Online Dating is Like The Wild, Wild West

Wednesday, March 06/19

So as I've previously mentioned in other posts, I've returned to the world of dating and reactivated an online account to help me meet new people.

The online dating world certainly has changed over the past few years as now it seems as if every other profile contains photo shopped pictures or pictures of 25 year old's on profiles saying they are 45-50 years old.

Because nobody is ever going to question that on a profile.........

But even though I find those facts alone to be a little disturbing, what is really offsetting is some of the messages I've received over the last few weeks.

I had one woman contact me telling me I had a well written profile that made her laugh, cute pictures, and she wanted to get to know me better but she had one special request.......could I please shave off my goatee and send her proof of a clean shaven face before she would consider meeting me for drinks.

Really? You want me to change my appearance so as to please someone I've never even met, someone I might not click with should we even meet, I don't think so, not here and not now.

Does that mean I wouldn't ever consider shaving it off? No, of course it doesn't, but it does mean I'm not doing so after a few dates let alone before we've even met.

There are so many online dating sites these days that I wonder how anyone chooses one over another....

Bumble, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, and eHarmony seem to dominate the landscape, all targeting a different slice of the dating pool.

The funnies messages come from fake profiles where they incorporate a persons full name as the user name, as if that will somehow make them seem more real.....SusanEvans278 or BarbJones88B are a couple I've seen.

Add in when they let you know their favorite drink in the tag line so you know just what to order them when you two finally meet........I like Harvey Wallbangers or I only drink Gin & Tonic are popular, which means the profiles were set up to scam people.......

The final giveaway is when they say something like "I'm hardly ever on here but you can always find me on nakedhump.com or easyholes.com"...........so you set up a profile on a dating site and list a relationship as your objective but don't spend time on the site but do spend time on a porn site.....please let me grab my wallet and see what it's all about

I think it fair to say I'm becoming a little jaded about dating given all the crap you have to endure to even have someone look at your profile and if you are lucky, they'll send you a message, but odds are that about 85% of messages come from these fake profiles hoping to separate you from your hard earned money.

Now not being on the female side of the equation I have no clue that you women are going through but can't imagine it's really any better, maybe not as blatantly obvious but probably still just as likely to make your skin crawl and feel the need for a very hot shower with lots of soap....

Think I might need to reassess my decision to unhide my profile and let nature take it's course and meet someone the old fashioned way, passing notes in homeroom.......oh yeah, those days are long past me so maybe I'm screwed and not in the fun way.......

My name is Marcus and as open minded as I try to be some things still have me scratching my head and asking myself WTF?

Questions/comments care of ooasm2018@gmail.com

Today's musical suggestion is a duet with Sting & Shaggy on "Just One Lifetime"