Everything That's Wrong with Online Dating

If you haven’t had the absolute pleasure of dredging through the sludge that is online dating, please, allow me to enlighten you to all the things you’re missing out on.

You get roughly six different kinds of messages:

1. Your monosyllabic bros who hit you up with “hey” or “sup”. Don’t respond to those people. How are you supposed to keep a conversation going with that?

2. The guys who clearly messaged you based off your super-hot pictures. Only respond if you’re looking for a hook-up. Or if he’s really cute. Caution: dick pics are eminent with these ones.

3. The men who actually send you a well thought out message, noting things in your profile, but you have zero interest. In this case, you can choose whether or not you want to respond, but be warned, bad things can happen either way.

a. If you don’t respond, there’s a chance he’ll just kind of go away.

b. OR he will become enraged because you obviously owe him a response and now you’re a whole stream of degrading profanities.

c. If you do respond with something along the lines of, “thanks, but I’m not interested” he could say, “well good luck!” but that usually doesn’t happen.

d. You’ve wounded his pride, so he’ll retort with those lovely profanities that the other dude threw at you.

4. There is a myth, a fable of old, that if you sift through enough garbage you may actually find a partner who you’re interested in who sends you an intriguing message. For the love of all that is good in this world, respond and pray that he’s not a bot.

5. Oh, yeah, there are an unfathomable amount of fake profiles on there. You’ll probably know um when you see um.

6. Finally we’ve arrived at the boys who use the anonymity of the internet to send you messages that are best reserved for the third date. Example: “sit on my face and let me eat my way to your heart.” Settle down, you hangry perv.

If the messages don’t depress you enough, they’ve added a “prospects” section, for a heightened sense of hopelessness.

Now we come to scrolling through profiles. Obviously these people are trying to sell themselves, so they’re going to lie. Most likely. If you’re a taller woman like me, feel free to slice off two inches from whatever height they listed. Oh, and never trust a man who chooses not to list his height. 95% of men have at least one shirtless/flexing pose even if they really shouldn’t. But heaven forbid you post anything with a little cleavage or some leg- you will absolutely get a message slut –shaming message. I suppose that makes this the seventh type of email you’ll have the poor fortune of receiving. These guys know you won’t respond to a normal message because you’re out of their league, so they’re attempting to open up the channels of communication by any means possible. They’re honestly hoping you have daddy issues. DO NOT ENGAGE.

Catfishing. That goes along with those fake profiles, but sometimes it’s a real person behind the insanity and not just a robot. Snapchat and Instagram are a non-threatening way to ensure that your hottie with a body isn’t actually a 500 pound, 50 year old dude who’s confined to a recliner in his mom’s basement.

Let’s say, but some miracle, you’ve made it to the point where you decide to meet up in real life. Here is where a myriad of terrible things can happen. I’ll give you some of my favorite examples:

- He spends the first twenty minutes explaining why tall women shouldn’t wear heels.

o As suspected, he lied about his height and is crazy insecure. It’s okay to climb out the bathroom window and ghost this tiny man.

- Silence. He refuses to stutter more than a couple words. Politely excuse yourself from this situation.

- In addition to the aforementioned silence, his persona IRL is nothing like the guy you started to fall for online. This one is up to you. Stay and get to know this new bro or cut and run.

- His pictures were clearly from years ago. If he has that many body issues that he has to lie about it, just back away slowly.

- You get stood up. It happens to the best of us, but the liver can handle what the heart cannot. Go get yourself some whiskey and straighten that crown, boo.

- He spends the entire time talking about how much of crazy bitch his ex is. All the nopes here. Sure, she could have been certifiable, but he probably got dumped and now he’s bitter and jaded. Clearly, he’s not over it. Plus, this is 100% how he’ll talk about you to the next girl. This is the kind who tells you you’re beautiful and when you hit him with the “no thank you” you’re suddenly, “a dirty skank he didn’t want to get with anyway.” Okay, bud.

I’m sure there are more that I’ve just blocked from memory out of sheer survival. As always, there’s still that slim chance that you hit it off with your date, make a second date, then a third, and before you know it you’re laughing in the grocery store together. That’s why we keep putting ourselves through this, isn’t it?