Mastering Online Dating: Part One

Mastering Online Dating

BACKGROUND


Online dating is weird and odd and strange and wrong. Or is it? I decided to rethink my attitude to the whole internet dating thing when I realised that two of the hottest girls I know met their boyfriends online. Hot women are cruising for men online! The future is now!


I decided it might be fun to conquer the world of online dating and write about it for your amusement, and to serve as an instruction manual for lonely, horny men who don't have access to the quality of babe that I do. 
I had some funny ideas to try. But it wasn't totally a joke - maybe I'd meet a lovely fraulein to settle down with. And we could raise sheep and make hot chocolate for each other and argue about who should bring the bin bags outside, and everything else involved in true love.


GOAL OF THE PROJECT:
To find out how to get women to reply to me on websites, and ultimately, to meet one of them in real life.


** NERD INTERLUDE **


First thing I did was try to find my copy of Freakonomics, because it had some interesting data about online dating. I lent it to someone, and couldn't remember who, but this site here summarises the info.


In short, on your profile:
* You must have a photo
* Everybody lies
* It's best to 'overestimate' your income - women care about it when searching (I'm genuinely surprised.)


STEP ONE - CHECK OUT THE COMPETITION


I had a look at the Plenty of Fish website, which seems to be one of the main ones in the Anglo-Saxon world, at least, and searched for men my age. Wow. If these guys were my rivals, I'd be overrun by female attention within days:


Username: Stew
Heading: Shrek's brother

Profile: im honest (honestly. lol), im cheeky, im fearless, i may look like shrek on the outside but i also have his heart of gold and have all the love in the world to give to the right person


My reaction: Actually, that's not too bad. "What you can't fix, feature." And it's kind of funny. But still, he looks like Shrek and I'm way hot.


Username: BigMan
Heading: looking for good woman

Profile: i am tim i live alone have 4 kids i seen all time work for me self have few cars because i bye and sell them i like to do my own think and i like makeing money i dont drink or smoke


My reaction: Women like grammar and spelling. And kids, but not four kids, probably from four different women.


Username: LonelyHeart
Heading: Oooooosh!

Profile:


IF YOU HAD ME ALONE... L0CKED UP
IN Y0UR R00M F0R TWENTY-F0UR H0URS
& WE COULD DO WHATEVER YOU WANTED
WHAT W0ULD Y0U D0 WITH ME? TELL ME IN
A MESSAGE... CUZ ITS A SECRET... THEN
REPOST THIS IN YOUR PROFILE... YOU MIGHT
BE SUPRISED WITH THE RESPONSES YOU
GET...LOL


My reaction: If I had you locked up in my room I'd steal your identity and credit card info, buy torture equipment on the internet, and use it on you until you stopped being such a lameass. And what is 'oooosh?' anyway, and why should a girl like it?


...


And so it went. Every guy positioned himself as a nice guy. Half included the word 'genuine'; few the word 'fun'. Most had weird stretchy photos that looked shit. If I had a uterus, I wouldn't look twice at any of them.

Next: I set up a profile.

.