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You keep seeing on “social networking” (not to mention “dating”) sites a lot of annoyed comments from women saying that men always send them short and stupid messages, with awful spelling and grammar, and are only interested in sex (real if possible, virtual if not), so they have nobody worth replying to and are getting really tired of the whole thing. From what I know (and my general opinion regarding most men), that seems to be a very valid complaint, usually… But how does that replying thing go when a guy’s message is the exact opposite of those they (justly) complain so much about?
But this is just a private rant about a very specific case, namely mine. I’m not going to draw any conclusions. If anybody wishes to do that, feel free…
The only such site I’m active on is OkCupid. They say it’s a dating site, but I don’t see it that way. I think it’s great if you just want to waste some time, very nice if you like tests and occasionally useful in finding interesting people to talk to. I first vanished from there when I vanished from everywhere, after I stopped talking to Andra at the end of 2005, after she left. Then I got back last summer (and that’s how I bumped into her again as well), then I vanished again when we stopped talking again (this time she stopped talking to me), after a while I went back for a week or two, then stopped again for a similar amount of time and nearly three weeks ago I went back again.
What I’m noticing is that not a single person I met on that site keeps in touch for long. I seem to be getting far more initial replies now than I did at first despite my messages being along the same lines, namely pretty much an analysis of the person’s profile start to end, commenting on anything that catches my attention in any way, but everybody just tends to vanish sooner or later (usually sooner). When I was still with Andra I was getting a first reply from about one in three girls (I don’t get along with guys, as I keep saying) I was sending something to. Now in these three weeks I sent such messages to seven girls and only one of them didn’t reply at least once. The problem is what happens after that first reply! Two only sent a brief message in which they’re basically thanking me for being different and saying they’ll write back when they have enough time to give my message the attention it deserves, but didn’t follow through with it. Two others replied nicely just the first time, then went silent. With the last two I seem to have a little conversation going for the moment, but they take several days to reply to anything I send them…
This is how it turned out before as well, just that this time the initial reply rate is very high, which makes it even stranger. I don’t get it… Whenever I send something it’s reasonably well written, usually quite long and it should be obvious for anybody reading it that I’m only interested in talking. Even says at the beginning of my profile that I’m not in any way interested in a relationship… That makes it pretty much the opposite of those messages they complain about, and yet… Plus that I very carefully select the recipients, only sending something if I stumble upon someone I really think I have quite a lot in common with and that we could find interesting things to discuss.
What’s more, usually if I do get an initial reply and then she goes silent I send a message after four or five days asking if something’s wrong or I scared her away or anything. I always get a reply along the lines of “no, sorry, I’m just awful when it comes to this, I’m really sorry, I’ll get back to you soon, I promise” and then silence again. Since I don’t press further, this is where it usually ends. Now I can understand that some might be busy for a while, but that can’t explain all the cases all the time. There are also those who are bothered by something but don’t quite know how to say it so they just stay silent and wait for me to “go away” imagining that’s better than saying what happened, but I like to think I usually avoid the dishonest ones… So I’m left at a loss…
