I haven’t dated anyone for a calendar year now. I don’t mind saying that because I don’t think any judgement should come with that fact, but it’s still a bit jarring to write. I’m 26! I’m supposed to be in the middle of some 20-something love affair like all the people on TV and the movies are! Nope. Not me. I had a serious attempt at online dating in 2011, followed by a parodical one, followed by a few months of bitterness and trying to convince everyone I was an INDEPENDENT STRONG DUDE GRR NO TIME FOR THAT BULLSHIT. That…ended poorly.

Obviously, one can only put on a face for so long. Eventually I had to be honest with myself again, a process which brings with it a lot of emotional binging and purging, which always makes me a bit tougher to be around. I’m always fortunate to have friends patient enough for that, but it’s unpleasant, and I’ve decided that I might as well be honest with everyone than be some kind of cynical self-parody that swings around in perpetuity. Before New Year’s, though, I decided after talking to a friend I had to get things in order, and primarily focus on bringing to an end my eternal quest for gainful full-time employment. Just before that I had lost out on a job last month because I was, as the employer put it, overqualified. I thought it was a slam dunk, and the setback did little for my mental facilities.

Once I buried myself one more time it was time to climb out, forget past failures, and get to the business of setting myself straight. I’ve cut back on drinking and tried to stop repeating the same self-defeating cycle that drives everyone, most of all me, completely insane. Those things never go totally away, of course, but I believe I will conquer them in due time. I say they won’t go away until then because there are still days like today when I wake up tired and irritated. Why? Because of someone I dated a year ago.

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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.

notquiteokcupid:

http://luapula.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/its-always-sunny-in-medford-6/

Thank you, Luapula!

To be fair re: your horrific date, I once told a guy, “Well, I need to go buy groceries now,” to end our awful date.  Misanthropy for everyone!

Whoa! I totally forgot I had submitted this until I went back to check this blog today. I don’t know what’s worse, getting out of a bad date by using a blog as an excuse (me) or using grocery shopping. Whatever gets it done, I guess.