Date Online (without Being a Tool), pt. 1: Your Profile

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Attractive, witty, confident, sexually experienced men do not have trouble dating online. It is a natural extension of their greater dating life and women will flock to them. But you are none of these things.

You are a flailing tuna in a sea of confusion and a net of thrice-daily self-touching, and there may be no hope for you. But that’s okay – you can redeem yourself. With my advice you can at least not look like a douche online, improving your chances of touching an actual human female at least once before you die. And you’ll do it stone sober.

The first step is to realize that 98% of the women you are going to encounter online are not for you. Being well-endowed or having big pecs will not improve your chances, and may even hurt them. Online dating, just like all other forms of dating, requires meeting the right woman at the right moment. It also requires that you not look and sound like you work at a chop shop. Looking at the typical man’s dating profile, most of you look like carjackers AT BEST. Often we look like murderers, and that is a turn-off to all women except other murderers, whom you should only date once in a while.

The second step is to verify that you are actually single. Not married, not going through a terrible breakup or divorce, not changing your name and address twice a week to avoid your alimony payments. Save yourself the time, save womankind the humiliation, and take care of your personal affairs FIRST.

BUILD A GREAT PROFILE

Chances are you’re boring. The average guy has boring interests and a boring job and boring friends. Luckily, the average woman is also boring. If you are boring (in other words normal), you’ll want to attract normal women. If you’re eccentric, you’ll want to attract eccentric women. Customize your profile to appeal to someone who is like you – normal or eccentric.

Be specific. Don’t cast a wide net. Women appreciate a man who knows what he wants, and hate sleazy men who’ll take any girl displaying cleavage. Do you hate sports and video games? Say so. Rant about this, even. Give your readers a window to your loves and hates. You will not only impress the women you want to impress but you will also get messages from women who want to challenge your opinions, or who want to know why you specifically refuse to date whale biologists. (Duh. Because you’re a tuna.)

Tell her what you want. Are you looking for a wife? Save time and get this information public in a general way because she’ll be mortified if you pull that out on the first date. Just looking for a hook-up? Say you’re “just looking for some fun” or better yet “I’m not looking for anything serious”. Honesty will be rewarded, trust me.

Christopher S. Wilson

Keep it short. This is not an autobiography. And if it were nobody would read it. Your profile needs just a few short sound bites so they get a taste. A brief three sentence paragraph per section will be read in greater proportion than your modern-day adaptation of Moby Dick. (See Graph 1a).

Don’t call yourself “awesome”. You are not worthy of awe and if you were you wouldn’t need a dating profile.

Be self-deprecating, but not TOO self-deprecating. Self-deprecation is charming and lets her know you’re harmless. But don’t admit that you live with your parents. It’s fine, people live with their parents and many women can forgive this. But on a dating profile it just looks sad.

Don’t state the plainly obvious. Don’t say you love your family. Don’t say you love to travel. Don’t say you like having fun or that you love to have a good time. That’s like saying “I love drinking fluid so I don’t dehydrate and die.” Make an attempt to say something in your profile that other erect hominids might not have said. But not “woozle wuzzle” cause that’s TAKEN, bro.

Be a little sexual in your profile. Women know you’re horny and angry. You don’t have to hide it. But don’t be gross. Can’t tell the difference? Then don’t be sexual.

Don’t use your online dating profile to denounce online dating, nor to whine about how hard it is to write an online dating profile, nor to complain how you can’t be summarized in a paragraph. It’s been done over and over again. Millions of people have already humiliated themselves before you got here. They were the pioneers. You’re just a loser.

Use correct spelling and punctuation. You’re and your; there, their, they’re, etc. These ladies are taking the time to read what you wrote, so take the time to run it through a spell-check device. Many women are turned off by your inability to handle elementary English composition, and they are right to be. If you’re exclusively after dumb girls and don’t care, I would conjecture this essay is too perspicacious for your ilk anyway.

Ask a girl. Surprise! Women have opinions, some of them informed. Ask a female friend to read your profile and comment. More importantly, observe her advice, even if you disagree. She is closer to vagina than you will ever be without gender reassignment surgery. Don’t have any female friends? MAKE MORE FRIENDS.

POST GREAT PHOTOS

Chances are good that you’re ugly. Look around and you’ll notice even the “average” man looks as if he blorped out of a sausage extruder. Fortunately, women are much better at overlooking this sorry fact than you are, and it is also possible to be ugly and still look handsome. Or at least vaguely presentable in public.

Put a shirt on. It’s true, you work hard to look the way you do, but I’m afraid girls already know what abs look like. If a woman is unsure about your attractiveness, I can promise that six to eight slightly raised knots of muscle tissue on your torso are not going to turn the tide. If it turns out you’re not as hot as you think you are, she may even laugh at you. Profiles with lots of shirtless, flexing pictures are often the ones women send to each other with the subject line “Look at this one! LMAO!”

Christopher S. Wilson

Nobody wants to see your penis. We know, you’re fascinated with this miracle organ. It goes up, it goes down, it emits mysterious alien fluids, it is your only source of pleasure in life. Maybe someday a human female will also find it interesting. (See Graph 1b).

Get your gross face away from the camera. If your head fills more than 50% of the photo, top-to-bottom, you’re too close to the camera (or you cropped it too much). At best you look terrible. At worst, you look like the Pittsfield Strangler just back from a night on the town. Find a friend who knows how to take a flattering photo of you. Don’t have a friend like this? MAKE MORE FRIENDS.

Post at least one photo of yourself with people. But not snuggled up with your ex, even if you crop her out. It looks terrible and everybody knows why you cropped it. And no photos where every participant is double-fisting two individualized ten quart scorpion bowls. You want your photos to raise questions, but the RIGHT KIND of questions.

Show some variety. You’re not just some lame-o that sits at your computer all weekend, playing CoD or WoW with your idiot friends while subsisting on ZONE bars, are you? Nooooo…. So don’t post ten webcam pictures of yourself that make you appear this way. Get a CAMERA and learn how to use it. Self-taken photos are fine, but photos taken by other people will demonstrate, if nothing else, that at least one person in the world at one point thought you were worth remembering.

Don’t show your tandem skydiving photos. You’re not brave. You just had a valid Visa or Mastercard and a free afternoon. However, DO show your tandem skydiving photos if the dive went horribly, horribly wrong.

Christopher Stetson Wilson is a word artist and songwriter in Cambridge, MA. His many works can be found at OutsideOutside.com.