My POF days are over. I deleted my profile and account. I had originally joined it because I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a profile up on another dating site. Twice the exposure, twice the possibilities right? WRONG. POF yielded me exactly 0 dates. And I think this message that I recently received from the creator of POF sums up why:

I have a few comments regarding this message. 

1.  Either “2% of men started to use POF as more of a hookup site” is a gross understatement, or I only received messages from that 2% during my tenure on the site. I was propositioned a LOT.

2.  Intimate Encounters.

If you wanted the website to be about Relationships (note the capital R he uses), then why did Intimate Encounters exist in the first place?

3.  “Intimate Encounters on POF can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women.” Ahhhh. Well, I’m no longer curious as to why I was so unsuccessful on this site…

I had pretty much already decided to quit POF before I received this message, and the above was just the last nail in POF’s coffin. I previously chronicled some of the other things that contributed to me saying goodbye to the site, like the decline of good grammar and the guy who stole his cousin’s nylons.

Now, before you go and say, “But D, if you didn’t like the quality of the messages you were receiving, why didn’t you initiate conversations with guys whose profiles you liked?”, please know that I did. When I found a profile that interested me, I shot the guy a message. Some didn’t respond, and most fizzled out after a few messages back and forth. Like this guy, who pretty much insulted where I live 4 messages into our conversation:

First of all, I hate Home Depot with a passion. When I was a kid running errands with my father, I quickly learned that “we just need to stop at Home Depot for 1 thing” really meant “kiss the next 2 hours of your life goodbye and then wait here with our 4 carts while I pull the truck around so we can load all this senseless crap.” When you say Home Depot, all I hear is “TORTURE.” So even though he admittedly had no way of knowing it, things had just taken a turn for the worse with the mere mention of Home Depot. Second of all, you’ve only been to the Home Depot in Somerville, but you’re judging it anyway? The Home Depot is sandwiched between I-93 and some MBTA tracks. Of course you didn’t see anything awesome. Somerville has a lot of cool and fun things to offer, like our movie theater that serves beer and wine. But I’m not going to defend it to some asshat who admits he hasn’t spent much time in the city I chose to live in and then insults it anyway.

The message that finally sent me over the edge was received a few hours before I got Markus’ terrifying message relaying the truth about Intimate Encounters. The sender? One of those 2% Markus mentioned. A JT and/or Ashton wannabe. (I would like to note that I have not actually seen either of these movies, despite my girl crush on Mila and my deep affection for Natalie’s emotional turn in Where the Heart Is. I have a very discerning taste when it comes to chick flicks, what can I say? But I’m pretty sure we all know how they ended – opposite from the reality of most who try to pull this kind of thing off…) Anyway, Mr. Emotionally Unavailable sent this my way:

This was not the reason I started online dating. I’m not looking to settle down yesterday or jump into a serious relationship with every guy I exchange a message with, but I’m not looking to sleep around either.

And finally, though the ads that are featured at the top of the site weren’t a reason I deleted my profile, they certainly didn’t help POF’s cause:

So, I quit POF. And bit the bullet by joining a paid site in its place: Match. I’m keeping my OKC account because it’s free and not nearly as creepy as POF was. In theory, the people who shell out money to be on a site are probably more in line with what I’m hoping to get out of online dating. Which, spoiler alert, does not include contracting a VD after a one night stand or wondering why all my tights keep disappearing.