Online Dating Etiquette

Edit: Since writing this, I've received a short but sweet message back from Theo. All is well. We're talking about getting together again this weekend. Plus, while I was waiting to hear from him I had a nice exchange of messages with a guy I'll call Jesse. Depending on how things work out with Theo, I may end up meeting up with Jesse. So the below now really is just a lot of frustration I needed to get out of my system.


Disclaimer: this post is a bit of a rant, though it's also an update and an ask for advice.

When looking for a date in the real world, one must have tough skin. A lot of energy is put into scoping out, approaching, and attempting to speak to potential dates. It's hard enough to approach, let alone speak, to someone new, so there are plenty of people who are only seen from afar and remembered as "what ifs?." In the real world, if one is fortunate enough to elicit a phone number from another, it's up to the receiver of that number to call it and the giver to answer (or even give a real number in the first place).

Online, it's different. Everyone is just as approachable as everyone else. There are no groups of friends to push you toward someone, the person being approached can't see you coming and hide before you get to them (well, not usually), and his/her friends can't intervene. If you do choose to message someone, it's understood that if he/she is not interested, there's no need to reply.

However, what remains the same with real-world and online dating is that if you actually go on a date with someone, the rules during and after that date are the same. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a date ends with "This was really fun and we should do it again," there's going to be an assumption that there might be a second date.

Such is the situation I find myself in with Theo (and the one I had with Aiden). I sent that second date message and am now waiting for a response. Perhaps I'm more polite than the average person, but if I receive a second date message from someone I've decided I don't want to see again, I at least have the courtesy to write him back. Is this too much to ask?

The one difference between the real world and online, is that in the real world, if you go on a date with a guy you met at the bar and you don't hear from a him again, you have no idea what he's up to. In the online world, you can see what he's up to, if he's been online, if he's been updating his profile.

Then again, one can also see that 21 year-old guys with usernames like kickaxecode want you to IM with them. That just adds insult to injury.

Race and Online Dating

Since I received so many comments on my post "Online Dating Experiment," I thought I'd write a new post responding to them all, rather than replying to the comments.

First, in the spirit of full-disclosure, I've now dated 16 guys from the dating site and all but one—who was Asian—were white. Given that whites are quickly becoming a minority in my area, this is, perhaps, a bit strange.

Second, from what I remember—as a reminder, it's been over two years now—I've received messages from a few Asian guys, a few Indian guys, and one or two black guys. However, as is true for all of the messages from white guys, I only respond if I'm interested.

Third, as Kia discovered in her experiment, relying heavily on pictures can be a bad thing. While the dating site that I'm on doesn't require users to post pictures, it is possible to choose to only be shown profiles of the people who have. I've made this choice because, as I've mentioned in previous posts, profiles without pictures could belong to absolutely anyone. (Of course people can post fake pictures or fake profile information—and they do—but it's harder to post a whole bunch of fake pictures.) Unfortunately, by choosing this option, it's all to easy to eliminate people from a search based solely on appearance. I've eliminated people with 90+% matches a number of times simply because I don't find them attractive. Am I a bad person for this? Probably to some degree.

All that said, don't people do this in real life too? As Ily pointed out in her comment about the movie "Medicine for Melancholy," people choose to hang out at places that have "their kind of people"—people with whom they expect to get along—and by doing that, they often end up ignoring large portions of the population.

Fourth, as Carolyn wrote, dating sites encourage people to list their race. Mine has a number of boxes one can check, but one doesn't have to specify one's race. I would wager that the vast majority do, based on what I've seen, but some don't. It's definitely possible to search profiles based on race, but then the people who don't select a race (or two or three) obviously don't show up in those searches.

I hope that you will all continue to comment on this topic and share your own experiences (if you feel comfortable doing so).

Second Date with Alex - Part 2

The date was…fine. The movie we saw, "An Education," was excellent. The rest of the date, well, there was lust and not a lot else. Once that haze cleared we realized that maybe we're not the most compatible of people and decided that would be our last date.

This experience with Alex made me think a lot about the differences between dating someone from online vs. someone one meets in person. Alex and I technically met in both realms before our first date. Had I just met him in person at the meet-up group, I would have been attracted to him, but probably not have asked him out. I'm too shy. If I'd only ever encountered him online, I probably wouldn't have messaged him, given our "match percentage" on the dating site. (It wasn't particularly low, but about at the bottom of my current threshold.) Instead, we met in both places and he asked me out; unfortunately, we seem to have overlooked the fact that we don't really have anything in common. We aren't radically different from each other, but enough that anything long-term (or, apparently, short-term) never would have worked out.

He was, however, well-dressed.

Being sick definitely makes one feel less attractive

If I hadn't been too tired to type, the cold that I got on Wednesday would have been enough to keep me from messaging/viewing profiles/posting here. The fact of the matter is, I feel gross and that makes me feel completely unattractive in every possible way. Who'd want to start dating a sniffling, coughing, sleepy girl who has gone without a shower for too long? No one.

Therefore, after not hearing back from Derek on Tuesday, I decided to message velcro4, a guy on the dating site who has interested me for a while. I might not have messaged, but he'd just looked at my profile, so I figured it was worth a shot. As I waited for a reply, I got this cold and I pretty much forgot about velcro4.

Then he responded last night. Hurrah! That said, I couldn't muster up enough energy to write him back until a few minutes ago. I have to say though, this is one of the best things about online dating. One can be horribly sick, but no one's the wiser. The guys sitting in front of their computers don't know that I'm subsisting on tea and cough drops. This, in comparison to meeting guys at a club/concert/bar/etc—I wouldn't be up to going to any of those places in this state.

I can say with complete certainty that no matter how good or bad I may feel about myself or whether or not his self summary is a parody, I will not be messaging Spiritof76:

"I am hella cool. Hella. Like, how much cooler can you get than online dating, right? I mean it's not like I need to be on the internet to meet ladies, obviously, I'm just really down with the information super highway, and want to do what I can to support electronic mass media. Go world wide web! I'm behind you all thew ay. So I'd really like to meet a gal who's shares my enthusiasm for technology. Also, I rock a yarmulka, which, as everyone knows, is about the coolest, hippest thing around…"

A Response to Rainbowswearing

Some guy, whose username is Rainbowswearing, wrote a post on his profile about the difference between approaching someone in real life versus doing so online. He says that he sees all of these people on the site that he would approach at a party, but after looking at their full profiles online he can't think of anything to say. I found this very interesting, because I feel quite the opposite. Perhaps he is more extroverted than I, but I have a much harder time approaching strangers at parties/social situations, than I do online. For me, it is much easier to be ignored/rejected online than in person.

Someone commented on this, saying, "I think it's just the fact that the more you have to go off of, the more likely you are to be picky." I do agree with this, as there are plenty of attractive people that I have ignored (or even blocked) because of things they wrote on their profiles; nevertheless, I'd rather know something about the person I'm approaching before I open my mouth.

What do you think? Is it easier for you to approach people online or in person?