Dear Online Dating

I haven't had much luck with ladies in the past.  Maybe I don't leave a good first impression, maybe not even a good second through fifth.  All I know is I once tried to dance with a girl at a club, and she simply said, "God no" and walked off, a woman on an elevator gave me the unsolicited opinion that I was ugly, and in high school my prom date got back together with her boyfriend before the dance started.  So, I'm not particularly gung ho about approaching anyone for a relationship, and I might have some issues stemming from the sitcom that is my life.  One day, I may write a letter specifically to the horrific blind dates I've been on, especially the one who refused to speak to me all night, but today I'm going to focus on online dating.

With my job, I work weird hours.  I work late nights, early mornings, and overnight shifts, and I work most weekends.  It also seems that after the age of 22, most women leave my town and don't return until they turn 40, have had four kids and a nasty divorce, and gotten some bad cosmetic surgery.  The ones that don't leave just went right into having the kids.  Since I can barely take care of myself, I don't need to be involved with helping someone raise their child.  These things add up to a big old "Greg doesn't get out and meet ladies".  So, recently I decided to try online dating, because honestly, I just don't give a damn anymore.

This might have been a flawed approach.  What I quickly learned on the first site I went to was that women don't read your profile.  They check out your photo first, and make the judgement there.  Let's just say I've never been "classically handsome", so that doesn't go so well for me.  I thought maybe I would just go for broke with the profile, and try to win them over if they bothered to read it.  If someone gets my sense of humor I've got a chance, I reasoned, so under the section "What would you do on your first date", I put this:

"I'd like to take you out for a nice dinner. We'll talk and get to know each other over a delicious meal and some coffee. We'll have delightful conversation, maybe leading to some deep insights about ourselves, and possibly have some eclairs.  Having fun?  Great!  Hopefully you didn't have too much to eat, because next up you are in for the most tense game of mini golf you've ever seen. Oh, it'll start off pleasant enough. We'll compliment each other's shots while secretly thinking how easy it will be to beat the other one. Somewhere around the sixth hole, it'll occur to both of us that we've been going a little too easy on each other, and now the game will be afoot. We both really start trying to win at this point, and we step up our games. By the eleventh hole, we're both making expert shots, and the game is still neck and neck. Tensions are mounting. I "accidentally" sneeze during your second putt on the 13th hole, and you whip out a copy of the PGA rulebook and call me for a penalty on the 15th. On the 16th, you somehow nail my shin with the follow through on your shot.  You apologize, but the sentiment seems slightly hollow, and I think I hear you chuckle as you get your ball from the cup.  You ultimately win on the 18th by ricocheting your putt off of my ball and into the hole. I grudgingly accept defeat, and a mutual respect is born between us."

 This did not work, so I just changed my profile picture to this photo of me when I was 19.

  

I left that site shortly after.

On the next site, I made jokes on the profile, but used a more straightforward approach.  I also used a non kitten eating picture, and after literally 24 sent messages, I got a response.  The girl was very nice, we had a few nice conversations on the messenger, and we decided to have a date.  As a gentleman, I will say the date went ok, but there was nothing really there.  She admitted that a major reason she agreed to go out with me was that I didn't ask her for nude pics or send her one of my junk.  

The only thing I can take away from this is that even though I am not a heinous moron that requests nude photos from strangers, I still was not interesting enough for the other 23 women to even respond and say no thank you.   I've had two other responses, and they've simply just stopped responding in the middle of a conversation. 

I think I'm just going to give up and change my profile picture again.

That, or I'll just have to cash in my chips and sign up for Farmersonly.com and get hooked up with some cowfolk.