are.
posted by rr at 4:38 PM on April 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

But someone who is not vegan, yet open to dating vegans, is not going to have a problem with you saying you're a vegan on your profile. It's perfect because it weeds out the people who don't want to date you, while also offering potentially interesting information to people who do want to date you.

Just like I can see someone looking at a "vegan" profile and thinking, "ew, nope," I can also see someone writing a message that says, "I notice from your profile that you're vegan. How long have you been doing that? I was vegan for a while in college but loved cheese too much to stick with it..."

You can see almost any information on an online dating profile as potentially eliminating people, if you've set out to look at it that way. Better to just be yourself, no?
posted by Sara C. at 6:13 PM on April 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

How would you evaluate that claim, really? The typical online dating profile is a combination of exaggerations and careful withholding of information. That photo is old or touched up. You really aren't that passionate about travel. Etc. Online dating is essentially peer to peer marketing especially if you are a heterosexual male; this is not a cynical statement but an observation from the actual studies on the topic.

My greater point is that the over specification is a serious issue. Instead of being "something about me" that is discovered, the current mode of online dating has turned into mate-by-specsheet-search. It is hardly "being yourself" to craft a profile online.

In reality, the extra information feels important but really is not. "Yourself" is a hard to quantify thing that goes beyond identifying how you fill out a particular table of properties.
posted by rr at 12:52 PM on April 23, 2014

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