[This is the first contribution piece for this blog. The author wishes to remain anonymous – but you should know she’s pretty awesome.]
This post is in response to Nancy Jo Sales’ recent Vanity Fair article on Tinder and hookup culture in the digital age. Because we are twentysomething young women and we support her.
Basically, if you must ask, online dating is a bitch.
I once had a guy who messaged me with every sentence ending in an emoji. I once had a guy asking me if I’d like to have a threesome with him and his half-Asian wife of five years. I once had a guy asking me if I’d like him to be my sex slave. I once had a guy who wanted to make me his little sister so I could cook for him and together we could “climb trees”. You can’t make this stuff up.
I am on OkCupid, Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, eHarmony, and briefly was on Hinge and this kind of elitist site called Sparkology. Why so many, you ask? Well according to the boys it’s “a numbers game”, so I was like, fuck, two can play this game. So.
This is an advice post for all you girls out there who are online and dating but NOT FINDING LOVE.
[Shit Nobody Tells You About Online Dating – a non-exhaustive list]
1. Don’t ever pay for online dating.
DO NOT. The first reason is that you want to avoid the “death spiral“. In economics, a death spiral happens due to a phenomenon called “adverse selection”, where some people in a decision-making pool has more information about the stuff they should be deciding on than other people (“information asymmetry”). For example, some loser guys on an online dating site know they’re not studs like they say in their profile, but you don’t know that! In this case, the “seller” – the owner of the profile- knows more about themselves than the “buyer” – poor innocent you who just want to find true love. Eventually, after enough bad dates, the higher quality “buyers” start to drop out because they don’t want to keep on having to deal with lackluster candidate selection in the online dating pool. As a result the people who are left tend to make poor dating choices and poor relationship partners.
Now, you say, but wait a minute, I come across so many “legit” men on OKC! Well maybe that’s because you live in a large metropolitan city like New York where everyone and their grandmothers are on OKC. Online dating success is essentially about the quality and size of the pool you have to work with – if the pool is small, to find that guy taller than 5’10” who is white and works in medicine and has no children and speaks some German, you can kill yourself filtering and you still won’t find him.
So you shouldn’t pay for online dating because typically the pool is much more restrictive (like if someone can find enough people to date on a free site why would they PAY to do the exact same). People also tend to self-select into a paid site so if birds of a feather flock together, and you don’t share their feathers, you probably wouldn’t want to flock there.
2. Your cleavage is begging for that one night stand
Ladies, I have no doubt your boobs are glorious but save ’em. Men are visual creatures, so while this indeed means you might get more attention online from your cleavage and butt pics, what this also means is that your photo will immediately lead them to associate you with sex. While this association is inevitable, flaunting your assets in such a blatant manner does not bode well for any one looking for something serious (which, if you are not, then well…have fun banging dudes and use a condom). Have like, I dunno, one or two sexier pics but keep the rest of them true to yourself. Like, if you’re really a sweet, girl-next-door type, ask yourself if your photos convey that message.
3. Don’t take no bullshit
Okay, this is where our collective female New York City spirits will help you. If you’ve ever lived in New York, you’ll know that dating is seriously a pain in the ass here, partially because of the sheer number of gorgeous young women in the city, some of which are models. As a means of survival, we’ve gotten pretty tough, and that means we don’t take no bullshit.
Example #1: His messages are never longer than 3 words and sometimes just emojis (like winks and shit) – you say to yourself, “I don’t take no bullshit” and walk away.
Example #2: You don’t hear from him all week, and he texts you Friday afternoon as work is winding down and is like, “Heyyy what you up to tonight? Wanna grab a drink?” In this situation, be strong. Say to yourself, “I don’t take no bullshit”. A first date should take more planning in advance than this.
Example #3: He only picks places close to his apartment even though he knows you live friggin far away from him. Don’t fool yourself into thinking he CARES about you. He is just lazy. Say to yourself, “I don’t take no bullshit.” You can either call him out on it or just move on.
Example #4: He doesn’t ask too much about you and you haven’t exchanged more than 3-4 messages with each other before he asks you out for a drink and didn’t even ask for your name or your number. In this case he probably just doesn’t give a shit. Don’t make excuses for him like, “Oh he’s just a busy guy ’cause he works in iBanking at Citi, prob doesn’t get enough sleep to begin with.” Say to yourself, “I don’t take no bullshit.”
I have a lot more examples. If you feel like having a heart to heart about this leave me a comment and holla.
4. Maybe don’t actually drink at all
I know this is hard because I personally actually love fancy cocktails – and also, liquid courage.
But hear me out. Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t drink on a date:
- Potential for you to lose sexual inhibition faster than you’d like
- Empty calories, especially if you go on a lot of dates.
- Sometimes when you are drunk you say the wrong things – like, about your ex
- You probably look a lot sillier drunk than you do sober
- You might lose your stuff or have trouble finding your stuff, which is not lady-like
- Because you need to keep drinking and finishing and drinking and finishing cocktails, your date might end up running very long and very late. That is just exhausting and you lose a bit of that intrigue if you stay too long.
5. When you are harassed
Fight back, report them, hold onto your faith.
We’ve all been there – having men say things to us that are simply humiliating, things that keep our hearts pounding before we go to bed because we’re so angry, things that make us lose faith in humanity even if it’s just for a little bit. Sometimes you are discriminated because of your ethnicity, your photos, the things you say that were simply harmless in your profile. Know that these people are cowards, that this shouldn’t take away your deeply-seated belief that there is a good man out there searching for you just like how you are searching for him.
Never, ever give up.
XOXO
J. A.
Valoress 