We know that online dating is very much lopsided towards women. Women tend to get a significantly higher amount of emails/messages to them then guys receive from women. For example, it’s not uncommon for an attractive woman to receive 50-100 emails a day versus maybe one to two, for a guy of equal attractiveness.
I’m sure of this because I have seen the dark side my friends. Yes, I created an experimental fake profile of a woman on the Plenty of Fish dating site, and what I saw shocked me.
Let’s take a look at what the “other side” sees.
[WARNING: a few days after doing this, I had both my personal real account and my experiment account deleted. The PlentyofFish system seems to have several methods for detecting duplicate accounts, so you may not want to try this at home]
Not long after getting the profile setup by loading up a few pictures of a female I grabbed from another site and writing a quick generic description, I was quickly swarmed by dudes who wanted to IM me. Seriously, the little boxes were popping up every five seconds. This annoyed me to no end, so I quickly disabled the IM feature.
I let the account sit for about a day and a half and this is what I got:
In a little over a day, I received three pages of emails from different guys. That’s approximately 60 emails total! This is pretty insane considering that the woman was of average looks and my own personal (male) profile barely gets one or two emails in a month, let alone every few minutes as this account did.
So one thing we can take away from this little experiment is that, if you are a guy, you have A LOT of competition for Plenty of Fish dating. Not exactly a comforting thought is it?
But Wait!
It does gets better. After further analysis, the experiment showed that despite a tremendous amount of competition, a large majority of those guys, like 95% of them, are pathetic when it comes to online dating. Thus the competition is also weak.
The most notable weakness is the lack of any thought into how they initiate contact with a female on Plenty of Fish. If you look at the above screen shot again you’ll notice that a large number of subject lines are simply lines like this: “Hey”, “Hey there”, “Hello” or “Hi.”
A quick count through all of the subject lines gives me a total of 39 guys out of 60 who sent an email with some variation of “Hi” in the subject line. That’s 65%! On top of that, the remainder subject lines were either really lame, rude or vulgar.
Now lets take a second and put ourselves in the shoes of this woman. If you are a busy attractive female and are receiving 60 emails a day from random men, whose email are you more likely to open? The ones that all say the same thing in the subject line or that one message with something clever, intriguing or at least different than a simple “Hey”?
Keep this in mind, as the next post about POF email messages, will examine the body of the messages that were sent to the experimental account and trust me, they’re not pretty…
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
interesting stats Matt..
I thought the situation would have been reversed..
maybe the males need a lesson in how to write a unique greeting
Kim,
I take it you’ve never used plentyoffish.com before, you’d be surprised at some of the drivel that guys are writing. I honestly couldn’t believe some of the messages that my fake female profile received, it seriously made me realize how pathetic most of the members of my gender are…
Yep, very few guys are able to find the sweet spot using email/text. Sure, if you got a lot going for you you can get away with pretty much anything but very few guys are actually that good.
The crappy messages are easy to discount. These are generally guys taking a long shot or are already in a defeated state.
The other type of messages are the ones professing some form of attachment or heavy attraction in the first message … to a picture on the screen no less.
The best approach is to only send messages (initial) when you’re in a confident fun mode and just keep it at conversation starter level and be a little playful.
Geez, you only have to do that for a little while and you will build up a pretty good selection of pr4ecanned messages to choose from after a while … from there it is just point and shoot.
Anonymous,
You’re right and it seems that if guys would just practice on their writing skills a bit and learn some fundamental aspects of attraction, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. Because the competition between other males on the site are so weak, it wouldn’t take much to start reeling them in…
“it seriously made me realize how pathetic most of the members of my gender are…”
Nice way of being misandrist.
I don’t know if you have some vested interest in POF or are a women-firster, but so far from what I’ve gleaned from your blog here, you are both from what I’ve gathered.
Secondly, by employing a fake female profile to lure men in to garnering the response you are seeking, you are practicing DECEPTION. Since your tonality seems to be rooted in some form of moral higher ground, it does not bode well or give credibility to your little experiment. Plus, did you gear your profile to receive the responses you wanted? This is also manipulative and only serves to prove you right, not permit a less biased outcome.
You also went against POF policy by posting more than one profile, but hey, I’ll let you off the hook for that one. Obviously, they did not.
You say that the competition between men is weak. In actuality, women have the pick of the lot at POF and other sites because the ratio of men to women is in their favor. Women can be afforded to be picky, snotty, arbitrary, and judgmental because they have a slew of men’s profiles to select, and many are simply attention mongers that rarely meet men in person.
And from (what I gather) from other men’s complaints, men are usually curt about contacting women because they know that a long essay length introduction doesn’t usually yield a response—why waste time and energy into something that gives minimum attention? That’s being practical and direct, not dancing around the issue.
BTW, I used to be on POF, and the PMs I received from women could be just as under-educated sounding as men. It was uncommon that one would write a meaningful and well written letter. I kid you not, one woman completely skirted my profile detail that I didn’t want to see someone overweight as she was obese, and her PM was simply “Hi.” That’s it.
I seriously question your defense of POF.
Wytchfinde
Anonymous,
First, to call me a misandrist is a bit out of line. I am certainly not a hater of the male sex and the purpose of this blog is to actually help males have a better online dating experience. Nor do I have any vested interest in PlentyofFish, except for my own dating, nor would I consider myself a woman firster, whatever that is.
So, did I create a deceptive profile? Yes. Was it ethical? Probably not. To be honest, I don’t really care. The fake profile was up for two days, men sent emails to the account, but other than that there was no other manipulation. It was simple act to observe the difference between a female profile and a male profile.
You then go on to say, “You say that the competition between men is weak. In actuality, women have the pick of the lot at POF and other sites because the ratio of men to women is in their favor.”
You are correct, women do have the pick of the lot, but this does not negate that the male competition is weak in online dating. You are comparing apples to oranges.
BTW, I’m not necessarily defending or supporting POF, simply writing my observations of what does and does not lead to attraction and real life dates.
Plenty of Fish is the most eleborate software programmed dating scam that uses fake dating profiles of men and women along with a “software programmed AI” system that automatically does the following: (1) generates fake “profile views” to your profile so when you “log in” it will show you some “women” or “men” that “viewed your profile recently”. #2 When you email one of the fake profiles, ie, to some “woman” you’ll notice your email is “read” or “deleted” or “read/deleted” within a few minutes of your sending it even if it is 3:00 am in the morning (the software automatically generates the “read/deleted” etc randomly to seem like a real person) is reading the message but it is not. It is just setting flags in a database – this explains why you email dozens of people yet get no “response” when you should be a perfect match for the women/man. #3 They used an automated method to “generate” fake profiles by “scraping” data from other dating sites, e.g. a computer program runs and hits specific dating sites, reads the profiles and adds the “member” to the POF database. #4 You’ll notice that most women that email you are the ugly ones (the real members) #5 The big question for Markus Frind is (if his site is not fake) … “Markus, please tell us how you went from 1 member to 10 Million members in a span of a few years with no investor money?”
Anonymous (above),
I can understand your frustration and why you would believe the above accusations. It does seem that there are definitely some sketch dating sites out there who inflate their member numbers with fake profiles and the like. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was done in the beginning to get the site rolling, but I find it hard to believe that it occurs today, simply because I’ve read tons of blog posts by women who vent their frustrations about the poor quality of men on the site. I’m lead to believe that guys aren’t getting responses for the same reasons they don’t get dates in real life. They’re just not displaying the kind of attraction that women are looking for.
As far as the site growing to 10 million members, it is because of publicity. Markus and POF have gotten tons of publicity throughout the blogoshpere and mainstream media, which would account for massive growth in numbers. Though I doubt that most members are active on the site.
Do you have any proof of your above accusations?
What publicity? I know all about dating sites, I’ve worked on them. Viral marketing is not as “easy” and “slam dunk” as people think. POF started in 2001 and even in the quiet times it was rampantly suspect of fake profiles. In addition, how many more men like you “created fake womens profiles” so there’s another batch of “fake women” for men to email and to be eventually “unread/deleted” by the automated system eventually either once your account is suspended or what happens is the fake account you created is “suspended” and automatically becomes a AI profile. Think about it… all of these sites, MySpace, Facebook, POF do you really THINK they want to “lose” profiles…? No, they never do, that’s why it’s hard to delete them. They want the site to appear as active and plentyful of “stinky” fish as possible.
As for the new service for “paid” dating on POF, I’ve already seen people “subscribing” to this “paid” service on the “100% FREE” Plenty of Fish site. It’s so funny. Hmmm… It looks like Markus Frind is going to have to change all of his marketing strategy now since he’s operating a “opt in” PAID dating site (like the ones he LOVEs to bash)… How laughable… As it is no one is serious on the site, now he’s finally “acknowleged” that by adding a “pay service” to “prove” people are “serious” about dating on POF…That’s such a good belly laugh… hahahaha…
First a few months ago, he tried to launch a rediculous “feature” where the POF suckers would pay $10-$30 to send a “virtual gift” to the women that are already “ignoring” the men, then when that failed miserably to a huge backlash, now he launches a monthly paid dating feature just so you can have a “gold icon” next to your picture (and STILL get ignored) ROFL… POF is going to implode eventually. They already are running algorithms to operate the millions of fake profiles on the site, remember right on POF’s home page Frind states:
“3. Our success rate, matching algorithms and technology is unmatched, we are the only dating site capable of generating matches in real time. At 26 my algorithms and their results were cited in the Nobel Prize of Mathematics (Fields Medal) paper.”
Hmmm… algorithms… just like the AI ones he made that operate the fake profiles that don’t respond to emails…
Also, another point that proves he’s full of shit and fake profiles is this statement on your “Sent Emails”:
“Hey if you see unread deleted don’t be disappointed, some users (.01%) get 100 new emails a day if they have a great picture up. People like that don’t have time to read your message even if they wanted to.”
Right, so all of the dozens of average-looking, non supermodel women (the majority of POF women) that you emailed on POF are all the “(.01%) get 100 new emails” and getting 100 emails a day? What a joke.
I just found this article on the web about “paying to be serious” on Plenty of Fish:
http://dating.about.com/b/2009/03/09/pay-to-be-serious-at-plenty-of-fish.htm
Look at posts #7, #9 and #10:
#7 Don’t be conned. Plentyoffish.com is assigning those badges to profiles (only women that I know of so far) that didn’t ask for or pay for them. Some I talked to simply found them on their profile without being asked. Several women that I communicated with said they didn’t want them, when approached by Big Fish (presumably the site owner), and had them placed on their profile anyway. Emails to the site operators to remove them were met with silence.
It seems that PoF is trying to drum up business, particularly from males, by giving away these badges. I find that to be fraudulent as it is intended to be a filter: only those who are serious about finding someone would pay. “If you want others to know you are serious and you’ve put real effort into finding someone then you should get your serious member profile upgrade. Take a look at some of the screen shots below. Think about it, do you take people more seriously if they have paid for something?”
#9 Here is PoF’s response regarding my complaint about the women with the gold seal not having paid: “Free upgrades were awarded to random members chosen by the system that have proven to show regular activity on the site and good behavior. Users that we would consider to be Serious Members. Those that are not in agreeance with the label email us and we promptly remove the status from their profile. You can rest assured that after two weeks time, those users that do not see themselves as Serious Members are likely to have contacted customer service and downgraded their status, leaving you with a more defined idea as to who is serious about dating.”
#10 I showed PoF’s response to one of the women with the “Serious Member” who didn’t ask for it (and who has been trying to get it removed for a week) and she said “Wow what a bold faced lie.”
Interesting yes…? Hmmm…
“Free upgrades were awarded to random members chosen by the system that have proven to show regular activity on the site and good behavior.”
Sounds like Markus Frind is up to his old tricks again, now having the AI system upgrade the real female members and leaving the “fake” women AI accounts as “not serious” …
Men are inherently logical and rational by nature. We approach everything we do from a systematic perspective, trying to find the most efficient way of getting things done. To ask or expect us to change is totally unreasonable; first, we can't. We are wired this way; our brains are biologically created to function in this manner. Second, it's offensive. This is a core attribute of our masculinity. How would you like it if men demanded women be less emotional? It's exactly the same thing. You can't help it, that's how you are.
This includes dating and approaching women. Men learn pretty quickly that there is a fixed percentage of women who will respond positively, regardless of the amount of work put in. Women are very fond of saying "well, if he just read my profile, and knew something about me, and wrote a real email special just for me, I'd probably be interested", but we all know that's bullshit. All you do is look at the picture, and if you think he's hot, you'll check the other stats to see if he meets all your requirements, typically that he's over 6 feet tall, makes six figures in a professional career, has his own house, car, etc. The content of the first email doesn't matter, and we know that. It's just to get your attention, if you respond back, then it's game on and we put some effort into it.
In days, 60 guys expressed an interest. How many of those emails did you read? How many of their profiles did you review? None, I would guess. These guys took the very real chance of risking rejection by approaching you, and you come on to your blog, AND MAKE FUN OF THEM?! Wow! You've got some kind of nerve on you. Instead of being flattered and complimented, you subject these guys to public ridicule. Instead of writing a post, awesome subject lines, you focus on the negative.
So, you've got a stuck-up, inflated sense of self worth, and you like to make fun of people who try to initiate contact with you.
Wow, what a catch. Please, if I ever send you an email, don't respond. We'll be seeing you on Craigslist Rants & Raves in about 10 years after you're past prime, bitching about how much men suck and you can't find a decent one.
Perhaps the problem isn't men. Have you ever considered the possibility that you really are a miserable cunt with a shit attitude?
Anonymous (from post above),
Dude, you are way out of line at the end of your comment. Did you even read the post?
First, of all, I am male, not female. Nor was I doing this experiment to inflate my own ego, which I don’t think would be very effective using a fake female profile. The whole point of this was to show men the “other side” of online dating; to show a female’s perspective of the PlentyofFish Inbox. So please, read the article before you start trash talking.
Now, as far as the emails that I received to this ‘experimental’ account, I did read them ALL and to be honest most of them deserved to be made fun of. Why? Because they were lame, crude and/or unoriginal.
I do agree with you, that the first email is only to get their attention. After that, it’s mostly up to your profile to do the work. However, the key here is to actually get her attention which is a difficult thing to do when you are sending an almost identical “hey there” email as 60 other dudes.
First of all, Matt, I think what you're doing is great. Maybe slightly unethical, but it's way too amusing not to try. I made a recon profile yesterday. After 1 day, the profile received 40 messages. 39 of them had subject lines that were some variation of "Hi". The only one that was different was even worse. The subject line was "did I scare you". It was from a guy who had sent an earlier message that suggested getting a beverage with him. I can now clearly see why girls don't reply to the majority of messages sent their way. Only about 3 messages made any kind of attempt to comment on what was actually written in the profile. Most had nothing but a greeting, while the rest made some lame comment about appearance. I'm wondering if the messages would be better if I had put up a picture of a girl that was dressed more traditionally (the one I put up was in a bikini). I think most likely they would be about the same.
Although the messages I used to send from my actual POF profile weren't nearly as bad as the ones delivered to my recon profile, somehow seeing these messages must have helped me out because I've got 4 responses over the last two days, as opposed to none before that (I joined about two weeks ago).
Thanks for the good advice. Also, I think that you are doing a pretty good thing in some ways because you are helping some decent guys have a chance with the online dating as well as hopefully giving the women online some more interesting messages to read. It's not like you are teaching anyone to trick a woman into a relationship that she doesn't want. All you are doing is helping guys to know how to approach women online. The rest is up to the man/woman. Looking through some of your other posts, it seems that you have always advocated complete honesty in actual POF profiles. Keep up the good work. Most people will appreciate you for it.
Good on ya for your "recon," mate.
Now, try testing out the sword's other edge (forgive me if you've already done this, and I just haven't read about–I just found this blog, and it's 4.45am here):
Put up a male profile, but in that profile, bill yourself as someone who makes a 7-digit salary, has a McMansion and 2 Hummers, and use photos of the most drop-dead dreamboat movie-star guy you can find.
Then wait. The mails from women should start pouring in, per the accounts of others I've read who have tried this.
After sifting through the crap and initiating communication with someone you feel is worth your time, you go to your actual profile, and send mails from it to these same women, saying something to the effect that you have a friend (That would be the fake profile) who said he didn't think him and the woman you're writing were a match, but he thinks you should get in touch with her 'cuz you two would hit it off well.
Almost-guarnteed result for your actual profile: "Unread," "read (but no response, now or ever)," "Read/Deleted,"….you get the drift.
Conclusion, if the literally dozens of accounts I've read, and my own experiences on this utter shit site (I've been on about 6 months now) are anything to go by:
The majority of the women on this site are either shallow little ego/attention whores, or broken ex-sluts with three kids who want a sugar-daddy, or out-and-out gold-diggers, or lying sacks of fat with SEVERE issues…
My conclusion: PoF is a cesspit of garbage, who get their little ego-boosts by treating men like same.
Yes, I'm bitter…But also, much wiser now.
I also had a fake girl profile for my own experimentation, it was quite enlightening. I started writing message requisites on the profile, like "Don't just say hello or I won't respond.", "Please use proper English." and especially "Don't even bother messaging me if it's only because you think I'm hot, it's pathetic." (One guy even missed the keyword "only" and chewed me out for such a requisite.) Other than that, the profile pretty much catered to men (in fact it was my own idea of mixing myself with an unrealistically perfect girl (which led to some irony about how gay the men who responded ecstatically could have been)) so the inbox got flooded even after I changed the status and profile to say she was no longer single. I responded to one tailgate-partying dolt, but told him I'm not interested because he clearly wasn't my type, and that my type was someone much nerdier. This put him into denial mode and he kept asking for a pity exception or something, so I shot him down again and didn't respond to his next follow-up. He was clearly only interested in sex. In another case, some guy was hitting on me from 300 kilometers away and refused to realize why this was a problem. The mass majority of e-mails were typical, guys clearly not even reading the profile and breaking all the requisites! I pretty much stopped there for two reasons though, my research was complete and I felt guilty for the nice guys who spent the time to write thoughtful messages which I didn't have the time or cruelness to lead on for no reason. As for the research, I came to the same conclusions as you!
Matt, thank you for revealing the truth about online dating for women. As soon as I looked at that screenshot, I thought, "That looks exactly like my inbox."
So many studies, etc. focus on the number of emails, IMs, winks, etc. that women receive (versus what men receive), but it helps to look at quality, not quantity. The vast majority of emails I get are form letters or, at a bare minimum, make it fairly clear that they haven't read my profile. Why email me if you don't want to get to know *me*?
I used to spend so much time carefully crafting my initial emails to guys and my replies to their emails, and I'd rarely get a response. It can be so frustrating. That's why I'm on hiatus from online dating.
‘The only one that was different was even worse. The subject line was “did I scare you”. It was from a guy who had sent an earlier message that suggested getting a beverage with him.’
what’s horrible about that? am i missing a hidden meaning in the word “beverage”?
he sent the 2nd message because he didn’t know whether his first had become lost.
Of course these dating sites are filled with fake profiles. Comon just by looking at pof i looked within a 10 mile radius of where i live and there was so many suspiciously hot looking women listed. They also were all tanned which is unusual because i live in a country where the climate is cold and the sun doesn’t show up much which immeadiately makes me think ‘FAKE’. Added to that i spotted a profile of a woman who is listed on a national dating website also listed on the pof website and she looks like a goddam supermodel.
Look i think online dating is the pits to be honest. If you can’t find love please learn to accept yourself and just get on with your life. Do not sink to the lows of online dating because it will never get you anywhere. Those ads you see on tv, they are designed to make the owners of these sites money because thats what this is all about Making money. They are not in it to make sure you find true love. They are in it to make sure as many people as possible visit the site and stay on there generating revenue for them. If they had no hot women on there do you think men would stay on there? The answer is no they wouldn’t and these dating site creators wouldn’t be able to afford his cruise to the bahamas and a nice fat paycheck along with the real hotties which he probably is ironically really getting while he plays off people on his into the never end task of finding something which doesn’t exist.
Theres a reason why they create fake profiles folks. Its to generate revenue. The more users on the site the more they make. They are not in it so that you can find true love. Trust me on that. Its all about economics.
Like george carlin once said so profoundly ‘Its a big club…and you ain’t in it’
So do yourself a favour people. Don’t visit these dating sites. Look if you have problems finding true love i suggest you start by loving yourself first and then things will work themselves out. Don’t degrade yourself. Respect yourself.
first off, i’m a guy and i have been burned and stood up a few times by the ‘women’ of this site. However, with a little ingenuity and some luck, you can retaliate with a dosage of karma she will not soon forget. Like some others have done, you make a fake(but believable) male profile that no female can resist. An attractive, egotistic male model will do. Then go back to said women and make small talk until you can convince her to meet you. If she asks for a phone number, tell her you do not give it out to people you have not met. This will make her think you’re a total bad-ass and ensure she WILL be there to “meet” you. When the date time comes around, grab a cold beer, plop down on the couch and pat yourself on the back for such an awesome display of retaliation.
*bonus points if she messages you back all pissed off, you know you got her good.
I like this bit, written by Dan:
“The majority of the women on this site are either shallow little ego/attention whores, or broken ex-sluts with three kids who want a sugar-daddy, or out-and-out gold-diggers, or lying sacks of fat with SEVERE issues…
My conclusion: PoF is a cesspit of garbage, who get their little ego-boosts by treating men like same.
Yes, I’m bitter…But also, much wiser now.”
Yes! Here, here. Although, you forgot to mention that some ‘women’ are actually MEN pretending to be women, having a look at what it’s like to be a woman on PoF.
I tried writing interesting messages. Received 2 brief replies out of 15-20, then deleted my account. I can take a brief reply (rejection). What I can’t stand is the non-replies. It made me very angry and bitter. And then there are women who delete your message and delete themselves from your favourites. How very dare they!
I know I shouldn’t get upset about non-replies, but I can’t help it. I also find it very funny to see how rude women can be. Some of these have profiles suggesting that they’ve nearly given up on ever finding a decent guy. Ironically, they probably get even more messages than most. Yet they will pay no attention to any of them. The vast majority of attractive women on PoF are not there to meet men. They are only there to receive attention because they are not getting enough from their boyfriends.
I’ve had a few women message me first. They weren’t ideal but I always replied, trying to be careful not to lead them on or hurt their feelings. It’s a tightrope. You don’t want to say you are not interested because then you have to say why, and also you are assuming that they are very interested. Maybe the non-replying women can’t do the tightrope walking, and just find it less hurtful if they ignore us uglies.
Yeah, PoF sucks. I was led to it by a friend who claims to have had some success with it. I’m skeptical. Women don’t want to meet men online. That’s not the fairytale, is it? But you can never receive too much attention, can you?
“Markus, please tell us how you went from 1 member to 10 Million members in a span of a few years with no investor money?””
Look at craigslist. And ebay. And youtube, and many other dotcom sites that boom. It happens.
fyi: i dont believe there are that many fakes on POF as you are saying. ive had no problem at all talking to dozens of cute girls and then chatting on the phone and IM and on webcam. while i was skeptical at first too, I am now entirely sure there are some fakes but i would say at least 80% are real, this is just based on personal experience. girls dont delete my emails – they read them- and respond back.
WOW…. I had no idea there were so many men here posing as women! I suppose I’d have better luck posing as a man huh guys? I mean, seriously, other than lift and carry very heavy objects, I’m just as capable as any of you to do just about anything that I need done. (I have my own power tools and know how to use them…)
I’m not a “fake” woman, nor am I a >>“ shallow little ego/attention whores, or broken ex-sluts with three kids who want a sugar-daddy, or out-and-out gold-diggers, or lying sacks of fat with SEVERE issues…<>picky, snotty, arbitrary, and judgmental because they have a slew of men’s profiles to select, and many are simply attention mongers that rarely meet men in person.<< I have a right to be picky, after all it is my life and I have the option of deciding whether someone is going to be a "match" or not. That does not mean I am snotty, arbitrary or judgmental because there are a 'slew' of men's profiles to select from, and I have met many of those I've talked to here.
Also, I am one of those women who was "awarded" a special sticker on my profile…. as a gift I was told for being a member here for so long, for having been decent to everyone who wrote to me (as in responding in kind). I fully expected it to be removed once the "pay for it" function was turned on, but it wasn't. Am I a paying member? No, I have all the elements I need from a dating site… with the exception of finding that special person I've been looking for.
As for 'lame' messages…. yes, I've had a few, but a simple "no thanks, I don't think we are a match" responses have solved the conundrum. At least I responded to them before I deleted them.
I don't mind when people put me on their 'favorites' list, but it does bother me when I don't hear from them within a reasonable amount of time. Why put me on your favorites if you aren't going to contact me?
I've had many men who never bothered to answer me, I can only assume they were overwhelmed by other women who may have been more 'compatible' in their minds. I've also had men disrespect me openly and publicly that I'd never even looked at their profile page. What's up with that? It certainly got my attention, but not the way the rascal may have hoped.
Dating sites are designed to give people the chance to meet someone outside their normal circles, and hopefully to find someone to fulfill their needs and desires. If all you can do is complain about the site, then maybe you need to go pay for your search.
But, as Matt said, there are so many lame profiles, and poor opening emails, paying for no results doesn't seem to be the ideal situation for finding the right woman. His advice was well-meant, and it would do many of you a lot of good to pay attention. I see just as many "lame" profiles on the paid sites… so what does that say about the caliber of men all of us women have to choose from? And after reading the comments here, I see that my choices have been severely limited again by attitudes held by most of you.
If you don't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. That's a good place for you to start…
Seriously men, post as a woman. Watch how many responses you get.
Make 2 profiles: One as an uneducated, overweight woman with 4 kids. The other as a man who is a pharmacist with no children. Guess who will have more responses? The female profile.
Women have it easy in this world.
Ladies, we are only doing this to show that you have it easier, which you do.
“If you see unread deleted don’t be disappointed, normally 1 in 3 messages get responded to.”
I am curious as to how they can claim such an outrageous statistic on POF. I normally receive 1 reply for every 30+ messages that I send. (note: I very carefully write and spell check each email. I never use hi, hello, ur hot, … etc for the subject line. I try to be creative with the subject lines but I’ll admit sometimes its hard to come up with a good one.)
Hello, i’ve been reading through most of these comments and have to admit, i’ve always wondered the messages that women receive so i make a fake one on POF. Like a previous person on here i got a photo from a different website (a good looking thai girl about 30) and made a profile saying that she was married to an older man who was housebound and that she was looking for “friends” to go on walks, cinema etc. I left it for 1 day and when i logged back on again the profile had over 300 messages! Most were from men who wanted “long term” or “dating” as their intention, but were quite happy to meet a married woman as “friends” I must say, if i were a woman, online dating would be the last thing i would do!
Also, i should add that i made another fake profile (after i deleted that thai girl one) of a male doctor on over £100,000 a year, well well, i was surprised that the hot girls (who never responded to my own messages on my authentic profile) sent the doctor an introduction message! Even though both profiles had the same interests and lifestyle! I’ve left the doctor profile on there to test if a girl i’m in correspondance with is honest and sincere before i meet her. I don’t know if this is right or wrong or the morality of it, but, i’m aware that as a man, a woman may be in correspondance with many many different men. I welcome any responses on this comment to see if other people think the same?
Mike
Seriously though women what to do you expect?? You get to sit there and have men throw emails at you. Men are busy doing stuff too. Why should we have to write a charmingly witty greeting / novel. especially considering we know that theres a good chance you either wont read it, your actually a 35 yr old man, or the account is just fake period. not to mention these poor suckers are going out on a limb to begin with.
Oh my, such a bunch of sour pusses! I’ve gone out of my way to meet some men who were superficially attempting to ‘fit into the mold’ of what they ‘believed’ I was looking for. I am fairly clear in my profile, and I meant what I said there, and what I said is also true. I’ve never claimed to be a ‘model-type’, and I’m certainly not looking for a rich guy with a foot on the edge of his grave. But, if you’re trying to twist yourself into what you “think” I am looking for, eventually you’re going to hurt yourself – and most likely me also.
I understand that you men believe we women just sit back waiting for the emails to pour in so we can get our jollies from all that attention that we then ignore. That’s not always (and very rarely) true. So a couple of you made up women’s profiles, but I noticed you didn’t share what you actually said in them statistically (income, age, height, weight etc. – most importantly a decent photograph!) If I can’t at least see your face, I’m thinking there might be an incredible hulk waiting on the other side!
I think POF should post the EXIF data from photos that get uploaded here so we can see when they were ACTUALLY taken. Of course, that won’t stop some people (scammers and those with little or no self-esteem) from posting photos that are scanned from a high school photo or where the face is not who is behind the profile. I know there are many women who do the same things as men do, write crappy profiles that say nothing interesting, or even give you a peek at the character and personality of the (wo)man behind them.
I figure, I’ve made some friends here over the years, one of them lives with me now. The Good Lord gave you a lot of opportunities to experience different people, and if you took advantage of them, then you’ve widened your perceptions of the world. Unfortunately, too many people just skim the surface of others and never look beyond the flesh to the ‘heart’ of the matter.
Emails are a means to communicate, and I must say, when I get an email that says “Hi. I think we are compatible. I want to talk to you.” I read it, check out the profile and decide if what was written would make a decent conversation and give me clues what to say in response. If there’s nothing there but “Looking for a good hearted woman”, without at least an idea of what the guy thinks that embodies, I’m left with only two options: Ask what a ‘good-hearted’ woman is, or respond that I don’t see why he thinks that from the information he’s given to me!
I suppose I could ‘guess’ that he must’ve seen something in what I wrote that made him think we are compatible, or maybe he just liked my looks, or enjoys one or two things that I also like. How would you men respond to that? I gotta tell you, 8 out of ten times that I respond to these messages I eventually find that they’ve been without sex for a few weeks and they’re looking for a hook-up. I’m not, never have been, and never will be a “hook-up”. I have some self-respect and I didn’t live this long being stupid.
I also have to say, the last time I saw or read this much kevetching, it was at a Jewish Women’s round table. Online dating is difficult, and if you’re in a big hurry, forget finding what you’re looking for, it isn’t here. Once you’ve done it for a while you learn (some do) that if you catch the attention of a potential partner, you did it by showing her you’re worthy of her time by writing her a conversational letter. Yes, conversational, not just canned words (spelled correctly gives points!) that say nothing she can respond to!
If you genuinely want to meet someone you see here, follow a few easy rules:
1. Clean up your spelling or write your message in a word program (make sure you re-read it for grammatical errors) check your spelling then copy+paste it into this message box!
2. While writing your message, think about what she might want to know about you, other than what you wrote (or didn’t write) in your profile.
3. Try to show your humor, make her laugh – not at you, but at life.
4. Don’t begin by telling her all your problems – she’ll run faster than that buck you were aiming at last weekend.
5. Be interested in what she has to offer too! I can’t tell you how often a man will email me and when I reply they are at a loss for words to reply. (Could that be because I’m Not…all those nasty things you all said above?).
6. Don’t tell her everything about your life immediately, and definitely stay away from divorce stories – believe it or not she may have one to match yours or worse. (Not all of us take it all, some of us loose it all too!)
7. Be REAL… Pretending to be who and what you are Not is the best way to loose her interest – and that of the other women she knows, and those they know…. get it? When you get a bad reputation on a dating site, it carries its message a lot farther than you think!
So there are your “Lucky Seven” hints when it comes to contacting women on a dating site. Always remember – if it seems too good to be true – it most likely IS. But, don’t forget – there are Exceptions to everything!
I refuse to take offense to your nasty remarks about women, because I just don’t fit into that mold. I’m sorry you guys get abused in this way, but try to believe that we women get abused the same way too. I’ve written to men who ignored me, and I just figure maybe there’s something I missed in their profile that was going to be a ‘deal-breaker’ for them. So-be-it! When it’s the right one, we’ll know. In the meantime, I’ve met some pretty awesome people and made some friends.
Would any of you like some cheese with your whine?
Separate point I’m making here but one I would like to share. I always felt better when I received a response from a lady I had written to. A polite, thanks for the email but I’m looking for someone else. Good luck.
I replied to every email I received until I got an abusive message back saying that i was the bottom of the barrel anyway.
I don’t reply negatively anymore. Just delete if I’m not interested. It’s a shame but I don’t fancy getting rebuked for trying to ‘do unto others’.