It's a jungle out there!

I have given up online dating.

In retrospect, I’m not sure exactly what led me to join the ranks of personal ad-placers in the virtual realm of romance. It began with me being bored after work, since my roommate works a night shift.

That’s when I discovered how incredibly entertaining it is to read the personals on Craigslist.

It turns out the site attracts all kinds of sketchy people -- looking for everything from a spanking to their Jewish soul mate.

At any rate, I figured it couldn’t hurt to look ... until I started finding ads that sounded half normal. They were few and far between, but nonetheless, I wanted to meet these people. They were attractive, fun and lived nearby.

I felt a little dirty when I finally answered one!

The first person I chatted with on AIM was Danny, a good-looking Asian student at Gainesville College. He seemed sweet, but we couldn’t exactly meet up since I’m still in New York.

The next was Derek, a techie working for Google in Manhattan. He was a nice guy, but after I finally received his picture, not my type.

After realizing Craigslist was slim-pickings, this 21-year-old decided to take action.
Why should I have to sift through the creeps to find a normalish guy online, I thought, when I could post my own ad and let him come to me?
That’s when I found plentyoffish.com.

It’s free, and you can set up parameters for who can contact you through the site. Of course, I didn’t know this at first, and received plenty of questionable messages from men older than my father.

I felt pretty confident as I described my interests and posted my photo -- I have nothing to be ashamed of! -- and I was justified by an almost immediate stream of messages in my inbox.

“You are cute how are you doing nice pics,” said Vick.

“I like your profile and I’d like to get to know you,” said Kamran.

Followed by the ever-endearing,
“Can i ask if you have a preference for a guy who is fairly well endowed?”

I won’t even tell you HIS username.

But it turned out to be an effective system. Through the site, I met Kris, a young engineer living here on Long Island; Matt, a software programer who works right down the road from me; and Justin, a student at SUNY Farmingdale.

After chatting online briefly, I decided to meet Justin in the village for pizza. It went well -- he was a funny and easy-going guy. We haven’t talked since, but he texts me incessantly. (See July 29 post)

So now I have a whole gaggle of guys to hang out with/date, should I choose to do so. What a blessing! you are thinking. Isn’t this what you wanted? More guys to choose from?

Apparently not. I guess excess really does lower the value -- I’ve now decided I don’t want to date at all. I don’t even feel a desire to meet the guys I’ve been getting to know on AIM.

But it’s a good feeling.
It seems there’s a difference between sitting at home because you HAVEN’T anyone to go out with, and sitting at home because you CHOOSE not to go out with people. Suddenly, I’m content to stay at home reading a book and writing on this blog.

So, even if I’m dateless, I guess I won’t leave my stint in the online dating world empty-handed. I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing there are truckloads of guys out there who want me ... but can’t have me!

Make him quit texting you

I received a text message last night around 10 p.m.

“What’s up?”

It was from the guy I met for pizza Thursday night. I guess you could call it a date if you wanted. I met him online.

This was the first I’d heard from him since our initial meeting, and of course I wasn’t surprised that he’d resorted to typing rather than talking.

I answered his message. He replied. It went on and on.

Had he simply called to chat, it might have counted for something, but he chose to keep it meaningless. Text messaging makes things impersonal.

It seems more and more men are using their thumbs to avoid really talking to a girl for the first time after a meeting. But text messaging is a cop-out, and we shouldn’t let them do it to us, ladies.
Aren’t you important enough to talk to?
Don’t you deserve someone who has the balls to shrug the jitters and just call you?

Blane Bachelor, a writer for the Sunday Paper thought she did.

She couldn’t understand why, after spending hours at a party talking and laughing with a new guy, he chose to text her a few days later. They’d had a great time, chatting easily, hadn’t they?

When one of her gal pals stopped replying to a guy who chose the text method, she wondered if he would eventually just call her. He didn’t.
“Refusing sex is one way we women tend to withhold power,” Bachelor writes, “but apparently refusing text isn’t quite so effective."

Savvy Miss, an online magazine for women, also tackles the texting question, offering tips to get him to call you.

A couple of my faves:

-Make texting irritating so that he has to call.
“Answer every text with a question until he realizes that if he had called, he’d already be done with the conversation.”

-He texts, you call.
If he texts, you know he must be by the phone. If you call and he doesn’t answer, just forget him. You deserve someone who’ll give you the time of day.

-Don’t respond.
One source, Rachel, 24, said texting “is a sign that he isn’t interested enough to call, invest time or energy in me. So, I don’t respond to the text messages.”

And if he doesn’t call when you don’t respond – delete his number!
He’s not worth your time.