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| Know All Men By These Presents, Coles Phillips, c1910 |
Once you're signed up to a dating site you can initially keep yourself occupied filling in your profile. A lot of time will be spent fretting about the photos you want to upload - the lack of one basically implies you're some Quasimodo figure. However, the time comes when you have to message someone or else the magic solution, to the problem that clearly exists if you signed up to such a site, is never going to happen. I don't mean there's something wrong with people, because that would be like calling myself an idiot. Setting up a profile and then just sitting back in the expectation of a message is a very passive approach. I am most definitely not of the school of thought that recommends approaching women at the bar and unleashing a barrage of pick-up lines - that's pro-active, absolutely, but not very tactful. In the context of signing up to a dating site, you've clearly taken a step to resolve a situation. So keep moving.
If you're like me (am I calling myself an idiot now?), the first time you try to message someone is probably as bad as approaching them in the real world. It's embarrassing, even though only you and the recipient know about it. I probably spent far too much time fretting about the composition of my message and possible subtexts of my word choices given I wasn't writing War and Peace and it's ultimately disposable. I don't recall who I messaged at first or what I said because I've cleared space in my outbox, and there's no reply in my inbox. It's indeed disposable, and an inevitability almost. I don't send out that many messages, so my experiences are not exactly empirical evidence of the way the site operates. I'd estimate I've sent out between twenty and thirty attempts at first contact in the past two years. That's relatively low, but if I sent out any more I might end up with two conflicting dates to the prom. Of those only five have worked. Furthermore, only two instances didn't run out of steam. It's fairly common that a lengthy exchange of messages simply dies out. I suppose it's because the site is geared toward well-populated areas and facilitating eventual meetings in real life - ie, dating. It's not a pen-pal service, but then again for a site with the word 'cupid' in its name there seem to be a lot of people only looking for friends (near and afar) and activity partners.
I don't know why I didn't come / I left you by the house of fun / I don't know why I didn't comeThe two women I contacted and struck up conversations with were several borders away. As I said, it's really geared toward cities like London with a lot of eligible young people. More importantly in the chronology of this narrative, they didn't appear until after my first year on the site had passed. This time last February, online dating having yielded no results, I believed I had come up with a great plan and executed it on the morning of the 14th. By 'plan' and 'execute' you should read 'sent a card'. In hindsight I don't know why I thought that would work. It was the only way I could think of initiating contact and Valentine's Day kind of legitimises unexpected communication. I couldn't very well go and knock on her door. Had I done it nine or ten years before it would have been far more effective. The fact that I recalled her after a decade, and only then sent a card probably sabotaged the entire effort. It probably smacked of desperation too, for good measure. For the rest of the year whenever it came across my mind I cringed. It wasn't until last month and the approaching anniversary of cringing that I re-evaluated it. It feeds into what I said above about taking action. I'd characterise my teenage years, and have probably done so multiple times in the early life of this blog, as a string of missed opportunities. If a girl throws her head into your lap because there's a bee in the classroom and on another occasion shows you her bra (both of which I can recall far too readily, and the bra was a kind of light purple) it's a fairly good sign she's coming onto you. She may have been a cocktease, or more likely I was a fucking moron. I could analyse my inaction until the heat death of the universe, not that it would change anything. What I thought would change it was taking action. Even a better late than never approach, because doing nothing was the worse option. Ironically, I came across her on a social media site much later. However, that bridge is certainly burned on account of the deafening silence that followed my card. Had I done nothing that door might still be open, but then what good would second-guessing my every action achieve?
He came from somewhere back in her long ago / The sentimental fool don't see / Trying hard to recreate / What had yet to be created once in her life / She musters a smile / For his nostalgic tale / Never coming near what he wanted to say / Only to realize / It never really was.And so it was back to OKC. The site's statistical blog notes that writing 'hi' and then a very non-committal question about how they are doing is the least successful approach. By this time I'd been honing my message-writing skills by picking up on information in profiles. That's not an attempt to appear I'm listening since I don't message women who don't say something that catches my attention in the first place - it's a way of both having an investment in the conversation. When it works, that is. Again, it doesn't seem to matter how much effort you put into a message if the recipient doesn't want to reciprocate. Checking the matches within a 200km radius, as I have to, I came across an interesting profile for a twenty two year old girl in Edinburgh. Turns out she wasn't in Edinburgh yet and was scouting ahead in advance of attending university there. It was such a bizarre, off the wall, flirtatious profile I had to message her. I couldn't pick something out to build my message around so I went meta and told her I had no idea where to begin. That actually worked, which reinforces the truth that the message itself doesn't seem to play much of a role compared to the approachability of the recipient. She contacted me one Saturday afternoon on okc's instant messenger after I came in from work and asked if we could talk on Skype. At the time I was refusing to move to Skype after Microsoft had axed MSN, so I immediately jettisoned my principles for boobs and installed it. Somewhat awkwardly she was not in the brightest of moods and was sporting a quotation from 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out' by The Smiths as her screen-name. She seemed a bit combative initially, perhaps because I was being a bit too flippant in the face of her depression. She lost out on her choice of university, so she wouldn't be coming to Scotland after all. I hadn't signed up to console her over this, which sounds quite selfish. However, I seemed to have landed the job of shoulder to cry on, which I was in no way prepared for. Nor qualified, what with my lack of relationship experience when it came to discussing the troubles of her new relationship through the summer. I didn't mind talking to her, though. I've spent more of the last two thirds of the decade talking to the same people, so it was a refreshing change. I haven't heard much from her since last September since she got accepted into another university.
As she was no longer available by the arrival of summer, I went back to checking my matches regularly. Not that talking to a woman who is unavailable is a waste of my time, it's that I'm primarily on a site named after the Roman god of erotic love for the things he connotes. I usually search ranked by match percentage, though the site recommends sorting by 'special blend' in order to present people who are similar to you yet distinct enough to avoid being a gender-swapped clone. I've found the results down to 80% are as far as my preferences typically extend, although it takes quite a while to scroll down that far so I usually give up much sooner than that. Admittedly, ashamedly, searching through matches can quickly devolve into looking at the main photo and only then reading the snippet of their profile presented alongside based on how attracted you are to her face. Rather her face than body parts, some might say. That's not to say I prioritise physical attraction above mental attraction (from reading her profile) or vice versa. The so-called special blend delivered one day last June when I didn't bother to set it back to percentage. I do not believe in fate or predestination. There is only probability from sequences of events which can build into inevitability. On the other hand, you can burn through an hour wondering if a binary digit had flipped the other way would she have appeared on your specially blended matches yesterday, tomorrow, or never at all. Since OKC's patented algorithm did most of the work in bringing about the circumstances, we'll call it luck.
While scrolling through many faces, one caught my eye - a French girl almost a year older than me residing 200km away in Ireland. And by the previously defined luck, the part of her profile displayed just so happened to say her absolute favourite film was Jurassic Park. Music to my ears. I quickly messaged asking her about a character that a true fan who has also read the book knows was too awesome to die. She replied positively and we seemed to be hitting it off exchanging almost forty messages in two weeks. I was waking up in the morning and checking my e-mails before work, buoyed by each reply. I had coincidentally decided to try and pick up French again earlier in June and begun listening to podcast lessons. I've never been more enthusiastic about showing off the average amount I could say. There was one night we swapped several messages almost in real time, which I termed Super Monday. When I didn't hear from her for three weeks I almost felt destroyed. I have too much of a tendency to think too far ahead and so I had planned to ask her all sorts of questions, talk about all manner of things, and get to know her. I really liked her and here it looked like I was suddenly, without explanation, being ignored. I could see she was logging in occasionally during the three weeks, which fed into a ludicrous miniature depression. She eventually replied, apologising for the delay and explaining she had been extremely busy working the long shifts she had told me about prior. I replied with some chatter, but didn't get a response. Driven by my eagerness to converse with her, I sent another message two weeks later telling her I had a lot of time off coming up and hoped to catch her online at some point. No response. My month off came and went without hearing from her. Finally I sent another in late October explaining I wasn't going to clog up her inbox sending messages without giving her time to reply, and that I was just letting her know I hoped to hear from her again soon because I really wanted to get to know her.
Last week was sixth months since her last reply. She's logged in frequently in that time, though I've managed to restrain the internal drama that seized my mind last July. I don't know what you would call the feeling I have after this. 'Heartbreak' is far too dramatic a term to use considering we exchanged electronic messages and never actually met. Disappointment? I probably set myself up with great expectations. I let my imagination run wild - mentioning I had time off was an attempt to talk about meeting up. Far too early for that, I'll admit, given the distance between us (literally and figuratively). I've repeatedly thought about why I haven't heard from her. Perhaps she's been even more busy with work trying to save up money to go back into higher education as she told me. Then I wondered if my last message had overdone it and scared her off. Maybe she doesn't want the kind of relationship I was implying a desire for. Maybe she's just on the site to meet new people. Then again, I've already pointed out the name of the site; and in doing a reverse image search to verify the professional-looking main photo wasn't stolen, I found she has profiles on other Irish-based dating sites - so it seems odd to me to be on a dating site without an intent of pursuing romantic relationships. Maybe she's too shy, maybe she doesn't know what she wants. Who the hell knows? Seeing her other profiles isn't stalking, by the way. If I wanted to harass her I'd keep sending messages until she blocked me. I figured it was better to leave her alone for whatever reasons the situation is so, rather than make her actively dislike me.
Malcolm: I want you to tell me why you don't like me.
Laurie: Why are you doing this?
Malcolm: I want a straight answer.
Laurie: God, I can't believe I liked you in the third grade.
Malcolm: You liked me in the third grade? I knew it, I wasn't crazy. You did like me! So what the hell has changed? Tell me, I defy you to tell me.
Laurie: Nothing! That's the problem. You're still the same vain, obsessive, know-it-all who doesn't listen to anyone.
Malcolm: But you did like me in the third grade?
Laurie: Malcolm, I don't like you! Can you get that through your head? Before I just didn't have a crush on you, and now I can't stand you! So you want me to tell you why I don't like you? You want me to tell you why I like nice, funny Gary Spinnler and absolutely despise bitter, annoying Malcolm?
Malcolm: Look...
Laurie: Well I'm going to tell you! There is something wrong with you! I don't know how you do it. You're cute, smart, funny, and somehow you managed to mess that up. Like today - it was an awkward situation. But it would have passed! But you just kept picking at it and picking at it until it turned into this big horrible thing! There is something wrong inside you! There is something rotten at the core of your personality!
...
I'm so sorry, Malcolm. I just started talking and I couldn't stop and I said all those mean things. I didn't even mean half of them. Who am I to say your kids will be screwed up? I mean, you might not even have kids.
-Company Picnic, Malcolm in the Middle, Season 3
So that's the status of the dis-union. I've had a steady number of profile views before and since, often with a four or five star rating of my profile. I don't know who really likes my profile because that's a function locked behind a paywall, and much as I wouldn't mind paying toward the free site, I can't justify shelling out for their subscription rates. In the end I remain waiting for the day 'Jurassic Park Girl' (not her real name, for I did ask en Français) might communicate with me again. I veer between hopeful optimism and fatalist realisation depending on whether the millisecond is odd or even. I did have a relatively shorter exchange of messages with a girl in Arizona, mostly about musical tastes; and asked an American in Glasgow what state she was from (it was New York). Both profiles disappeared without word, either deleted or disabled. All anyone can tell me is that there are plenty more fish in the sea. And I know there's a site with a similar name, that's the pun. On the subject, if I can turn my nose up for a moment, Plenty of Fish is a bit down-market purely judged by my alleged matches in the West of Scotland area. It hasn't even produced the dashing of hopes, and all students of story-telling know you need conflict and disharmony for a compelling tale. That's why this over-long recounting wasn't written up last year when there was nothing to show for it. Like that complaint-filled post I wrote about being at the airport in 2006, if everything went my way it wouldn't be worth reading. Definitely not over a hundred times as in South Korea.
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