Progress Report #1

First, thank you all for your support (vicarious or otherwise) of my online dating experiment. I’ve rounded out Weeks Two and Three with messages from 18 different people in my inbox, and somewhere around 60 profile views.

Of the 18 people I’ve had contact with, most of them approached me, although I did send “Icebreakers” to 6 of them. Here’s how Yahoo works: with a free account, you can set up a profile and photo(s), browse other people’s profiles, and search for matches. What sets you apart from your full-price counterparts, however, is your limitations for contacting people. With a free account, you cannot send emails in your own words. You can send “Icebreakers” and “Quick Replies,” which are prewritten one-liners that can be unintentionally hilarious (“Tell me more about your kids!”), but they’re generally useless unless the other person is a subscriber and can write back in their own words, or provide information on how to contact each other outside of Yahoo.

A couple of the people who contacted me were subscribers, and they were forward-thinking enough to provide me an email address or a messenger ID (cleverly coded, since Yahoo will automatically censor email addresses if the recipient is not a subscriber…touché, Yahoo), but for the most part, my communications were going nowhere. I got especially frustrated when the more promising candidates hit a dead end. After debating with myself about the principle of paying for something like this (and finding a free seven-day trial coupon code on the internet), I decided to go ahead and fork over the fee for one month (plus the free seven days). If nothing comes of it, I’m out 25 bucks, but in the meantime, I think I have a better chance for success if I’m allowed to form my own sentences.

Candidates thus far have been varied and enlightening. I appear to have been laboring under the false impression that most adults can write at a 7th grade level or above. My mistake.

One of the first people I talked to was that guy that told me my profile rendered him “speachless [sic].” You remember, the guy who thought he was Tobey Maguire? Tobey appears to be reasonably cute from his photograph, but if I were the type to make snap judgments based on a single IM conversation, I would place his IQ roughly equal to that of a tetherball. It turns out I am that type.

It was the most boring and stilted IM conversation since the creation of the internet. Aside from the lapses in substance, there was also a conspicuous lack of pronouns and I kept waiting for him to tell me the story of how he lost his shift key. He used some variation of “u” (instead of “you”) at least 8 times in the space of 20 minutes, and that includes the rather creative use of “urs” (in place of “yours”). Somewhere in the world, a grammar teacher cried out in her sleep.

I can look past poor writing skills, though, if the person is interesting or easy to talk to. Sadly for Tobey Maguire, he is neither interesting nor easy to talk to. We had never spoken to each other before, so it caught me off guard when he said, “anything new with you?” Since when? The beginning of time? We’ve never met. I wouldn’t have been so hard on him for this, but he then pulled out that gem TWO MORE TIMES during that same conversation, and I ran out of ways to answer without sounding like I was making fun of him.

At one point, the conversation teetered on interesting, but the poor guy kept inexplicably misplacing his momentum:

Tobey Maguire: “well, lets see born in germany and moved around alot, father was in the army”
Meldraw: “Germany, no kidding! How long were you there?”
TM: “for 2 years then another 6”

[pause]

M: “So…8 years?”
TM: “thats about it”

[pause]

M: “Ah.”

Later, I tried to wrestle the conversation into something—anything—that Tobey Maguire might like to expound on with more than four words:

M: “So what other things do you like?”
TM: “walking, swimming, hanging out with friends – if they ever show up, chatting, walking”
M: “If they ever show up?”
TM: “they say they will come and then never show up”

[pause]

TM: “I know great friends”
M: “I guess!”
TM: “howabout u”
M: “My friends usually come when I ask them.”

Too soon? He seemed to get the joke, but it’s hard to tell with him. If you can imagine. Meanwhile, he really likes walking.

In other news, I know some of you were rooting for Mushroom Guy. Unfortunately, he’s probably not a viable candidate. His mushroom-revolution message was kind, but he is older than I’m looking for and is a widower with three kids. I just…can’t go there right now.

Coal Miner’s Cleaner (another commenter favorite) is also not particularly appealing to me, mostly because his tone was arrogant and abrasive. Also, his profile says (among other things): “Nothing is more relaxing than your friends laughing at you because I know that it will come back on them real quick.” Which, if I can parse that sentence, makes him sound a little like a sociopath.

Then there was Chatspeak Guy. As it turns out, his chatspeak was not intentionally ironic, so when I said he was either really funny or kind of an ass, I was only half right.

His unremarkable email took a dicey turn when it became a rant about women who lie about their weight or post old pictures of themselves on their profiles. He went on to describe in great detail a date he went on where he was surprised to see that the woman who answered the door ended up being 300 pounds and not as cute as her picture. He used the words “sooo gross” and I immediately felt offended. I mean, I hate it too, when people lie on their profiles or are intentionally deceiving, but that didn’t seem like his point. The way he talked about her weight and appearance as if it somehow made her less of a person completely put me off. Plus, who talks about things like that in their FIRST EMAIL EVER? He should know by now that you can’t impress a woman by talking derisively about another woman’s weight. We’re hardwired to cut you when you bring up weight. My favorite line was this: “So me being a nice guy I didn't just run and still took her out.” What a gentleman. Somebody knight this prick.

Finally, after waxing not-so-poetic about people who post old pictures on their profiles? He says, “I'd luv to hear from ya again and since I was complaining about outdated pics...mine on yahoo is a lil old. I've got some recent pics on myspace if you use that. just search for [Chatspeak Guy].” So I did. And according to his picture on mySpace, he is both older and fatter than his picture on Yahoo would lead me to believe. Hypocrisy? Table for one?

He emailed me yesterday (after not hearing from me for five days) and asked if he offended me. I don’t really know what to say.

For all of those poor candidates, though, there are also a few promising ones. I’m speaking to one Military Man, an aeronautics engineer who seems normal enough and is returning from Guam on Monday. There’s also Triathlete, who is both literate and kind, and assures me that his closet is completely empty of skeletons. (I hope I didn’t scare him when, after he told me he’s an electrical applications engineer, I asked what that meant by saying, “Please tell me you build robots.”) Emails to Military Man and Triathlete are still in progress.

My hopes lie with two strong front-runners, though:

A funny, smart, and grammatically pristine guy from Lincoln has wholly caught my interest. He contacted me a couple of days ago, and we’ve already traded witty and impressive emails. His profile sparked my interest (“I'm tired of being used for my massive biceps, endless pocketbook and my seasons one, two, and three DVD box set of the Gilmore Girls. Alright, I was trying to sound too cool. I don't have any of those things”), but when his first email opened with the general agreement that chatspeak should be illegal over the age of 12 (“…no, 10”) and that one of his biggest pet peeves is the use of bad grammar, my heart sang a little.

His first email to me was engrossing and fun and filled with all the right things. He was enthusiastic but not stalker-ish, and he not only appreciated my sense of humor, but shared it. He seemed both interesting and interested. Rock! Then he informed me of his profession: Correctional Officer at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

I am not even f***ing kidding.

And he loves it. That’s scary, right? He seems totally normal and level-headed about it, though, so I am going to proceed with the benefit of the doubt. And so, I dub him Shawshank.

My other strong candidate, Easily Impressible Guy, contacted me last night for the first time, so I have little to go on at the moment. But he, too, seems funny and smart and writes pretty sentences. He’s playing a clever flattery card: he started his message by saying that I’m the one who inspired him to subscribe, and he was apparently blown away by my “midnight in the park” thing. That bit of sycophancy aside, he does seem to be creative and interesting, so we’ll see what happens there.

I appear to have a full plate. Which…was unexpected.