Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

I FINALLY HAVE A PROFILE. give me tips, ilx - http://www.okcupid.com/profile/communist_dog/ i realise that i say basically nothing about myself but do list an awful awful lot of media i like, i suppose i'll try to change that when i think of anything about me that doesn't involve that media.

"For example, communist_dog appears to be more sloppy than straight men his age."

OKAY FINE I'LL START WASHING MORE.

looks purdy fleshed-out to me. Now for the questions!

I've done like a million questions! Answering questions was fun and easy, and listing a big bunch of things that I listen to and watch and read was easy and fun, but actually saying things about myself, not so much.

Good profile!

Yeah, that part is no fun, but I think you say just enough.

yeah, it's good. Maybe ditch 'I'm not very good at this'? I seem to read a lot of profiles that start that way, and yours would be fine without it.

ya that makes sense, I suppose it's the same for 98% of users. Thanks! I'm still not really sure what I want to use OKC for, I suppose my next step is to lay low and see if I get any of those rare female-male messages.

sent many such recently in a fit of optimism. Silence.

My approach has lately been the "give up and then something happens" one, tho tbh Ive now met someone nice ive had 3 dates with and now wont see for 3 weeks cos he's off OS for work. Blast.

This pretty much exactly applies to me, except the three week phase ends today. I dunno when's the right time to resume contact. Saturday?

Merdeyeux, given your academic interests and location, do you happen to know J0hn Cr0ft? Sorry for derail, wasn't sure where else to put it.

so hoping he writes "I AM..."

haha. The name rings a slight bell, but I don't think so. Looking him up his work sounds interesting!

we were very early dating site adopters, although I've forgotten the name of the site, which began with N. It had racy content and an incongruously non-racy dating section

nerve.com?

Yes!! Thank you.

Ahhh, Spring Street Networks. I was on that.

Not many people put pictures on nerve in 2000 - we exchanged pics in the mail,

One of my good friends met his wife on there.

i wonder if there were online dating in the 70s lots of nerdy girls woulda chosen mary tyler moore screennames like they do liz lemon ones now

god i wish people in Hull chose liz lemon names

I just got messaged by one Mr. Johnnyrealestate

uhh, so this popped up on another website I browse on occasion:

check out the linked tumblr

just got schedule bumped by two people :[

xp oh my god!

should i know who d0m passantin0 is

lololol

from websit

so disappointed to scroll down and see that there was only one entry on that tumblr.

kind of was reading that feeling disgusted, hovered over the link, and thought "no fucking way" when I saw the url

^this

it took me a while to find it, but when i did i had to go back and reread for closer attention to content
whoa

Followed her userinfo's twitter link and saw a tweet saying her first twitter follow was someone I see occasionally in the real life world of work, which was just too many worlds colliding. did someone I stare blankly past the ear of in seminars ever meet the mysterious D.P.? ehh

though on the rare occasions I look at twitter I'm reminded that The London Internet is a very small place where people from the previously disjoint sets {people I knew online pre-university}, {people I was friends with at university}, {people I met post-university who were too cool to talk to me}, and {ILXors} all rub shoulders and RT each other all day while happily suppressing any hints that they ever lived anywhere provincial or knew dorks like me, so yeah, thanks for always doing that, internet

any bitterness in this post fuelled by the realisation that at some point in this thing called singleness which I am an indeterminate/disputed number of months into I might have to dip my toe into the OKC-, selfie-, MRA-era world of modern dating, which I was always very glad to be out of, and with the added handicap of now being Proper Ice Floe Age for a lady

<3

In an attempt to write a briefer, less meltdowny post, that Laurie Penny article linked in the original post of the mefi thread is the 2nd amusing and more or less OTM Laurie Penny article on gender relationships I've read in as many days; wondering what else I've missed in a couple of years of not reading her articles because they were a bit "student spends entire bus journey talking loudly about how radical they are"

(in this post I commit the very same Nice Guys of OKCupid sin of being dismissive of other people for minor flaws while apparently not having noticed the gaping light-centuries of void between what I am and, to quote another article linked on the metafilter thread, "the kind of person that the kind of person you're attracted to would plausibly find attractive")

spacey i didn't know you were single :(

OKC-, selfie-, MRA-era world of modern dating

ehh, in some ways it's a better world, even with these complexities. I guess the rub is that (as endless articles will attempt to postulate) the ability to see that there are people out there with similar interests or outlooks makes you less likely to stick with someone when you feel there's some magical ideal person out there.

the laurie penny thing on the manic pixie dream girl she just published i really like

um OKC just gave me mod privs?

like 'moderate photos'?

Yeah basically I only get to vote on wether flagged photos should be deleted or not

it's kind of satisfying clicking the "this should be deleted" button on all these photos of expensive cars parked in driveways with captions like "my new toy"

ha yea

though on the rare occasions I look at twitter I'm reminded that The London Internet is a very small place where people from the previously disjoint sets {people I knew online pre-university}, {people I was friends with at university}, {people I met post-university who were too cool to talk to me}, and {ILXors} all rub shoulders and RT each other all day

ya i do slightly wonder why i'm bothering with okc since twitter clearly indicates that everyone in london worth knowing is one step away from people i already know. why there's someone making social arrangements with an undisclosed ilxor right now.

my exciting first week as an actual okc user has been quite unexciting, a few casual messages received, a few notifications of high ratings, too much of a anxious idiot to make the first move with messaging anyone yet, etc etc.

gr8080, in my profile pic, instead of fuzzing out the face of the other person in the picture, I photoshopped in jeff goldblum's face. Is this allowed Y/N

It also allows me to falsely claim to be bros with Jeff-Goldblum-with-boobs

gr8080 I have mod privs too, I think it might be kinda common??? DUNNO!

and um that d0m thing is amazing.

modding is fun! and sometimes depressing.

Yeah I kind of want to start a 77 thread of screencaps

Dan I'd allow it but I can't say the same for the rest of the secret mod community

Re: discussion around that Laurie Penny article, here's an interesting (and fairly typical) comment from a NS reader I found underneath it. Anya says:

Women do like nice guys. What they don't like is wet guys, or guys with no self-confidence, guys who don't take care of themselves, guys who hang around them pretending to be nice so they can take advantage of the situation which women can sniff out at 100 paces. Basically,women like men, don't find unattractive bodies and personality traits attractive. You can get away with an unattractive body if you have an attractive personality, and you can get away with an unattractive personality if you have an attractive body, you might be able to get away with both for a while if you find a woman who's not a good judge of character or masochist or who wants to exploit you. It's really not that complicated.

Italics mine.

I mean ... okay, I don't say stuff like this, ever. But what would that comment look like if the gender roles were reversed? I only mean the stuff I italicised.

I am not - n.o.t. - defending the guys on Niceguys Okcupid blog who, 99% of them, were basically saying 'I hate gays and rape is okay and why don't these slags fancy me?', etc ad infinitum.

But, as the sort of person who doesn't like the attitudes of NiceGuysOkCupid, I also don't like the attitude of 'You are under-confident and ugly, why should I waste my time on you', whether expressed by men or women. And in the blowback against Nice Guys I keep seeing that going by unchecked. I do not, as a man, have that attitude towards women re: relationships. Confidence and shyness can be good or bad, it's complex. Beauty and ugliness don't have a fixed definition and are always surprising.