First, a little introduction to OKC’s sad cousin, POF. As far as I can tell from my experience on the site, POF is good for three things: harboring fetishists, providing generic and useless advice about healthy relationships, and eschewing basic principles of sentence construction. You post a few pictures, provide some demographic info, answer a few yes or no questions (do you do drugs? do you have children? etc.), and fill in as much or as little personal info as you’d like in an “about me” section. If I had to make a rough estimate of how many of those “about me” sections are just one giant stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence, I would say 93%. At the risk of sounding like my (former English teacher) mother (love you Mom!), what is happening to this world? Real life examples of people who have contacted me:
Maybe I’m being picky, but I’d like to date someone who understands, at the very least, where to place commas and periods. Bonus points for the use of the oxford comma. Want to really make me weak in the knees? Use apostrophes properly (or just at all, we can start there). The trifecta? Don’t senselessly abbreviate words, especially “and” down to just “n”. Three letter words do not need to be shortened. If POF is any indication, this is a sharply-declining population.*
POF is proving to be pretty useless, to be honest. But it did provide today’s Pic of the Week, so there’s at least a little value there… This 31 year old gentleman on POF had six pictures on his profile. NONE of which were of him. ALL of which featured delightfully healthy thoughts/quotes about relationships. Behold:
Let’s look at these individually, shall we? First up:
These “girls never go for good guys” rants are pretty standard actually. Guys just usually put them in their own words, instead of google imaging “the plight of the self-proclaimed nice guy” and posting the results as profile pictures. So kudos to him for creativity?
It’s true, when I picture my ideal relationship I’m always peacefully napping on the back of a shiny-skinned, muscle-clad man whose sole purpose in life is to stare at the ground all day whilst carrying me and providing for me. Who wants to be in a relationship where you both consider each other as an equal? It’s way better to be perceived as a weak female who is dependent on the men in her life.
If I’m too busy to call you or check on you, chances are pretty good I don’t love you. So you probably shouldn’t love me, stop being so understanding. You say “I’ll understand.” What you really mean is “I’m a spineless doormat.” (Tardiness isn’t a very good indication of my affections though, I’m late to things on a daily basis. So I will actually need someone to be understanding on that topic).
In a certain way, I can actually relate to this one. I’m a total catch, yes, but I’m also a complete lunatic (which is part of my charm). So every potential relationship for me involves a delicate balancing act between a) exposing some of the crazy in an endearing, adorable way, and b) hiding the majority of the crazy until he’s already fallen for me. Obviously this balancing act isn’t perfected yet, as I’m still single. It’s hard to be me.
He doesn’t seem like the kind who just goes with the flow and stays happy. He seems PRETTY paranoid, unhappy, and affected. Just the type of traits that I’m looking for in a guy.
This guy has either never dated at all, or only dated crazy bitches. My baggage is the size of a little wristlet compared to what this guy is carrying around.
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*I had planned to provide just a brief description of POF as a lead-in to this post. I didn’t even realize what a tangent/rant I had gone off on until I previewed the finished draft. Apparently, I have strong feelings about good grammar. Sorry for taking you along on that ride. Except I’m not sorry, because the only thing that makes the dating population less soul-crushing is this blog.
I just started a slow clap (by myself) after reading that grammar tangent. PREACH IT LIKE YOU TEACH IT, D. This whole post = why we’re friends.
This makes me want to listen to “Oxford Comma” by Vampire Weekend. And best of luck containing your own craziness; that is a song and dance many of us struggle with.
Yikes… Well I’ve had at least two handsome, educated, well-spoken friends who have used all three sites (POF, Match and eHarmony). They are out there. I’m sorry
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