Online Dating: The New Way to OD.

I. Hate. Online dating.
Hate it. It totally sucks is not for me.

I'm a face-to-face kind of person. I've never even liked talking on the phone all that much. And call me old fashioned, but I absolutely refuse to have any form of a serious discussion via text or Gchat. Will not do it.

Here's my beef with online dating: you get a picture, some facts, and some creepy messages. And, what, attraction grows? Maybe I'm doing this wrong. Are you supposed to just go out on dates based solely on whether or not your facts line up, or do people actually form feelings over the internet based on some Times New Romance chatting? I don't buy it.

Let me just start by saying I know plenty of people in very happy relationships -- marriages, even -- who met their significant other/spouse online. A lot of people do have success with it and that's fantastic. Good for them.

Now, communication is extremely important to me. I fucking love good communication. Did you know that communication is about 7% verbal, 93% non-verbal? In that non-verbal category sits tone and body language. So, when you are talking to someone over the internet, you are really only catching 7% of what they try to say to you.

Let's take it a step further, because this is my favorite part. (Anyone who's looking to get the most out of these sites, listen up because what I'm about to tell you is going to be critical to your response rate.) You have already cut your communication down to a 7% chance of catching someone's interest based solely on the words you type. Why, why would you want to cut that down further by using poor, trashy grammar? Do not disrespect the language that you spent 12 years learning. It is unattractive and embarrassing. I once received a message that simply said, "You're eyes are really pretty." Well, sir, that's very flattering, but your use of the wrong "your/you're" is not going to get you far.

I used to work with a guy who would talk to me online and spell everything wrong and, even when I'm sure he just took a stab in the dark, always managed to use the wrong homophone. I would comment and his response (a guy two years older than me who did his undergrad in English) was always, "I don't care, we're not in school." Oh yeah? We only learned our first language to not fail school, but not to actually use it? I... don't understand.

Overall, I'm just sick of the messages that go something like, "u r so prety call me" and "their aren't a lot of girls like u." And that's just the beginning. Blech.

SO, for the sake of making sure there's always good material for SWB, I've signed up for PlentyOfFish! I will be posting some of my favorite messages and I look forward to it. I set up a fake-ish profile and, for the record, already have 3 messages in my inbox. That is, by the way, without posting a photo.

I am already regretting this decision.