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.

You ever think about what a silly response this is to anything?

A friend was telling me yesterday she was going on vacation because she was stressed. My reflexive response to that was to say “I don’t blame you!”. And then I thought about it and how stupid that sounded.

Saying “I don’t blame you” implies that the person did something you would normally blame them for, right? If someone says “I punched that guy in the face” and you knew for a fact the guy probably deserved to get punched in the face, even though it’s generally a wrong thing to do, “I don’t blame you” might make sense. But who would blame anyone for going on vacation? An asshole, that’s who. So, “I don’t blame you” is really inappropriate 99 percent of the time its used.

This has been my profound thought for the week.

Those annoying iPhone commercials got me thinking about how much I don’t like the idea of being seen on the phone. First off, I don’t like talking on the phone to begin with. I feel like if I don’t constantly have something on my mind or interesting to say I’m wasting everyone’s time, and I probably am. Take it from someone that has wasted people’s time on the phone in the past - I don’t like talking on the phone. I’ll avoid it if at all possible and use another form of communication (texting, instant messaging, smoke signal, etc.).

Secondly, I don’t really want to be seen when I’m on the phone. If I’m at home talking on the phone, it means I’m not out talking to somebody, and ergo have not taken proper care of myself to be presentable because that expectation never existed before videophone technology. Nobody needs to see that I haven’t shaved in a week, or that I’m wearing the same shirt from three days ago, or that I’m not wearing a shirt at all. Of course, you now know that I do this because I’ve explained a point, but I don’t need there to be visual proof of what a slob I am most of the time. “What ARE those beer bottles doing on your desk, Tino?” YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW! DON’T JUDGE ME!

And that’s what I think about that. Exception: boobs.