the biography of someone

random happenstances | shedding a little light on people we've met in life

April 1, 2012

ABC's of Online Dating

Let me set the scene: I found myself incredibly unhappy in my relationship, which was made even worse by the fact I had built my life around this individual over a three year period. So when the time came to be HONEST (this is a word we will discussed at a later time) with myself, I decided to move on without him.

After a rough patch of anger, sorrow, and a genuine hatred for anything love related, I realized I was now technically labelled as a single female. As the fog started to lift, I was left with the inexpressible feeling of being given a second chance at life. I was a 26 year old single girl living in downtown Toronto. I had spent the last three years preparing for the rest of my life and had now been handed a blank canvas. It was empowering. The air smelled cleaner, my food tasted better, and the world appeared brighter! Nothing could get to me, I was untouchable. So one evening when I was feeling particularly strong and independent, I decided to sign up for an online dating service.

Ok fine, that isn’t completely accurate. The real version is I got drunk, watched Pride & Prejudice twice (fuck you Mr Darcy *cries*), and ate my body weight in cinnamon hearts before coming up with the smart idea to create an account.

In the light of day, and after vomiting a bright red blend of cinnamon hearts and beer, I chuckled at my actions and removed the site from my thoughts. But resistance was futile. I started to hear my phone beep periodically throughout the day, subtly letting me know I had a new email... The emails continued to pile in, with subjects like; "Signed, sealed, and delivered! Here are your new matches!" or "You’re looking old today, better find love before it's too late!"

It was like Chinese water torture in email form, and I was left with no choice but to go through my matches.

I found that I started to categorize my matches into groups. The first group were simply known as having poor grammar. But these guys really popped out at you, simply due to the fact that they never capitalized the first letter in their name. So as I nonchalantly went through my list, I would annoyingly see:

Jeremy
Tyler
joe
bob
mark
Terry
asshat

And if you happened to view their profile, you would be assaulted with sentences such as “i want a girl who knows dat money isnt everything and that i can treat her good and when i get home from work she can make me a sandwitch.”

I would then proceed to stick forks under my eyelids.

One of my favourite groups had to be the I-take-too-many-pictures-of-myself-in-bathroom-mirrors guys! It was always the same, a compilation of their worst facebook profile pictures. And they were the guys with 20 different images of just themselves, no friends or family in sight. You know the pictures I’m talking about, where their expressions are very serious (with a slight deer in headlights note) as they hold up their phone to what is clearly their bathroom mirror.

Seeing a toilet in the background tends to kill the overall impression you were trying create.
On the other side of the spectrum, there were the guys with no pictures at all. Or worse, they only had one pixelated image that could either be their face or their last murder victim. And when you gave them the benefit of the doubt and viewed their profile, it was only ever 4% complete. A topic will be “In my spare time, I like to...” and their responses would be:
“i like girls” [sic]
“lots of things” [sic]
“message me to find out” [sic] -
Yeah, I'll get right on that.


But every once in awhile, you come across someone who catches your eye, so you send them a response. And this is where we will be visiting next. Making the first real steps into the dating continuum...

2 comments:

  1. Mi sono sempre chiesto se il contatto virtuale non fosse una via, forse la piu' facile, per cercare ciò che ritenevo ormai introvabile nelle mie relazioni. Ma come possiamo essere semplici e diretti in un mondo virtuale? Il meglio di noi o cio' che realmente noi siamo, emerge se chi ci guarda ci tranquillizza e ci incoraggia. Mi mancano le emozioni e non riesco a comprendere se il problema stia in me o negli altri. E per ritrovarle ora cerco lo sguardo, perchè nulla piu' degli sguardi che si incontrano fanno emergere l'emozione.

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  2. It's been well over a year now, where's the follow-up blog post?

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