Boys like, boys like, boys like me!
Published by Kyso Kisaen April 13th, 2008 in For the ladies, What would we do without such great advice?Women looking for love on the internet face a most distressing problem - men responding to online personals ads can be so picky! With the number of lonely women far outstripping the number of lonely men using the internet to find companionship, it’s really a buyers market out there. How can a lady increase her chances of catching the discriminating eye of a man who has literally thousands of women available to him with a single mouse click?
She can follow these helpful tips from Kimberly Dawn Neumann and several helpful guys, who probably aren’t just acquaintances of Kimberly at all. Why will he like your profile? Prepare to be shocked:
1. Men like, and I quote, “truth in advertising.” Once, I saw a commercial for Wendy’s Baconator sandwich, and since I love bacon, the glistening, delicious looking bacon orgy on TV seemed like the sandwich for me. Then I bought one, and it was two slabs of beef with a couple pieces of bacon. All that salty bacony goodness was overwhelmed by ordinary beef patty; I had severely decreased the radius of my arteries for nothing. NOTHING!
Ladies, don’t be that sandwich.
For a woman’s profile to work, the picture has to match the profile which has to match reality
“Huh,” you’re saying, “Not lying? That’s so crazy it just might work!”
2. Sound like a real person.
Men are more likely to be intrigued if they can think of you as a real, live human being on the other end of—well, their wireless connection.
This might not be as hard as you think. In my corner of Craigslist, for example, probably about 5% of the posts the scanty Women-Seeking-Men page is men trying to tell the other men that real, local women interested in a date will not post a four-line, picture-less ad that tells you her bust measurements and invites you to find out more by clicking the link. Try peppering your ad with reassuring statements like “I am not posting spam for a porn site!” and “One of the best things about me is that I won’t be charging you by the minute when you call me!”
3. List activities that you enjoy, so that you may attract a man who enjoys the same things. Also, put on your pants first, then your shoes.
4. Don’t sound desperate. For the love of god, do you want this awesome guy trolling the internet for dates to think you’re some kind of loser who has to advertise on the internet for dates?
“Men can sense neediness from miles away,” says Bev Bacon, author of Meet Me, Don’t Delete Me. “If you feel self-esteem and self-confidence are not your strong suit, do something about it!”
Women, on the other hand, couldn’t detect neediness if they had special neediness-detectors and a fresh set of batteries. I say, ladies, if you are so desperate for companionship that you’ve taken to watching Nicholas Sparks movies with a boyfriend pillow draped around your shoulders, I say own that shit and put it in your advertisement. Because somewhere out there on eHarmony is a guy who needs you as much as you need him, and it’s important you attract him before he gets scammed so many times by fake 27-year-olds who just need him to send her a few things before she can come visit that he cancels his accounts.
5. And last but not least, “values.” Dog-whistle that shit up if necessary.
Many women shy away from mentioning family and faith when talking about themselves out of fear that they’ll seem too serious and scare men off. Not so! Many men hold the exact same values and will respond to your mentioning what really matters most to you.
But remember to take alot of time combing through men’s personals ads first to make sure you’re using the right code words, especially if you’re trying to filter people by race or ethnicity, to avoid embarrassing mistakes. For example, and ad that subtly discourages blacks from responding should pay particular attention to class issues - are you the type of person that likes to claim she’s not racist, she just couldn’t date a black man over beers after a day of skeet shooting, or lattes after a trip to the art gallery? As you can see, many times one coded filter is not going to be enough. Frequently, a picture will be worth a thousand words here (see point 1).
“Do something about it you stupid maggot! God! Why are you so worthless as to have bad self-esteem and no self-confidence? If you don’t shape up right now you’ll never find a man!”
they didn’t mention that ladies should never bring up the dreaded feminist word. men will never respond to your profile if they think they might be strong and independent, and more educated. men don’t like feeling inferior to their potential mate!
*sigh*
…the Waitresses rule, by the way.
Personally I recommend not trying to internet-date.
hey, bashing internet dating is so 1998. i’ve actually had awesome luck with it, and don’t see anything wrong or weird about finding someone online. there’s still this strange stigma with net dating that needs to just go away.
that said, i *am* a m4w afterall, so it’s a lot less creepy, imho; various girl friends (girls that are friends) have had plenty-o-horror stories to tell… there just seem to be a much higher ratio of creepy, asshole males than creepy asshole females. but i guess that’s EVERYwhere you go to meet people–be it a bar, or online, whatever. i’m not saying i’m teh awesome, but there some fucking LOSERS swimming around in the Y-chromosome gene pool. i feel for the ladies out there sometimes.
Ooops… this was the link i meant to embed in my previous comment. =)
I wasn’t merely bashing it because that’s what’s done, or even saying that it’s weird. Clearly your mileage varied considerably from mine though.
i’ve actually had awesome luck with it, and don’t see anything wrong or weird about finding someone online.
Oh yeah? Then how YOU doin?
-Liberal Love Train
…What’s that? We work together now? Damn, I guess that makes you off limits.
Man I’d like to know where that author lives. The Craig’s List in my town I’ve managed to meet one girl, she was nice enough but we didn’t click, and I talked on the phone with a woman who didn’t give her age and turned out to be more than twice my age, every other response has been an Ad for porn or a dating site or a dating site that looks like porn.
As for what JasonC said, I agree and I’m not sure why that is. Are creepy women just less obvious? I actually know a guy we simply call Stalker Joe. He’s a weird mo-fo, I honestly can’t say I know any women who are even close to as creepy, and I know weird people. Anyone else have a hypothesis on why there seem to be much creepier guys than gals?
I’d be very remiss to take advice from someone named Bev Bacon.
I’ve had fairly good luck with people I’ve met online. The current boy, who responded to my profile on a dating site which listed me as “an unapologetic liberal and feminist” is a sweet, liberal, feminist boy. I would frankly never date or sleep with anyone who would have a problem with me being openly feminist.
Anyone else have a hypothesis on why there seem to be much creepier guys than gals?
Privilege. Men don’t get nearly as many cultural messages telling them they’d better be sweet and polite and not scary or they’ll never get anyone to love them. It’s the same reason most women would be ashamed to whine and carry on like Nice Guys do about how little sex they’re getting and how unfair it is. We’re more likely to anticipate other people’s reactions as “Ew, obviously” if we acted that way.
Junk science has it. Guys get more leeway to be antisocial. Ask any woman how many times she’s just been ordered to smile by strangers who don’t feel she’s perky enough, much less antisocial - people don’t publicly correct men’s behavior like they do women’s, so guys like that get to live in sweet obliviousness about how off-putting their behavior is. They also are more able to blame those picky cunts for not seeing how great he is, as opposed to women who would be programmed to seek out what was wrong with her before blaming him for not being interested.
“Privilege. Men don’t get nearly as many cultural messages telling them they’d better be sweet and polite and not scary or they’ll never get anyone to love them.”
So, does that mean women really are “sweet and polite” (’cause they’ve been forced to be and now don’t know anything else)? Or have they just learned to cover it up better?…
You can’t trust any of us, Mike!
Kyso, I’ve known that for a long time…
:)
“Ask any woman how many times she’s just been ordered to smile by strangers who don’t feel she’s perky enough”
Or by your boss’s boss, who’s a VP of your company…you’d think he’d be glad that one of his engineers looks “so SEEEEEErious every time I walk by your cube!” but no.
I like my bridges like I like my engineers, lighthearted and ready to collapse into giggles at any moment.
Pff. You don’t hire gal engineers to frown up the office. That’s what the Asians are for.
So, does that mean women really are “sweet and polite” (’cause they’ve been forced to be and now don’t know anything else)?
I don’t think most women with half a brain are really sweet and polite all the time, but I think being told that being creepy is bad and other people shouldn’t have to put up with our off-putting narcissism is a lesson that sticks with most of us. I don’t look at a random attractive guy on the street and think “That’s a walking cock. I don’t think of him as a person, but as a sex object,” and have to restrain myself out of politeness from insulting him. I daresay most women don’t feel that either, which is why guys who insult women they don’t know are fundamentally baffling to us. We actually believe that other human beings are real people with dignity, and I would grant that creepy men are equally genuine in their feelings toward women. I think a lot of men would benefit from getting the same conditioning women get, in that they would actually be happier and respect themselves more, as well as annoying fewer people.