By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / April 17, 2008
For most guys, online dating is a fucking waste of time. Actually, according to Jupiter Research, online dating is a really big fucking waste of time, as 97% of guys cancel their online dating membership within 3 months due to dissatisfaction. The number one reason cited in this survey?
Lack of response.
In fact, the NY Times bestselling book Freakonomics states that 57% of men who sign up for online dating go through their membership without getting a single response from a gal. Instead, in today’s online dating world, most guys experience the following:
1. Guy puts up typical online dating profile and shells out $60 for a 3 month membership.
2. Guy browses for profiles.
3. Guy emails 100 girls over the next few months.
4. Guy gets 5 responses back from the 100 initial emails he sent. 3 of them read “Sorry, but I don’t think we’re compatible. Good luck!” The remaining 2 seem promising, so he emails them asking for their phone numbers. One offers her screen name instead, and he never hears back from the other.
5. Guy chats on-and-off with the girl over AOL IM or MSN or GTalk. He tries to get a face-to-face meeting with her, but it never materializes. Guy increases porn-viewing habits.
6. Guy cancels online dating membership, and puts a picture of Dr. Phil’s face on his dartboard.
Sadly the above scenario is really not much of an exaggeration. So why is online dating so fucked? Well, for starters…
• It’s a huge numbers game. If you’re a guy and you don’t believe me, do what I did and set up a personals profile as a slightly attractive woman on CraigsList. I guarantee that you’ll get at least 50 email responses within the first few hours. By the second day you’ll have at least 100-150 replies.
• You’re probably writing the same shit as all the other guys write, or copying and pasting from a template (yes, she’ll be able to tell; no, I don’t blame you for doing it). Again, set up a fake profile as a girl and you’ll see what I mean.
• Writing individually tailored emails takes up a lot of time, time that could be better spent on more productive activities (like shaving the back of your neck).
• There’s a lot of crazy people out there. PS: If a woman has the acronym TV in “her” tagline, that doesn’t mean that “she” likes to watch television.
• Pictures lie.
• Many of these online dating sites have no qualms about making their employees pose as lonely, nubile 19 year-olds to keep you on the site.
• You’ll get more rebounds than Dwight Howard in a charity basketball game. Seriously, at least half the women on the site just got out of a long term relationship.
• They drop like flies. If they’ve been on the site for more than a week, chances are they’ve already received more emails than they can check.
Yeah, you get the point.
But 2 weeks ago, I received an email from the folks over at Yahoo! Personals, offering me a free 3 month trial membership. So I thought to myself, why not take them up on their offer and make a little experiment out of it: Is it really possible for the average guy to just put up a profile, sit back, and have women (who aren’t actually guys in Bombay selling penis pills) emailing him constantly?
So here’s the challenge:
1. For the next 10 weeks, I’m going to rotate a new profile and profile tagline. For starters, I’m just going to use a plain-vanilla profile and tagline, one you’d typically see in the average guy’s profile.
2. I’m going to count both the number of views and the number of responses I get (positive, neutral, negative).
3. This is where I need your help. 8 of the 10 profiles and taglines will be coming from the readers here. The profiles can say anything, provided that they’re approved by the dating site and they don’t contain any kind of hate language or personal threats. Otherwise, use your imagination and come up with something creative. Email me your original profile and tagline at bb@thebostonbachelor.com. Do not post it in the comments section here, for obvious reasons.
4. At the end of the trial period, the results and responses will be tallied. The person who wrote the profile that received the most number of positive and neutral email responses from women will get a surprise gift. Of course, if you don’t want the gift, I’ll just keep it for myself.
I’ll be back in a few weeks with an update. Have fun; I know I will.
-The Boston Bachelor
