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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 m

by 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
      It's not like I was out-of-the-blue busting her balls. Say I see this in a woman's profile: "I've mastered the art of unwrapping a Starburst in my mouth." You can be sure you'll find something like this in my first message to her: "Awesome, I hear it takes ten years to master an art...." That actually has me cracking up right now. So, it's not like this particular person had a precedent to conclude that I was more likely trying to be a dick, rather than having fun in accordance to my previous messages. Something made her completely miss the fun side of it. And the few times this "unpaid phone bill" joke didn't get me the number, the woman was polite with something like: "sorry, it's too soon. I'm just not comfortable giving my number to a guy on the internet yet." Which is absolutely fine. I know what this looks like (I'm an a-hole), but I also know how women generally respond to this stuff; I have empirical evidence that shows a strong correlation of success. Her response was not normal and pretty low-class, and really left me blindsided. She did say some pretty ridiculous stuff that wouldn't even be true of a dog with down syndrome. Quite unbalanced, even if you read my message at face value: with no evidence other than her not giving me the number, I was asserting she couldn't pay her phone bill on time, and that I was willing to share some of my raman. Besides, I had never met a person who didn't think raman was funny in itself. Who hasn't lived off it for a few days? It's like an inside joke we all share. I'm not going to abandon everything that actually works because one person got offended. It has worked before, and it is very likely that it'll work another 50 times before I come across someone who is even mildly offended by my general manner. Also, and I feel really bad mentioning this, she is one of the lesser looking girls I've spoken to with intentions of dating. I'm starting to think the whole thing was because she had less experience with jolly bantering. But, this may be me unjustly rationalizing. Thank god for nested comments. Waaaayyyy off topic.

by RevRal 17y ago

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
    It's not like I was out-of-the-blue busting her balls. Say I see this in a woman's profile: "I've mastered the art of unwrapping a Starburst in my mouth." You can be sure you'll find something like this in my first message to her: "Awesome, I hear it takes ten years to master an art...." That actually has me cracking up right now. So, it's not like this particular person had a precedent to conclude that I was more likely trying to be a dick, rather than having fun in accordance to my previous messages. Something made her completely miss the fun side of it. And the few times this "unpaid phone bill" joke didn't get me the number, the woman was polite with something like: "sorry, it's too soon. I'm just not comfortable giving my number to a guy on the internet yet." Which is absolutely fine. I know what this looks like (I'm an a-hole), but I also know how women generally respond to this stuff; I have empirical evidence that shows a strong correlation of success. Her response was not normal and pretty low-class, and really left me blindsided. She did say some pretty ridiculous stuff that wouldn't even be true of a dog with down syndrome. Quite unbalanced, even if you read my message at face value: with no evidence other than her not giving me the number, I was asserting she couldn't pay her phone bill on time, and that I was willing to share some of my raman. Besides, I had never met a person who didn't think raman was funny in itself. Who hasn't lived off it for a few days? It's like an inside joke we all share. I'm not going to abandon everything that actually works because one person got offended. It has worked before, and it is very likely that it'll work another 50 times before I come across someone who is even mildly offended by my general manner. Also, and I feel really bad mentioning this, she is one of the lesser looking girls I've spoken to with intentions of dating. I'm starting to think the whole thing was because she had less experience with jolly bantering. But, this may be me unjustly rationalizing. Thank god for nested comments. Waaaayyyy off topic.