What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

***Official*** FFA iDating Thread (2 Viewers)

It means she's really a 'tute and has a Triple A rating with the Better Business Bureau.

She's probably based out of Toronto.

 
Interesting read: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/all/

Of course, a major point is that he presented himself as the kind of person that the kind of women he was interested in would be interested in. He didn't make the mistake I see people making all the time... "Why isn't so-and-so interested in me? Why can't s/he like me for me?" Well, if you're a boring dolt, s/he won't be. Be the kind of person that they would be interested in, in your own way. Ask yourself why should they like you for you if you are a boring dolt. He didn't like, he didn't make anything up, he just packaged himself in a way that would be attractive to the kind of person he wanted to meet.

 
Sarnoff said:
Interesting read: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/all/

Of course, a major point is that he presented himself as the kind of person that the kind of women he was interested in would be interested in. He didn't make the mistake I see people making all the time... "Why isn't so-and-so interested in me? Why can't s/he like me for me?" Well, if you're a boring dolt, s/he won't be. Be the kind of person that they would be interested in, in your own way. Ask yourself why should they like you for you if you are a boring dolt. He didn't like, he didn't make anything up, he just packaged himself in a way that would be attractive to the kind of person he wanted to meet.
Click to expand...
A lot of ####### genius in there...

 
Sarnoff said:
Interesting read: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/all/

Of course, a major point is that he presented himself as the kind of person that the kind of women he was interested in would be interested in. He didn't make the mistake I see people making all the time... "Why isn't so-and-so interested in me? Why can't s/he like me for me?" Well, if you're a boring dolt, s/he won't be. Be the kind of person that they would be interested in, in your own way. Ask yourself why should they like you for you if you are a boring dolt. He didn't like, he didn't make anything up, he just packaged himself in a way that would be attractive to the kind of person he wanted to meet.
Click to expand...
Holy ####. No wonder the dork could,t find a date.

 
I put up a profile on okcupid. Did a long summary and just mentioned I'm married at the very end. Not my problem if they don't read the whole thing. Said I'm 27 and used a photo from that timeframe. Will let you guys know how it goes!

 
From reddit:

I'm a straight man in my mid-to-late 20's living in a major American city. I'd say I'm of average attractiveness. When I was on OkCupid, I actually got more messages than I sent out. Part of it is that in many major cities, there are more highly educated single young women than single young men1 . Part of it is that I'm Jewish and signaled in my profile that I'm Jewish2 . Part of it was I understood how the % match score was calculated3 , and made sure to answer questions accordingly.

But I think the real reason I got more messages than I sent (and high quality ones at that from the type of people I was interested in), more than the structural factors mentioned above, was that I wrote a really good profile. I've helped a bunch of my heterosexual female on OkCupid and most guys' profiles... suck. It's not just the "too old dudes", and the guys who are more interested in showing off their abs than saying anything4, and the dudes who seem to only exist in order to send out lewd messages--I'm not talking about those. It's the normal dudes. The dudes I would be friends with. Their profiles were just boring. And mine started that way, too. I remember showing the first draft of my profile to my friend Kim and she was like "No, this is awful." I was hurt, "Why?" "Because you're funny," she said, "and this profile makes it seem like you don't have any sense of humor."

So I started making it less pretentious, less trying-too-hard, a little more goofy, and a lot more telling about who I am (but emphasizing the best parts, obviously). I tried to make it memorable--that's one of the biggest problems with most "nice guys" on OkCupid, their profiles look like all the other nice guys. Oh, you like Arrested Development and Community and the Office and Parks & Rec too? You like indie rock with some danceable music and some hip hop and/or classic rock? You like a mix of comedies and movies that are on IMDB's Top 250 with maybe an action movie or two thrown in? Or whatever the ratios of all those things are. The point is, on most of the male profiles I saw, that does very little to differentiate you. If it was something that was different about cultural taste, it was something that I or the female friend I was browsing with had never heard of so was basically a useless signal for us. Taste is not a substitute for an interesting personality. OkCupid gives you plenty of space to sell yourself--take advantage of it. Why should anyone pick you? Try to list your best traits. For me, it's that I'm smart, it's that I'm funny, it's that I'm cultured, and that I care. Then remember to "show, not tell". I didn't say I'm smart, I showed it with my vocabulary and writing style. I didn't say I'm funny, I made goofy jokes. I didn't say I'm cultured, I had a variety of specific examples. And I didn't say "I care", I mentioned things like the fact I always say "bless you" after someone sneezes (which is stolen from the Cameron Crow movie, Singles, in addition to being something I actually do).

So the first mistake people make is not seeming interesting. Not selling themselves because it's hard not to come off as smug, at first. Remember the old maxim that "Good writing is rewriting". Every time you sign in, tweak something in your profile. I shut down my OkC when I started dating someone, but from the very first line my profile was memorable. My about me didn't start "I'm a PhD student", it started out with a single sentences about chivalry and other stuff that I'm sure annoyed some people who came to my profile, but it kept the kind of person I wanted interested. It got their attention, it sent me apart from other people, and it made them remember me. And people messaged me about it.

As you know, messages that are just like "Hi" or "U r cute" are dumb, so you need to, as Bonnie Raitt said, "give 'em something to talk about" (while simultaneously, at least in places, leave them wanting more--make them want to ask a question about something). I had lots of little things and opinions that people could comment on. I lived in a bunch of countries, so a lot of women messaged me about traveling. Some women messaged me about Judaism. I had a goofy fact about how a lot of my exes ended up dating girls which people messaged me about. I got two or three messages that started off praising me for understanding "proper sneezing etiquette" because of the "bless you" thing. I'd try to say things about me, but put them in interesting ways--I didn't say I couldn't live without books, I said I couldn't live without "full bookcases", and got messages from other people who covetously horded books, or had to give up their library when they moved to this city and missed it. In all likelihood, that line turned some people off as pretentious, but you're seeing how I write this: I'm going to turn some people off as pretentious. I can tone it down but not turn it off. Some of the stuff in my profile was just goofy and lighthearted. For a while I said, "I'm definitely Team Jacob", which ended up getting a really surprising amount of people message me about Twilight. I eventually deleted that bit because they weren't messages from the kind of people I wanted, but still, it's a good demonstration about how the little lines can help get you messages. Even things like liking my hometown sports team were put in joking ways about hating our rivals which let people message me and say "I hope it's not a problem that I'm from a family of rivalteam's fans". The point is, there were a lot of little little things that were potential low-effort conversation topics if a girl was at all interested6 . And there have to be a lot, because what happens if someone is interesting and pretty and thinks you're, you know, kind of interesting and pretty but doesn't have anything to say about your profession, your obscure and/or average taste in music/TV, or your one prominently featured hobby? They end up not sending you a message because they can't quickly come up with anything better than "Hi" or "You're kind of cute". I apparently wrote something about how I spend my free time thinking about what rhymes with "orange", because someone even messaged me about that (I'll save you time: there aren't any perfect rhyes, but there are some slant rhymes). I deactivated my account almost two years ago so I can't review all the things I said, but I've been looking through the emails I got from OkCupid about messages to see if they would help jog my memory about what I'd written, and one message started, "Wow, your profile is really good at leaving the reader with questions about you. Well done!" Another said, "Its rare that someone's voice can come out so well in a profile." It shouldn't be rare--your profile should be an advertizement for the best parts of you, the most interesting parts, and also have a lot of little throw-away lines that reflect your personality. It should also be in your voice, reflecting your real personality, because that's all that can get from date one to date two.

Another small thing I did was I made it clear that I'm receptive to messages: I think I said something for the "Message me if...." section "You think it's so 20th century for women to wait for men to approach them" or something goofy like that. I made myself not only interesting in general, and different from the infinite sea of similar OkCupid profiles, but approachable in multiple ways. And I did this all by giving a fuller, more accurate, more telling picture of myself. And obviously, this didn't just get people to send me messages, but I think made people more receptive to answering my messages, because I clearly wasn't just a dude writing because I thought they were cute (pro-tip: everyone wants to feel pretty, no one wants to be appreciated just for something mostly or completely out of their control, like ethnicity5 or beauty). Last thing: don't write big essays for each section--that's just a new kind of boring. Some should be longer, some should be shorter.

The point is, I think it's a cop out for most men saying, "Men get fewer messages because of traditional gender norms." Yes, that's certainly part of it. But it also might be that your profile is boring and forgettable. Look at other men's profiles (go to "similar profiles" or whatever it is when you go to your public profile in signed out mode). Does your profile seem like the similar profiles? That's bad. It should seem like you, and not seem so similar to those other guys.

tl;dr: Write more, write better, rewrite more. Be memorable, but not cloying. Be funny, but not desperate. Be smart, but not smug. Be different from other dudes. But more than anything: give women a reason to message you, and also give them a bunch of potential conversation starters so it's as easy as possible for them to do so. Use the concept of "kaizen", or "continuous improvement", in editing your profile. Someone reading your profile should want to know more about you. Elsewhere on Reddit you've heard stories about people "holding out for the people they deserve" without trying to be "the people who deserve to date the people they want". If you want messages, show that you are a person deserving of being wanted.

Footnotes

1: I'm not 100% sure how many cities this works for, but it is my impression that it's common in major U.S. cities. Here's a map of single people in New York, for instance. You'll see that in most of the rich, hip parts of the city (most of Manhattan, Brooklyn) single women out-number single men. There are several poor parts of the city (East New York, Brownsville) that also have more single women, and several cool parts like the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, where women and men are split, but you'll notice that all the high socio-economic status areas are either mostly single women or evenly split, so being a cultured, hip-enough, white dude was at my advantage from the get-go. Most OkCupid people aren't really interested in how much money you make, but people do care a lot about the "socio-" part of socio-economic status, and as has been long known in sociology, socio-things like education and cultural tastes are highly correlated with the economic part of socio-economic status. I'm just relating these maps to the economic maps for people who don't know what New York neighborhoods mean in terms of the "socio-" stuff. As a PhD student living on a stipend, I don't think my low economic status hurt me, but I know my high socio-economic status (like I said, PhD student) helped me in attracting the kind of girl I was looking for. Since taste is high correlated with socio-economic status (see Bourdieu's Distinction for a statistical analysis demonstrating this), the match questions in part sort based on socio-economic status anyway. Having relatively a lot of women and relatively few men in my socio-economic status group helped me, is all I'm saying. I don't think this ratio holds true for every city, but I think it holds true for most major cities. You can see maps of other American cities here and judge for yourself.

2: In major cities, anecdotal evidence suggests that Jewish young women have a stronger preference for dating other Jews than young Jewish men do, but I don't know if this is actually true. I feel this worked worked to my advantage in getting messages, however.

3: If you don't know that "mandatory" question is worth 250x more than a question that's "a little important", you don't really understand how to answer those questions. Learn about it here. I also read all of the entries in the sadly defunct OkTrends blog. A good one to start with is the first one they had about pictures: 1, 2. Also good are the ones about messaging cited in n. 6. They're helpful in thinking about how to do things. Notice in the picture blog they even mention that you might want to have "something unusual, sexy, or mysterious enough to make people want to talk to you. "

4: For a detailed ethnography of the wide variety of ####ty, superficial dudes on OkCupid, see Alli Reed'sCracked article, "4 Things I Learned from the Worst Online Dating Profile Ever". Let's bracket this creepster group as a lost cause and discuss them no further.

5: Quit messaging Asian girls just because they're Asian. See also, "Why 'Yellow Fever' is Different from 'Having a Type'". But yeah, always compliment people based on who they are, not what they are. Being hot is not who someone is.

6: We know from OkCupid's own data, part 2, that successful messages often have certain characteristics. Have enough random things in your profile that girls can write you the type of short, individualized messages about non-physical characteristics/specific interests mentioned in your profile in such a way that they don't read like subliterate form letters.

final edit: I did my best to give advice for people different from me, which may be totally wrong: for peopleoutside of major cities, for women, for non-white people. Other comments scattered below. I won't look at your profile--get your friends to do it. They actually know you. Ask them, "Does this sound like me? Would you want to date this person? What's missing?" If you're hungry for more advice, check out the do's and don'ts forprofiles and messages on /r/okcupid.
Click to expand...
 
Here's another bunch of good advice found through reddit:

REDACTED asks:

I gotta be honest man. You have the best profile I’ve ever read. Both in terms of being well-written, paced and humorous, and also as probably able to wrangle in more women than any other jerkoff profile I’ve seen. Respect.

That being said, I’m curious if you could give me your thoughts on my profile. I know it’s kind of a lame thing to ask, but #### it, you get it. Do you have any advice for me on how to better attract chicks on here?

OK, well first of all, thank you for saying such nice things. I like my profile, too. I get a lot of these emails because of reddit users briefly discussing me months ago. And most of my visitors are dudes from out of state. So, thanks guys. I wish you were nubile young women from Southern California, but, #### it. At least someone gives a ####.

But I should tell you– I get an incoming email from an actual girl in my age range about once every two weeks. If this is in fact the best profile on the entirety of OKCupid, and I am a six foot one athletically built white guy who is gainfully employed in a major metropolis, and this is the unsolicited message yield one can expect from an “original” and “humorous” profile, men are genuinely ####ed. Plus my response rate on outgoing emails is about fifty per cent, my phone number rate when I ask this fifty percent for it is about fifty percent, the call back rate when I leave a message is about fifty per cent, and the amount of dates that actually result in sexual intercourse or wanting to see the other person again is fifty per cent, and so on. I am in a Zeno’s paradox of ##### where you are walking halfway of halfway of halfway along a wall forever and by the time all the hoops are jumped through the possibility of having an actual relationship is functionally zero. So even if this profile is so ####### great, it’s like– the most lethal Nerf weapon ever invented. There’s just not much you can do.

But still. It is good, for what it is. If nothing else, having a funny profile certainly distinguishes you from the rest of the community who are just boring the girls to tears. So, if you want to have a profile like mine, here’s how to do it:

Get up an hour early every morning and sit down and make your fingers move on a keyboard until you have to go to work. DO NOT deliberately set out to write an OKCupid profile essay, just write about random ####, or how much your job sucks, or how much you’re dreading your visit from your mother, or how your cat ate a gopher and then puked up its bones on your curtains. Write about how you are incensed that the rest of your D & D group wants to switch to 4th edition when you are the wizard and the whole point of playing a wizard was to be underpowered at low levels and then grossly overpowered at high levels and this has all been reduced to a formless mush where all the characters, even the fighters, have fifteen special abilities each that are functionally exactly like wizard spells, and plus you have to buy a whole new set of books and magic missile doesn’t always hit anymore and the damage calculations for spells like fireball are just made so middle of the road and “balanced,” no more of those ridiculous advances that suddenly turn your character into a badass at level five. And your intelligence modifier contributes to armor class, now– really! Because you are smart enough to dodge blows? You read a book about how to duck from swords or something, so you no longer get to satisfyingly roleplay a character who is a master of the arcane arts but crazily susceptible to physical blows and can easily be taken out if he’s standing in back and the party’s thief failed a perception check for any kobolds flanking the party from behind, you know.

Anyway, write about #### like this for an hour for like five days. The trick is doing it long enough that you can get out of the “don’t think about polar bears” phenomenon of remembering that this is for your OKCupid profile and just have legitimate, honest observations about life experiences flowing out of you. Then at the end of five days look over what you have and cut and paste whatever your favorite paragraphs are that are remotely germane to “six things I could never do without,” etc. Tweak them a little to make them fit the question.

Ultimately, and this is a massive ####### cliche, but it comes down to show don’t tell. The more you try to reveal, the more you make a point to reveal, the less you actually reveal. The more you have an on-the-nose discussion about your goals and aspirations in life, the more it feels like a sales brochure and one begins to suspect that your goals and aspirations are the exact opposite. You (the general “you,” not you in particular, letter writer) come across as some bull#### advertiser-friendly simulacrum of yourself. And that dishonesty reads as chicken####. It reads, to me at least, as shame about who you actually are. It reads like you have something to hide.

I know I’m shooting myself in the foot by admitting that virtually no girls actually message me, because look, now don’t take my advice– but– there are such depths within people, you know. Such interesting stories. And they never want to show them on here; they want to give the sanitized version because they’re afraid of scaring people away. Well, the good thing to know about OKC is that you are starting from nothing. Just being a dude who doesn’t look like 1994 Casper van Dien has already scared them away. You literally have nothing to lose. You might as well crack yourself up, and if you can get a couple laughs out of people, maybe they will be the kind of people who will not be put off by your giving the list of the top ten abortions you’ve caused over a glass of Pinot, you know, and then maybe coming home and making it number eleven.

Anyway, long story short: take down all the #### that comes right out and says what you’re like and put up random funny #### that is seemingly unrelated to the profile essay topics but is, in its honesty, revealing of who you actually are. Do this well, and you will still not get emails from women. It will make no difference. But you will get noticed by dudes from across the country who mistakenly think you get laid all the time. And really, other guys thinking you get laid is what life is all about.
Click to expand...
 
"Show, don't tell" is absolutely key. Don't write that you're funny. Be funny. Even if the jokes are stupid. I have a throwaway joke in my profile about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that I think has gotten me more results than anything about me that's actually true. I keep looking for ways to move it up closer to the top of the profile so it gets read quicker before the chick gets bored and moves on. Be stupid and corny if you have to, as long as you show and don't tell.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've found you should never mention anything about their appearance/photos if you want a response. Mentioning you have a shared interest in something from the profile is always the way to go. :rookie:

 
Sarnoff said:
"Show, don't tell" is absolutely key. Don't write that you're funny. Be funny. Even if the jokes are stupid. I have a throwaway joke in my profile about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that I think has gotten me more results than anything about me that's actually true. I keep looking for ways to move it up closer to the top of the profile so it gets read quicker before the chick gets bored and moves on. Be stupid and corny if you have to, as long as you show and don't tell.
Click to expand...
:goodposting:

That article was spot-on. Be funny and be different. And be good-looking... I think he left out that part.

 
CYP said:
CYP said:
EYLive said:
zed2283 said:
CYP said:
I have joined plenty of fish but I have not put up a photo as of yet.
Click to expand...
Don't use the one in your avatar.
Click to expand...
Now THAT would be funny.
Click to expand...
I used a very non serious pic in my profile photo. Im expecting zero responses but I am also not taking this seriously as of yet
Click to expand...
http://pics.plentyoffish.com/dating/232/66/4ejeqzm3hjcr4bhifdmvz4gwz386531559.jpg
Click to expand...
Not bad, but the doo-rag screams "bald!!!"

 
OC Zed said:
CYP said:
CYP said:
EYLive said:
zed2283 said:
CYP said:
I have joined plenty of fish but I have not put up a photo as of yet.
Click to expand...
Don't use the one in your avatar.
Click to expand...
Now THAT would be funny.
Click to expand...
I used a very non serious pic in my profile photo. Im expecting zero responses but I am also not taking this seriously as of yet
Click to expand...
http://pics.plentyoffish.com/dating/232/66/4ejeqzm3hjcr4bhifdmvz4gwz386531559.jpg
Click to expand...
Not bad, but the doo-rag screams "bald!!!"
Click to expand...
oh I dont care, like I said, Im not taking this seriously at this point. When I do, Ill switch all the crap around. Im really just poking around. There are a lot of BIG fish out there lol

 
Cleaned the slate for the most part after Thanksgiving. Had one FWB still kind of hanging around but nothing serious.

Updated my OKC profile and will do the same on POF and start at it again in the next week or so. Will try to post some good stories.

Side note: The Wiccan from last year has become single again and is not ready to date, but has been texting constantly and it looks like a FWB situation might be opening back up.

 
Anyone have any stories from tinder? I imagine it is great for the hs/college/fresh out of college crowd. Is the 30+/divorced/single moms/etc crowd using this? Guess it doesn't hurt to try it out. Worst case scenario get 'matched' with some horny youngin :homer:

 
And I assume the whole process is accelerated from first contact to making bad decisions. Match, text hello, make plans within 48 hours, meet, let "things happen", next! Sounds too good to be true.

 
I haven't used tinder but seems to be all the rage amongst wimmenz I know (20-40yrs) so I'd assume more variety than just barely legal.

 
chauncey said:
Anyone have any stories from tinder? I imagine it is great for the hs/college/fresh out of college crowd. Is the 30+/divorced/single moms/etc crowd using this? Guess it doesn't hurt to try it out. Worst case scenario get 'matched' with some horny youngin :homer:
Click to expand...
Eric Stonestreet admitted on Howard Stern that he uses it all the time to get laid.

 
chauncey said:
Anyone have any stories from tinder? I imagine it is great for the hs/college/fresh out of college crowd. Is the 30+/divorced/single moms/etc crowd using this? Guess it doesn't hurt to try it out. Worst case scenario get 'matched' with some horny youngin :homer:
Click to expand...
If you are in/near a metropolitan area, there are tons of 30+ women on there. Yes. Most are still in the 27 and below club.

 
Not sure where to post this, but it is loosely i-dating related.

Backstory:

So a month or two ago, I am out on a idate that is going half way decent. I was actually mildly interested in the girl I met. About halfway through the date, we are sitting at the bar when we are approached by a girl who was hotter than my date. She comes up to me and says, "Hey, did I go to high school with you?" Immediately, I figure out who she is and realize she is now much hotter than she was back then. So she proceeds to hang out with us and chat for about a half hour while she waits on her date. My date later ends, nothing much to report there.

Update:

So about a week ago, the girl I ran into from high school sends me a message via facebook with her number asking me to text her. Long story shorter, we end end up meeting out on Saturday night at a local bar in our hometown. We are having fun just catching up for about an hour and then decide to go to another bar where she has a couple of friends. Get there and meet two of her girl friends and one dude who is with them. Both of the girls are also attractive.

So somehow after many drinks and shots, we get onto the subject of sex and how girls in their 30's are really into it. So, the girls go on to tell us of these vegetable parties that the girls would go to. Previously, I didn't think these existed other than in the movie Old School so I called bull#### on it. At that point, the girls started providing photos / videos of proof of these parties. Without getting into too much detail, the proof was impressive. I'm still pretty much in awe of it.

Then a little later we got on to a formerly favorite topic on FBG, "is it pee?" The girls of course claimed it wasn't pee. One of them told a story of her sister actually peeing into a glass first then doing the other business in another glass for comparison. And of course took a photo of it. In conclusion, it's not pee.

Yadda yadda, it was one hellova fun night.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

NCCommish
So how's it going?
2
Replies
71
Views
2K
NCCommish
NCCommish
Lehigh98
Suggestions for Where to Book a Reunion / Birthday Weekend in the Northeast in April?
Replies
21
Views
557
zamboni
zamboni
Psychopav
FBG Prayer Intention Thread
Replies
18
Views
567
Mr.Pack
Mr.Pack

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top