So as someone who’s trying to get “out there” again I have a lot of thoughts. Of course, a lot of them are about past failures. They’re obviously pretty damaging and I’m not a kid anymore so if that’s all you’ve got in the bank it’s hard enough to outrun them. I have to say, though, that the last time I went off the deep end and swore all this off it was one last bad online dating experience that pushed me over the edge.

Now, it’d never worked for me in the past. I’d been on it for extended periods of time and ended up going on one legendarily bad date with a woman who was fascinated with tall guys. On some well-intentioned advice earlier this year, however, I tried it again after getting dumped a couple of days after New Year’s (which reminds me again, people who have told me that they’re into really tall guys have generally been terrible people).

I wrote a thought-out, honest, funny profile that I thought was a pretty good snapshot of who I really am and what I was looking for, and a friend agreed it was solid. I put it out there. I sent some messages out (good ones - not “HEY U HOT WANNA FUK?” or whatever) to people I thought were interesting, looked around and all that, and waited to see what would happen.

Nothing, it turned out. I didn’t get a single response to a message. I got a couple of barely readable messages from accounts that were soon deleted. After a few weeks, I got disillusioned. So I naturally did what I thought I had to - I made a troll account. I mentioned nothing other than the fact I was very tall and very proud of it. Repeatedly. Over and over, as if it was literally the only thing about me, ever. I also changed my income to be over $250,000 and mentioned I was in a Fleet Foxes cover band.

Suddenly, to my horror: messages! Messages from people who missed the point, or, in an extremely rare case, found the real me boring but the self-deprecating, ironic, and apparently vapid me hilarious. This was nauseating. I responded to a couple of messages “in character” before I decided it was kind of stupid and stopped it all. 

So, from my perspective, mentioning my interests: sports, history, the authors I’ve read, the bands I liked, the places I liked to go etc. paled in comparison to some shitty half-baked troll profile about how I’m 6’10 and that’s THE BOMB!!!!!! This was pretty nauseating, and pretty damaging. I still don’t think too well of most people on Ok Cupid and I honestly would not recommend it or any online dating service to anyone unless you’re a woman and you can pick and choose.

Behind my “real” dating experiences, which have been pretty shit all around, I’d say that my various forays into online dating have been pretty damaging. Getting flat-out ignored repeatedly, and then turning your profile into something you hate and seeing the qualities you think are least important get attention from people who don’t get a joke is enough to flip anyone into cursing all of it to hell. So, whatever I do, I won’t be doing that again, and this time I mean it. I know people have had success and vastly different experiences, and if you have, I’m happy for you and encourage you to tell your side as well, but for me it is not.