5 ms·

Good timing. On OkCupid I was just told that I am an asswipe, that I have no personality, and no respect. Brought back some bad schoolyard emotions. Thanks.

• impeachgod 17y ago
  Hang in there, buddy. Probably you were just rejected by a bunch of high-maintenance princesses. Look for a decent woman, you probably deserve one.
• tjic 17y ago
  The bit in the post where the woman deleted a swath of emails touched on that. Ouch!
• donaq 17y ago
  Out of curiosity, what sort of introductory messages do you send? And how many times have you gotten such a response? I mostly get either nice responses or no response on OkCupid.
  • RevRal 17y ago
    I send lovely introductory messages. Here's a real response: "First, please allow me to thank you for sending me a message that doesn't suck." Everyone I have messaged, who has responded, says something along those lines. However, in this particular case, the scathing message was a response to a subsequent exchange, not the introductory. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything was going as planned, so I asked for her number. She didn't respond with her number. No big deal. I've wrung numbers out of girls on OkCupid before (read: assuaged their reluctance), with stuff like this: I understand. You're likely a poor collage student who couldn't pay her phone bill on time. Look, it's okay, you should've told me. I mean, I have extra ramen packets and cans of beans. Most of the time, the response is like this: "haha, how chivalrous. Here's my number...." This time it was something like: "WOW. Are you trying to be a dick? Blah blah blah. I'm independently wealthy due to my heritage asswipe blah blah blah and something about me having no respect and no personality." I don't know what her deal was, being "independantly wealthy" must be a touchy topic. My feelers were injured.
    • dkarl 17y ago
      The problem is that what you wrote is exactly what you might have written if you were trying to be a dick. In theory, the perfect ambiguity of the message would be cool in itself, leaving your recipient in a surreal quantum juxtaposition of two states, which she could maintain by responding equally ambiguously, and you would respond in kind, and after you two bonded online over your shared joke you would get together for coffee and talk about Poe's Law. In theory. In reality, the "bitter, sarcastic dick" possibility has a much bigger emotional impact than the "friendly joker" possibility, so it's a very unpleasant email to receive, which can (perfectly reasonably) be taken as evidence that it wasn't sent with friendly intent. Solution: provide some kind of clue to reassure her that you are, in fact, joking, and not turning into Mr. Hyde at the first hint of rejection.
      • pingou 17y ago
        No need to provide a clue, if she can't understand the joke, she probably doesn't worth it, so they both don't waste their time. Unless he's looking for a fling.
        • dgabriel 17y ago
          As a woman who has in the past dabbled a bit in online dating, if I had received that message from someone I didn't know, I would think he was an asshole. Context is hard in email, and some people are assholes online. If she's getting enough responses, her guard is way up. This was mis-communication on both parts. She's NOT necessarily a bad person.
          • mcantor 17y ago
            This. Without seeing someone's smile, their microgestures, we are disarmed from our ability to consistently detect sarcasm and jokes. For this reason, I am literally never sarcastic on the internet, unless I'm talking with a close friend I've known for 10 years, because it's just too easy to misinterpret things.
          • RevRal 17y ago