Hi Sarah. Please allow me to introduce myself. Except I’m not really introducing myself. I’m just giving you a bit of a poke. And I’m hoping you will then give my profile a bit of a gander, like what you see, and give me a poke back.
As I said, practically no woman was initiating contact with me. So I rolled through the “meet me” feature, looked at pictures, and read profiles. I sent a message to the ones I found attractive. I also sent messages to those I found super-attractive. And, oddly, I have sent messages to women who had no picture at all. More about these at a later date.
On PoF, one can use the “meet me” feature and click on the women you find attractive. The recipient of this positive acknowledgement sees you want to meet her and can send a message or not. In other words, on a site that has reduced dating to a series of swipes, this is the laziest way to meet a woman. It is literally a one icon press.
When I use the “meet me” feature, I scroll through the pictures of various potential dates, occasionally stopping to look further into the profiles. It always starts with the pictures though. If I like the pics, I will read the profile. If I like the pics and dislike the profile, I will probably still send a message. If I don’t like the pics, I likely won’t get to the profile. My message will usually consist of a greeting, a name if provided, and hopefully a humorous sentence showing I read her profile. Sometimes, I break my rules and just say, hello there.
Hey there and hello there:) are the second laziest ways to meet a woman. To my untrained ear, it even sounds a little creepy when I say it. When a woman says it, it sounds a little sexual. Sad to say, I use the phrase occasionally. And , as it happens, I get a boat load of “hey theres”. And while I dislike them, I don’t discard them out of hand. I take a look at the pics and maybe the profile. When I get them, my usual response to the ones I like is, “Hi there, ho there,” which are the lyrics to the Mickey Mouse club theme, but nobody ever remarks back to me they recognize it. One can only bring so much high culture into a place like this.
When I send a message to a woman I find attractive, I am hoping for a response, of course. There are several types of responses. As a paying member, I can see if the recipient has read my message or not and what she did with it. The most ego damaging response is when I see my message has been discarded unread. This means the woman has decided on the basis of my looks alone, she is not even going to waste the 30 seconds it would take to open the message and be charmed by my delightful opening lines. This is followed by the slightly less painful discarded read. At least I was given a chance, though found wanting.
Some of my messages are read, but never given a reply. Finally, some are read and I get a reply. Hallelujah! Some replies are, “Hi there!” which is just another way of saying, I’m going to give you one more chance to impress me, but you’re barely scraping by. I hate this response, because it really doesn’t carry the conversation forward and it puts all the weight on me. I saw a woman’s profile once in which her main pic was very stern looking. It really struck me this woman was not trying at all. Her tagline was, “Make me smile!” No thank you. You can just keep on frowning. I kind of feel the same way when I get a “hi there” response.
The best kind of response is the one where the lady read my message, it made her smile, and her response carries the conversation forward a bit. Don’t move too fast though. Don’t ask me for my phone number too quickly. I’m like a squirrel. I need a lot of skittering to and fro before I make any real moves.
Note: I’m told the “Hey theres” I get are actually the canned response when you hit the “flirt” option in “meet me”. Duh! I’m so gullible and those women are now officially in the top lazy classification.
H/t njgreeneyed
#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss
The Last First Kiss 
Right, we need something much better going on than “Hey there.” And if someone replies back to a hey there, ho there with another hey there, I’d be inclined to hit the delete button. A pretty face only keeps attention for a while, and if the conversation is this mind-numbingly boring from the off-set, then I’d start relishing your singledom by preference. Why don’t you lead with something quirky? ” Imagine this scenario: Your favourite cocktail – what is it? Paired with a piece of music you like, which is? And finally, where are you as you imagine this? “
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