Given that I guess I've been on OKCupid for over a month now… I figured I'd type out some of the initial comments I have about online dating itself (no specifics, of course — I'm not dumb enough to a) post publicly about people I'm still potentially going to see again or have crushes on or anything that's super recent in a way that they can identify themselves b) it's taken until now that I've had critical mass of people i) meeting me in person or ii) trying to contact me online).
Firstly as a woman, I get next to no responses if I try to contact people first. I've pretty much given up on that strategy, mostly because it doesn't work but also because it's more effective to just rate people highly and if they're at all interested they'll check me out. That strategy seems to work better — I'm not sure if this is a gender role thing or not.
When men do message me (either returning my first message to them as unlikely as that is, or when they send a first message) there are several types of messages I receive
1) Hi, how are you messages that don't really indicate anything about the person that is messaging
2) Messages written in such poor grammar and spelling and whatnot that I can't even decipher what they're trying to say (okay so that's a slight exaggeration but true
3) A question or two
4) A slightly longer message (paragraph length) where they've put some effort into tailoring a response to my profile.
Generally I only really like the 3rd and 4th types of initial messages, though I have on occasion responded to the 1st type of message.
Some people don't fill out their profiles or include pictures, and what pictures they include are often a) old/out of date b) really blurry c) unflattering d) in a context that doesn't make them seem attractive.
I don't tend to use the lack of a good picture as reason to not message back or eventually meet the person, but it certainly doesn't help their chances, I would think. I mean honesty is something I value, so appropriate pictures is a good thing, which makes meeting up a lot less scary among other things.
People messaging from really distant locations or who have an exceptionally low match percentage are also unlikely to get responses from me, though I may still glance at their profiles.
I vary between really enthusiastic about OKCupid and really unenthused about the whole online dating thing.
And that's pretty much what I'm going to say about the whole thing at the moment — sure I might want to type more, but I know better than to do that at this juncture.