photo of Minneapolitan filmmaker Wyatt McDill, kung-fu-ing

Competitive Online Dating

This morning I read this article on sfgate about how the author gets kind of into her MySpace hottie photos. Her thoughts on dating in the world of MySpace reminds me of one of my favorite bar-stool tales.

Ex-boyfriend Will – his MySpace profile actually reminds me why it didn’t work out, but that’s another story. Anyway, in one of the lulls of our non-relationship, we played this funny game. He was bitching about how he never gets any dates online because he’s black. I told him it’s just his profile that didn’t work. He contended that girls get more hits regardless. So we decided to conduct a very scientific experiment.

He wrote my post, and I wrote my post, and we created new email accounts for each post (separate). Then we gave that about 2 weeks, and did the same for him. Rules: we have to state race/height/job, no lying, though we can omit somethings, and emphasize things, without the other’s permission.

Results? His: he wrote this angst-ridden, women-hatting single paragraph where he outlined what he DIDN’T like about women. Me? I wrote a kind of hopped up happy poem, where I mention his cute butt, etc. (from his perspective). It was long. I think that women like guys who write lengthy posts. Shows that they’re good communicators, and all that. I mentioned he “worked in a law firm” (couldn’t say he was a lawyer) etc. Didn’t say anything negative about women. The results? His post: zero. The one I wrote for him, 3 women, all of whom he ended up dating!

So then we start mine. I write a long post about all of my likes, dislikes, how I’m bookish, I like to go on walks, I’m into local history, and I like to drink coffee. His: very short, mentions that I’m Swedish (come on, barely!), voluptuous and “like to party.” Oh shit. My email box was flooded. I maxed out the hotmail inbox, actually, past like 300 email messages in 1 day. My post? About 12 responses. I ended up going on 1 date, though, out of the entire inbox. A cop, from San Leandro, who ended up translating Mandarin for the FBI. Needless to say there are more anecdotes from that guy. But the funniest email was one in Swedish, and as I worked on translating it — took a week– I originally thought they wanted help with homework, but no, it was a pure hookup email, involving a guy and his wife (who’s schedule was constantly in flux). Ugh.