Thursday, July 16, 2015

My Online Dating Experience

Following a year long hiatus from my blog I’ve decided to do something productive with my existence during my spare time, other than drink and watch Netflix, and at least TRY to blog once and a while. I felt that there was no better way to jump back into the blogging world, than with a blog post which reveals how my desperations levels are sky rocketing as of late. I have shamelessly joined various dating apps in order to increase my chances in finding a husband and of course I’m willing to share my experience of these apps with you.*

[* Now I will warn you that I may come across as being shallow in this blog, however I believe that if you’re on one of these sites, being shallow is a given as you are judging people superficially on their basic information and a few photos. So if you’re thinking “why the fuck does this fat bitch think she’s a Victoria’s Secret model?” don’t worry, I certainly do not have such an unbearably high opinion of myself, but I do have (some) standards. ]



Up until the recent emergence of Tinder, online dating was viewed as a shady, catfish infested world where people who couldn’t even get the shift on a night out congregated in search of their soul mate. Now you could easily download an app which connected with your basic Facebook details and alas, you were on your way to finding ‘the one’. Tinder is extremely popular amongst younger people, which helped with ‘normalising’ the whole dating website stigma. Over 50 million people are using Tinder and at first I really enjoyed using it too. However after some time I felt as though that it was more so an ego boost app where you could maybe organise some casual sex, but nothing serious. Out of the 280 matches I’ve made on Tinder I have probably only conversed with around 20 guys seriously and have only met two in person. Often, I found that people were using Tinder to establish who thought they were hot but in the case of actually seeing the person in public, they’d look the other way. Some people I know often deleted the app and restarted their account again, just to see if anyone new would have liked them. Therefore my original high opinion of Tinder has diminished as of late and I have now moved on to greener pastures (OR SO I THOUGHT). On the advice of a friend, who told me that these other apps were much more successful as regards to going on dates, I joined OkCupid and subsequently Plenty of Fish (PoF)


What to expect:
Both apps are quite similar in their set up. Unlike Tinder, you fill out your own information such as your age, body type, height, interests, who you’re interested in meeting and so forth. You can complete so called ‘chemistry tests’ which delve into more ‘personal’ questions such as ‘Are you attracted to dangerous situations?’ or ‘Are you disgusted by the extremely obese?’ or my personal favourite ‘Are carbohydrates something you think about?’, to which I obviously answered yes because I like to fantasise about all the carbs all of the time.
Unlike Tinder, both POF and OkCupid allow anyone who is interested in you to contact you. So as a young, mildly attractive female, you can expect to be inundated with messages from guys who you would certainly would never dream of ‘swiping right’ to on Tinder. This can actually be quite overwhelming at first as on OkCupid it emailed me anytime someone visited my profile (I learned how to turn that notification system off quite quickly). What I found irritating and somewhat concerning were the guys messaging me who had no photos of themselves on the site, or worse, the guys who had photos of themselves with no tops on and their faces cropped out. I cannot see the point in having a conversation with someone on one of these apps when I had no clue what they looked like and the whole secrecy over what they looked like did them no favours in the “el creepo shady department”. I filled out my ‘About me’ section as follows:

Not interested in anyone under the age of 22. If you have your top off or your car in your photos I will be inclined to wonder if you are trying to compensate for other areas. Interested in dates and maybe taking things further of they’re successful.

Anyhoo, as it is a dating site I did expect the usual el freakos and the cringe worthy chat up lines, but HOLY FUCK was I naive about how vile some people truly are. Now to give some context here, I do mention ‘Bye Felipe’ in conversation with a creepo in one of the following photos. This is from this Instagram account I stumbled upon some time ago, where they upload screenshots of dating app conversations that girls have had with less than pleasant individuals.

You can check out that page here: https://instagram.com/byefelipe/



Secondly, I am by no means a prude. However, the way some of these guys approached a conversation with me was truly stunning. I really am concerned over how any of these creatures expect to actually find a girl on these apps with some of their opening lines and more importantly, some of their incessant need to continually harass me when I have clearly shown no interest and have not responded. 

Alas, my dear friends, feast your eyes upon the screenshots of my online dating adventure:


I enjoy how he blocks out some of the letters from the word 'cock', as though it makes it less rude.



Now that is an excellent way to start a conversation

IMAGINE joining a dating website to increase the number of your Facebook friends?

I'm holding out hope that he was just trolling me 




One of my profile photos is of me and my friend Meghan and I suppose he thought he had a good chance with her by suggesting to me that he would put his semen on her.





Self praise is no praise at all

Plenty of Fish was a little less chock a block with weirdos, however there were some gems worth screenshotting:


Please refer to my previous blog post on slut shaming for why I would be infuriated by this


Dealing with rejection is not obviously a strong point of his.



 

                                                  He genuinely gave me the shivers 


Don't people tend to 'Perv on the local talent' through Facebook stalking?

So what is my verdict? Whilst this post will seem overwhelmingly negative because I am only focusing on the degenerates on these sites, I would actually recommend using them. Personally, I think Plenty of Fish had more people in my age range and more 'normal' seeming people. If you are genuinely interested in meeting people to go on dates with I beleive the chances are much higher when using these, than on a night out or using Tinder. You have nothing to lose by downloading the app and having a look, and who knows, you may just find the love of your life!

Goodnight Irene