38 and Single :o(

LostSoulForever

Very interesting thread, have been away so jumping on this late & notice it's been dorment for a few days, but hopefully people will see this.

Hope things are going well for the OP & the Meetup event was ok.
I was going to start a new thread before i saw this one & as my situatiion is similar i thought i'd add it to this one (hopefully that's ok).

I have taken the plunge to try the whole t'internet dating thing & signed up for POF, Zoosk & Match. I haven't "subscribed" to Match yet & debating the vadilty of it as i seem to have been inundated with winks etc but wondering if it's a bit of a sham to get me to sign up - because obviously you can't see who's winked or e-mailed etc until you do.

Not much happened on the other 2 yet, again like Match you have to subscribe to Zoosk & i notice for some parts of POF you have to subscribe as well.

Am going to sign up to Meetup as well after the recommendations i've seen in this thread as i should be a bit more social as well .

1940sGal

LostSoulForever wrote: »

Very interesting thread, have been away so jumping on this late & notice it's been dorment for a few days, but hopefully people will see this.

Hope things are going well for the OP & the Meetup event was ok.
I was going to start a new thread before i saw this one & as my situatiion is similar i thought i'd add it to this one (hopefully that's ok).

I have taken the plunge to try the whole t'internet dating thing & signed up for POF, Zoosk & Match. I haven't "subscribed" to Match yet & debating the vadilty of it as i seem to have been inundated with winks etc but wondering if it's a bit of a sham to get me to sign up - because obviously you can't see who's winked or e-mailed etc until you do.

Not much happened on the other 2 yet, again like Match you have to subscribe to Zoosk & i notice for some parts of POF you have to subscribe as well.

Am going to sign up to Meetup as well after the recommendations i've seen in this thread as i should be a bit more social as well .

Personally I wouldn't touch PoF with a barge pole but that's just my bad experience. I'd recommend OK Cupid. You only have to pay if you want some of the bonuses the site offers, such as browsing invisibly and seeing who 'likes' you.

Good luck with the meetup! I fancy the idea of one of those and I might give it a go myself

LostSoulForever

1940sGal wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't touch PoF with a barge pole but that's just my bad experience. I'd recommend OK Cupid. You only have to pay if you want some of the bonuses the site offers, such as browsing invisibly and seeing who 'likes' you.

Good luck with the meetup! I fancy the idea of one of those and I might give it a go myself

Thanks for the warning
I have no experience of internet dating at all, so picked sites that people on here seem to use. Have signed up for OK Cupid as well (thanks for the recommendation).

Good luck yourself with Meetup if you give it a try.

Retroguyuk

There's nothing wrong with POF, but obviously being a free site, you're going to be exposed to a much larger group of people, and with that, a much larger group of idiots. You might just want to be a bit canny when writing your profile to try and filter out unwanted interest as much as you can.

OKCupid is good too, but generally seems to cater to a slightly more bohemian/creative crowd. Also, just be aware that it has other social aspects to the site too, so it's possible less people are on there for online dating purposes.

1940sGal

Retroguyuk wrote: »

There's nothing wrong with POF, but obviously being a free site, you're going to be exposed to a much larger group of people, and with that, a much larger group of idiots. You might just want to be a bit canny when writing your profile to try and filter out unwanted interest as much as you can.

OKCupid is good too, but generally seems to cater to a slightly more bohemian/creative crowd. Also, just be aware that it has other social aspects to the site too, so it's possible less people are on there for online dating purposes.

It doesn't matter what you do or do not put in your profile, in my experience. It has been blatantly obvious in the past that men have messaged me having not read a single thing I've written, others have read it and just plainly ignored it.

I suppose it is to be expected in some respect seeing as how the number of men on dating sites far outweighs women.

Retroguyuk

1940sGal wrote: »

It doesn't matter what you do or do not put in your profile, in my experience. It has been blatantly obvious in the past that men have messaged me having not read a single thing I've written, others have read it and just plainly ignored it.

I suppose it is to be expected in some respect seeing as how the number of men on dating sites far outweighs women.

That's why I said filter as much as you Sure, some will ignore it or won't read it, that's always going to happen with online dating, but you'll still filter a few out by your content and the tone in which you write it. If you don't bother putting much of anything (or not anything interesting/that can be picked up on) you could well miss out on getting responses from the guys who do take the time to read it (which are presumably the ones you want).

It's a slight generalisation, but yes, due to the inbalance of women to men, a man's task is generally to stand out, whereas women have the problem of trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff with all the responses they get.

But I totally disagree that it doesn't matter what you have on your profile. If you don't put in much effort, in this case you'll still get plenty of results, just probably not the ones you want. You might as well do all you can to help yourself.

1940sGal

Retroguyuk wrote: »

But I totally disagree that it doesn't matter what you have on your profile. If you don't put in much effort, in this case you'll still get plenty of results, just probably not the ones you want. You might as well do all you can to help yourself.

What i meant by that was in reference to the unwanted attention of the few idiots out there. Of course it matters what you put on your profile if you want to grab the attention of people you're interested in.

But where some idiots are concerned it clearly doesn't because they'll show themselves up for the idiots they are regardless.

Retroguyuk

1940sGal wrote: »

What i meant by that was in reference to the unwanted attention of the few idiots out there. Of course it matters what you put on your profile if you want to grab the attention of people you're interested in.

But where some idiots are concerned it clearly doesn't because they'll show themselves up for the idiots they are regardless.

Those two are pretty closely connected though- you want messages from the non-idiot group, and sadly there are probably more than a few idiots out there I just disagree with your point about it not mattering at all about what you have on your profile as a matter of filtering out some undesirable people- what you have on there does seem to have an effect. Whilst you're never going to stop all the idiots from contacting you, you'll still filter out a few of them by tailoring it. It just makes life a little easier, and doesn't exactly take long, so it's worth doing if you're swamped by crap messages.

VestanPance

Retroguyuk wrote: »

Those two are pretty closely connected though- you want messages from the non-idiot group, and sadly there are probably more than a few idiots out there I just disagree with your point about it not mattering at all about what you have on your profile as a matter of filtering out some undesirable people- what you have on there does seem to have an effect. Whilst you're never going to stop all the idiots from contacting you, you'll still filter out a few of them by tailoring it. It just makes life a little easier, and doesn't exactly take long, so it's worth doing if you're swamped by crap messages.

I doubt it would filter out anyone. I know for a fact some of the guys in my workplace who use these sites pretty much send a copy and paste message based on how the lady looks.

If anything a tailored/more detailed profile is only going to help get more personalised messages from those who are really interested after reading the profile. Their messages should stand out as it's clear they've read the profile. It's not going to filter out those just playing the numbers game.

Retroguyuk

VestanPance wrote: »

I doubt it would filter out anyone. I know for a fact some of the guys in my workplace who use these sites pretty much send a copy and paste message based on how the lady looks.

If anything a tailored/more detailed profile is only going to help get more personalised messages from those who are really interested after reading the profile. Their messages should stand out as it's clear they've read the profile. It's not going to filter out those just playing the numbers game.

All I can tell you that in all the instances I'm aware of, it does indeed cut down on the number of rubbish messages Again, not all of them, there will always be people who cut and paste obviously, but it definitely reduces the total that I've seen. So I'd always advise people to do it- it doesn't exactly take a long time to do, and it definitely saves time in having to sift through an even larger collection of messages from idiots. It's saving time overall.

It's not really only a few cut and dry types of people responding to messages, either idiots or people who take the time to read them. There's seemingly a grey area in the middle where people will reply with dross messages to a profile with no information, or a profile with very little or generic content rather than one where they don't bother if someone's gone into detail, or send a better response instead.