The Horror of Online Dating...The HORROR!

[Aware]

[I was writing this as a reply to the thread below regarding "why men should not online date", but it ended up being really long so I figured I'd start a new thread...It goes without saying that I agree completely with the other thread, but would like to expand on some of these ideas]

Online dating in America is a night terror from which you can never awake...

I have participated in this sick industry longer than I care to reveal, but am happy to say I no longer go near it. Please heed my words, I beg of you, for I have had first hand experience with this engine of destruction and I have learned a lot through my trials and tribulations.

I cannot be completely sure of this, as I have no close friends who have really tried the online dating game, but I believe that I was more "successful" (if you can call it that) than 90% of men in regards to actually securing real-life dates from online dating interactions. I say this based on reading I've done about men who were NEVER able to turn email conversations into face to face meetings -- it seems to be the norm rather than the exception. I do not account for my "success" with a shred of arrogance -- I simply believe I participated long enough in the game to learn how to play it pretty well, and that is nothing to brag about...in fact, I feel slightly ashamed that I spent so much time involved with it at all. I would also like to make clear that I have never tried any type of international online dating...all of my experience has been with U.S. dating sites and only in some of the bigger West Coast cities.

Here is my breakdown of this terrible device called 'Online Dating':

Online dating is actually a microcosm of the bigger dating picture in America, but, if you can believe it, actually magnifies the evil by 10 fold.

Without a doubt, I can tell you that men outnumber women by at LEAST 3 to 1, and that's being generous. If you take a look at a major dating website like match.com in a big city, you'll find approximately 30 to 40 pages of profiles (18 profiles per page) for the ladies, and something like 80 to 90 pages of profiles for men! That is insane, and inherently WRONG.

I hate to say it, but men on these sites propagate the problem. Here you have women with too many men to choose from, allowing them to make unreasonable and illogical demands, and the men on these sites do not have enough pride to ignore them. They reinforce this behavior by rabidly pursuing these women with email after email, no matter how sick, twisted, entitled, demented, or rude they might be.

The result of this is an inflation of ego for the women. They now feel that they can behave in whatever disgusting manner they choose, and they will still be inundated with emails from hundreds of desperate men. It does not matter if they are of below average, average, or good looks, the women WILL get a LOT of attention just by being on the site.

Most men on these websites are flat out ignored. Whatever time they put into writing a considerate and charming email is invariably a waste, because these women have so many emails flooding in that they have their pick of the litter and the odds are not good that your specific email will catch her eye. As a man gets accustomed to this, he will inevitably realize that in order to get a response, he will need to have a very original and tantalizing email to stand out from the crowd. This results in additional time spent on the writing of these correspondences, more care going into them, more thought, more blood sweat and tears, but more often than not this won't elicit any better success.

Other men who might be "granted a conversation with the Queen" will most likely exchange a few awkward emails with a woman and THEN be ignored. These email interactions will likely involve the men being witty, considerate, polite, and inquisitive, while the women are curt, difficult, uninterested and uninteresting.

If you think that this behavior will change once an in person meeting takes place, you are wrong. I have met numerous women who were just as dull in person as they were through the computer screen. Many of them had no conversational skills, and many of them had no notion of politeness or consideration in regards to behavior on the date, OR in regards to the actual setting up of the date etc. Some women do not understand that a conversation is a verbal back and forth, and not a one sided monologue where one talks about oneself.

The lack of straightforward, no nonsense communication is also blindingly apparent. The games played throughout online dating interactions are mind-numbing. For me, I appreciate people who don't beat around the bush, don't keep you waiting, and are forthright...this is not limited to the dating realm, either...in my opinion, it is better when everyone behaves with these qualities in everyday interactions, business, work etc. When you are in the online labyrinth, these qualities are completely absent. Women will keep you waiting as long as they see fit. After all, why should they show interest by being direct or honest? It would be a much better idea to play hard to get, right?

Minorities...forget about it! If you are not familiar with dating websites, there is a function whereby you list what ethnicity you would like your potential date to be. Without fail, 80% of women on these sites list white/caucasian in this spot. I myself am half Japanese and half Turkish (an odd combination, I know), and my appearance is sort of ambiguous as I could pass for a lot of different things. I went through periods where I would try to contact women regardless of what they listed for this criteria, but I soon learned that a women that was so closed-minded was not worth pursuing. After seeing so many profiles of this nature, it begins to wear on your soul, and I'm sure many men of ethnicity have had their confidence shattered by being cut out of the running before anyone even gave them a chance.

Height...talk about unreasonable demands. There is the widespread notion that a man should be taller than the woman he's with. This has been understood for quite sometime, and although it is illogical, most people have come to accept it. I ask you to go to an online dating website, look at some female profiles and take note of the height criteria they ask for in their potential dates. Somehow, being as tall or an inch or two taller than a woman is NO LONGER GOOD ENOUGH! Time and time again, I see profiles of women who are 5'3'', 5'4'', and demand that the man they are with be 6 feet or above. I guarantee you the majority of profiles are like this, go see for yourself!

Many guys turn to online dating due to a lack of success at meeting people in the real world. This may be due to your circumstances, eg: having a solitary job, your location, eg: living in the middle of nowhere, or due to your personality, eg: being introverted and naturally shy. I would assume that women go online for similar reasons, but that would only be an assumption. I do believe that some women, and probably men as well, go online for a quick ego-boost or some entertainment -- this of course works out much better for the women and not so much for the men due to all of the factors I've listed already.

It seems an exciting thing at first. All of a sudden, hundreds of women are available for you to meet that you would never have a chance to meet in any other way. Its a fantastic idea at its roots, but just doesn't really fit the bill when actually put into practice. This is due, of course, to the warped social climate of Western Culture. The sense of entitlement instilled in women through the media and popular culture has made them impossible to deal with, face to face or computer to computer.

I would like to suggest that online dating is not simply a pain in the ass...it is actually a vicious machine that is worsening the pathology that we already see every which way we turn. The majority of women who experience online dating come away from it with the feeling that they can walk on water. They are already packing a delusional mindset, one that makes them believe that they deserve the world on a silver platter and that no man is good enough for them. The realm of online dating only serves to make this mindset more potent. It is like higher education for princesses. It is a graduate degree in entitlement.

Pain radiates through my core when I see how many men are on these sites with no sense of how they are furthering this problem. Yes, we've been made desperate and lonely through years of being ignored and put down, but is the possibility of sex and romance so powerful that you cannot resist giving your time, energy, and attention to delusional, sick women who do not deserve ANY of it? How many times will you let women walk all over you? How many times will you let a woman treat you like dirt while demanding EVERYTHING from you and more? If a woman's profile makes your stomach turn, why do you still send her sweet emails? Is a pretty face that hard to say 'no' to?

Don't get me wrong, I understand how powerful the draw can be. It is driven into all of us from a young age, that sex and romance and relationships are necessary for a fulfilling life...this might be true, but only if those relationships are healthy, balanced ones. In this society we find ourselves in today, relationships like that are as rare as a white whale, and I certainly doubt that any relationship birthed from such a diseased embryo as that of Online Dating will be a healthy one.

[zzzz]

I used to be on POF and OKCupid which are the two best free sites (and probably better than the paid ones). I talked to many women and got dates with a couple. The amount of work required to play this numbers game was crazy for the results I got. I eventually learned the best bet was to contact new women before they got overly jaded and learned how out of whack online dating was with the real world. After a year or so I just stopped online dating with no intention of ever using it again (in the US anyways).

One thing that works to always point out how f***ed up online dating is, is to point out how many of the beautiful women on these sites have their profiles there for years and years. There are many reasons this doesn't make sense. If these women are there to actually find a husband they'd have done it by now since they are getting flooded with requests for dates. Secondly I did manage to get a date with one of these women. I don't know if anyone remembers the old POF website but it used to be you could favorite people and the profile would list how many favorites you had. If any woman had a couple hundred favorites you knew lots of guys were chasing her and/or she'd been on the site FOREVER. Anyhow I got a date with a women who had a few hundred guys favorite her. We just went bowling near her house then to dinner after as we got along OK. Why didn't it work out? Well her pictures was 3-5yrs old and taken in her college days when she was much younger and much more attractive. I almost didn't recognize her. Granted, she was by no means bad looking maybe a 7 down from a 10 but mainly it was the shock of the dishonesty that amazed me. Just put a bad taste in my mouth. My own pictures were recent and I even dated them, beware of undated pictures in online dating!

I'd soon learn that this dishonesty and selfishness prevails in online dating. Two other ridiculous examples of my online dating were these... I had exchanged a lot of messages with a women who had no picture but her description sounded attractive enough and soon I even got her to show me pictures of herself. She passed, she was attractive. I soon learned why her picture was hidden from the public, she had a boyfriend. I didn't learn this very easily, it took maybe 30 messages back and forth, and two canceled dates before she finally admitted it. What a colossal waste of time that was for a women who was listed as "single". Another example is the women who worked 6 days a week downtown with a schedule going from 2pm-10pm in sales, I didn't learn this until we were going to go on a date. She thought I could drive 30mins+ and see her after work, sure I can do that. Then it occurred to me, how would this ever work for a real relationship? She had no car so it'd be a nightmare for her to visit me, and I could only see her after 10pm maybe twice a week. When I explained this to her she got extremely mad and starting insulting me, and that was the end of that. I suspect she had problems with guys rejecting her due to her insane work schedule in the past. Online dating in the US is insanity.

[have2fly]

I totally agree and second you guys. Girls that write me on POF just don't go for dates! I just don't get that.

Another thing - it's almost impossible to meet people in the US in general. Girls freak out when you talk to them, girls at clubs runaway and jump around.

I use Russian websites a lot, they are free and I did get many "REAL" dates out of those and many times it worked really well. However, Russian websites are also flooded with men because Russian guys in the US are as lonely or even more so than Americans. American girls don't care/will not understand normal conversations and dating introductions. Many American girls also freak out when they hear an accent.

Therefore, most Russian girls get the same sense of entitlement in the US, they are being constantly chased by some dudes, they get thousands of e-mails at any website. IT'S INSANE!

I think bottom problem is that many women in the US just "DON'T CARE" if they are single, married or don't have sex for years. Russian (East European) culture always leans towards binding relationship. You just look awkward if you are a single girl in Eastern Europe-Russia. Girls are always actively looking for any decent guy to date because they want someone to care of them and to care about.

On the other hand, I get tons of e-mails from girls in Russia or Ukraine. No, not because I live in the "holy lonely land USA". I checked that twice by changing location in my profile to Ukraine and even more girls wrote me.

[Asia Outback]

I think I have been too long out of the American social loop. I can't figure why you and others are even bothering
thinking about American women in any way. If I am back in the states, I might see a girl walk into a Starbucks who I would rate
as moderately pretty. About every guy in the place is thrown a bit off track, some obviously so.

I might guess that "sigh...if only I could get a girl like that..." is running through their minds...but having resigned themselves to
the "fact" that such a quest is impossible, they know the closest they might get is sniffing a bicycle seat. Even the way she walks
clearly shows that she feels the has the power in the situation, and she can choose from the pethetic supplicants as she wishes.

I find this very amusing. It is a different world elsewhere. As one expat friend put it, when he sees a pretty girl, he might think,
"I can probably have her, but what would I do with her after that?"

In a place where P4P is readily available with attractive young women, a straight pretty girl knows she has to offer more than just
a little piece of ass. It really changes the dynamic.

So why all the whining about how hard American women are to get? From an "over there" perspective, American women are about as desirable as an STD.

If you are marriage minded, (Filipinas really like that term) the supply of very attractive young women far outstrips the number of
men they would hope to find by some large factor. Once you experience that, you are likely indifferent to what the bitch-hogs back in
the states are doing.

jake

[MrPeabody]

I haven't bothered with online dating in over ten years, and don't live in the US anymore, but you describe the experience perfectly. You can tell by the language that these women are junk. For example, someone who is suppose to be an adult woman will place an ad saying something like "Superwoman looking for Superman". Why would a man want to be with someone this childish unless he is totally desperate?

[Aware]

in response to zzzz:

I definitely agree with you regarding womens' profiles who have been up there forever. I would usually be on a website for a month or two, get fed up and then delete my profile. This pattern went on for a number of years, but every time I came back to a site, I'd see a lot of the same faces on there. These women are on there year after year, and it is very telling that they are still on there after so much time -- it must mean something is very wrong with them and no man can deal with them, or it means that they are NEVER satisfied with any man they date, and can't stay away from the endless stream of ego stroking that is delivered to them through email.

I saw an interesting video clip called "The Paradox of Choice". Here's the link:



Someone used this video on their blog to comment about the dating scene in America. Essentially, the video details why having TOO MANY choices paralyzes a person and makes them second guess anything they decide on -- a person can never be happy with what they ultimately choose, because they'll always think that maybe one of the other options was better.

Needless to say, American women have too many choices in men, which is why relationships never last and the divorce rate is at an all time high. They take any man for granted because they will inevitably become dissatisfied with him, thinking all the while about all the other men who might be better. Again, this is why online dating is making the problem worse. Women already have too many choices, and now with online dating they have EVEN MORE!

I've heard this question numerous times: "If American women have so many dating options and so many men chasing them, why are they all bitchy and unhappy?" I think this video answers that question. Barry Schwartz suggests that we are all made unhappy by this overwhelming influx of choices, from food to cars to pencils and pens. American women will never be happy with any man, no matter how many of them she can choose from. So take some solace in that fact, that even though we have NO choices here in the US, and are forced to look elsewhere for companionship, it is the women that will ultimately be unhappy. You see, the sweet is not so sweet without the sour. We bathe in the sour here in the states, therefore we are able to appreciate the sweet when we taste it, no matter where that might be.

[jamesbond]

I haven't bothered with online dating in over ten years, and don't live in the US anymore, but you describe the experience perfectly. You can tell by the language that these women are junk. For example, someone who is suppose to be an adult woman will place an ad saying something like "Superwoman looking for Superman". Why would a man want to be with someone this childish unless he is totally desperate?

I agree, online dating is a complete waste of time, the majority of the women who use it are garbage. For example, a lot of them are single mothers, or they are over weight or ugly or have a mental illness.

[cathyaaa]

I totally agree with you!