My friend told me a story a few months back. I wish I could remember all the glorious details, but suffice it to say that:

In college, a guy asked her out.

At the restaurant, she ordered an entree and a beverage.

He simply ordered a glass of milk. He then proceeded to retrieve a baggie of cereal and a ceramic bowl from his backpack.

A male friend of mine offered to guest-post. And here, he humbly presents….

Four Ways To Make Sure Guys Don’t Write You on Match

1) Have a really bland statement that says nothing about you.

Most profiles have a way of being amazingly prolific in such a painfully cliche sort of way that one learns nothing at all about the author. Or maybe the thing that you learn is that they are insipidly uncreative and dull.

Example:

I am a sweet, honest, and respectful girl that appreciates beauty in nature and art. I like travel and wine and long walks on the beach. I really enjoy getting dolled up for a night on the town in heels and a skirt, but I also like spending nights in, cuddling on the couch with a movie. I’m slow to fall in love but when you’ve got me, you’ll have a partner that will stick with you through everything. I’m looking for a man that is kind and faithful and that I can spend the rest of my life with. I like dancing, my friends, and my family. And I LOVE to laugh.

Now I just made that up, but that seriously is a functional equivalent to about 95% of the profiles out there. I’ve spent a minute or two reading it and I know absolutely nothing interesting or notable about you. I’m not going to remember you for a second, and neither will anyone else. You’re clearly afraid to be you.

How to break out:

Don’t be afraid to be weird. If you’re into canyoneering in Utah or taking the best macro photos of gecko skin in the world, let that show. If you dream about selling your meatloaf recipe or collect pigeon stools, that’s still awesome because it’s something that people will remember about you.

And c’mon. Nobody actually likes walks on the beach that much in California. It’s cold and windy and overcast and there are dead seals and dead birds and decomposing kelp chunks and jellyfish everywhere. It’s actually quite unpleasant for anything more than about a minute.

2) Be really apologetically self-conscious about your online dating.

Look, everybody is on online dating sites. It’s just how it’s done. You don’t need to freak out about it. And yes, you need to summarize yourself in a few paragraphs. I don’t want to hear about how you found that so incredibly challenging any more than how I want to hear about how your trip to the bathroom was pretty difficult.

Example:

Oh goodness, wow, I have to write 255 characters about myself? Um, that’s kind of hard, gosh. So, I’m a little nervous about this online thing, it’s really not the kind of thing that I normally do, but my roommate talked me into it after I kind of lost a bet and now I have to be on here. OH YAY I MADE IT TO 255 CHARACTERS!

How to break out:

Easy. Don’t make a big deal of the fact that you’re writing a profile. Just do it. Everyone else had to, too, you know. You didn’t get singled out.

3) Use consistently terrible grammar and/or TXT-SPK.

The degree of class you show in your textual presentation will say a lot about what kind of person people expect to find when they meet you. It’s not a big deal if there’s a typo or two (c’mon, we’re all human, there are probably a few mistakes in this article!) but if you consistently portray yourself with bad grammar or use a lot of TXT-SPK, you are going to make people think you are a stupid teenage whore. And hey, maybe that’s a good brand for you. But if it’s not, spend a minute or two to tidy it up.

Example:

LOL OMG SO I M SO LKNG FWD 2 MTG TEH HOT GUYS LIK U ON THIS SRVICE!! PLS MSG ME RITE AWAY DAWG B/C I M HAWT N U R 2. LOL! TINGS I LIKE R LIKE 92.7 N DA DANCE OOMPAOOMPA MUSIC IF U NO WUT IZ MEEN. PEECE!!!!

How to break out:

No all-caps except for really rare emphasis, please. aNd mIxEd cAsE dOeS nOt mAkE yOu LoOk eDgY, jUsT dUmB.

4) Use only from-above headshots.

Everyone knows the “Myspace shot” angle, a self-held camera from above, just framing the face (and maybe a boob or two). It makes you look half decent, pulls your face into a smile, and hides that double chin that you’re developing, but since the point of the site is actually meeting people, your hot profile pic is not going to fool
anybody when you actually meet someone and you’re going to feel a whole lot worse when the guy of your dreams runs away from the table screaming than if he just never wrote you in the first place.

How to break out:

Use pictures that actually look like you. Ones that are smiling, fun, unique, that show you doing a hobby you really love or in a place that means a lot to you. And I’m sorry but yes, you really should have a full-body shot of some kind that shows off your figure well. Get mad if you want, but it matters to a guy. And if you don’t have any full-body shots, a guy is just going to assume you’re really *incredibly* fat. So if you weigh less than 300 pounds, include it. Most people actually do not have very good pictures of themselves. Have one of your friends with a *good* camera spend half an hour with you with good lighting and dressed well. It’s not vanity, it’s showing the best of what you’ve got.

Last night, a female friend and I went out to an event. After a few minutes apart, she tracked me down and told me this story:

“So I just ran into this guy. I could have sworn I knew him from somewhere, so I walked up and asked him. He couldn’t remember either. But I just now remembered: we corresponded a little on Match.com and then I stopped writing him.”

Thank *god* the guy didn’t recognize her. Otherwise the conversation would have gone like this:

Her: “Excuse me, do I know you?”
Him: “Yes. You wouldn’t talk to me.”

Heh.

I thought my date was weird for using twitter when I ran to the bathroom…but my friend just let me know that her date used twitter to inform her he was running late. Wow.

My mother reports that a male friend of hers asked out a girl….and then mistakenly took her to a gay bar.

Apparently gay bars aren’t the worst of venues, because the couple is now married.

A friend writes:

“So for the last date I went on, the guy and I were trying to find a place to meet after work to have a drink. I wasn’t familiar with the area, so I looked to him for suggestions. He didn’t have any, so he just suggested we “meet on the corner.” Keep in mind it’s like 40 degrees out, windy, dark, and I get to stand on a street corner in San Francisco waiting for this dude. Pretty awesome.”

A male reader writes in:

She and I were walking while having some cake. At one point she drops some of it and shrieks, “Ah, I dropped some cake in here! [looks at cleavage] No really! Look!”

A friend writes:

“Last night, this Argentinian playboy was trying to hook up with me at a bar. His line, unfortunately, was, ‘You have that look in your beady eyes.’”

A dear friend recounts a date:

“Turns out he’s a regular in the bar we’re at, so there are all sorts of people coming over and saying hi, which is fine. Except when two of them are walking away, and one says to other, ‘Oh, that’s totally the girl he’s been stalking.’”

A friend of mine was doing the online dating thing. Along the way, some guy asked her out, they had a date, and then she never heard from him again.

So far, not entirely unusual.

Several months passed. After a short-term relationship with another guy, she returned online and the just-one-date guy asked her out again. From the tone of his email, it’s clear he didn’t realize that he had already been on a date with her.

I told her to write back, “OK, how about we meet at Zeitgeist on September 15 of last year? Oh wait, WE ALREADY DID.”