I’ve always wondered how much database integrity online dating websites maintain. It would be very easy for an insider with a grudge or a boner to do the metaphorical equivalent of downvoting any one particular user’s profile. Now a reader writes to fuel my suspicions:
An ex of mine, who is/was merely an active OkCupid user, once gloated to me that she was given administrator access, ability, and privilege at the site, simply for being a cool femme type. Of course our side doesn’t get gifted with such love.
Her suggestion was that, if I ever got back on after we broke up and started scoring poon again, she could look in on me and invent ways to harass me.
Worthwhile intel for the Chateau. Wonder how pervasive that sort of thing is.
I can believe this. Imagine the hard-up nerdlings that code and administer dating sites. One of their cute babe customers gets in contact with the denizens of the IT deep. Falling over themselves with glee at having secured the (faked) attention of a non-fat whale for once in their lives, and recognizing the awesome power they wield within their manboobed, pinched milieu, they’d probably bend over backwards faster than a prepubescent Chinese gymnast to shower her with Gifts of the Honorary Vagi, which would include supersecret access to all sorts of supposedly well-guarded user data. Never underestimate the rapidity with which an undersexed nerd will give away the farm and betray his principles for a cute girl with a flirty vibe.
So, is it pervasive? Who knows. Is it probable? Yeah.
Online dating is really a shit show for (non-gaming) men. Besides the back room subterfuge and the cosmically awful ratio of men to women, you also have to deal with blowback effects from profiles that stay up after you’ve met and banged a girl. Why would a man feel like putting time and effort into a girl he’s banged when he sees her continuing to log into her profile? Online dating may streamline meeting girls feeding girls attention, but it also undermines investing in them. It’s the perfect vehicle to distribute the products of the 21st century mating market.
While online dating websites are not my go-to sexonomy, there are ways to sufficiently exploit their information asymmetries and competitor contrast opportunities to get laid fairly regularly off of them. Reader “A. Veidt” offers an example:
I’m a skeptic of “online dating” (even the term is a contradiction: dates do not happen outside of tactile range), mostly because I think chicks lie in their close-cropped five-year-old profile pictures. But I also go where the pussy is, and increasingly, it’s possible to find some decent women on free sites like OKCupid. And anyway, sometimes I’m bored at work.
The key to getting a decent return on investment is to invest as little as humanly possible in any one girl until you’ve got a phone number and a firm commitment for a time to meet up (in your neighborhood, somewhere quiet and cheap). Girls on these sites get ridiculous numbers of messages, and I’m convinced that’s why many otherwise sort-of-attractive women (who surely don’t need okcupid to get men) sign up: they love the one-way, no-commitment flow of attention. Log in once a week, read your adoring fanboy mail, and log off without answering any of it. What could be better? It’s like having a Dial-a-Beta.
As a consequence, messaging girls with the standard shit is a waste of time. “Hey, you like Perks of Being a Wallflower? Me too!” Give me a break. They’ve heard it all before: every piece of information in their profile has been used by some sad sack to try and open them. So, instead, I wrote a stock opener that I use on literally everyone. It saves time. Log in for five minutes a day, paste this to five chicks you think are interesting, and move on with your life. Plus, it’s unusual, so it might knock an attention-seeker off her pedestal and get her to (even though she hadn’t planned on it) actually write back. Here it is:
SUBJ: the bet
“so, obviously you’re aesthetically interesting, but a buddy of mine was looking over my shoulder just now and claimed that – without a doubt – your profile was written by a guy; he says any profile with so little information makes him suspicious. [EDITOR’S NOTE: change the part after the semicolon as needed. it doesn’t matter what it actually says. don’t make it complimentary, and don’t get specific. if it’s a confusing non sequitur, so much the better. run, hamster, run.]
he claimed that there were a million dead giveaways. I came to your defense, of course, but it got a little out of hand and now we’ve got a $20 bet going as to whether or not you’re really a girl. so, just between you and me, am I about to lose $20?”
It seems retarded to me, but it keeps working. I think girls love the unusual nature of the accusation and relish the chance to prove themselves; they like the framing of a guy who’s hanging out with his friends and not sitting around lonely at home; and, of course, it’s a neg. That’s why it’s important not to compliment her except in the most oblique and ambiguous way (“aesthetically interesting”—you may have to tone this down for the stupider chicks. sometimes I use “interesting looking.” don’t say pretty.)
I sent that message verbatim to a girl today and got the following response back within hours:
“Without a doubt, more than anything I know, I am 100% female. My profile was written by me, sincere and honest.
Meaning, if this bet is real, your friend lost $20 and you should take me out for a drink with your winnings.
“
I have gotten this response back close to verbatim many times. “I’m a girl! Tee hee! Use your winnings to take me out!” After this, game as normal; get her phone number, meet up within a couple of days, and treat her like any other chick. (Which means, don’t actually start serving up drinks from your fictitious winnings, of course. You would, but you lost that $20 back to your buddy—it’s sort of an interesting story actually . . .)
(Two pics of the girl, who’s 23, are attached; I’d ask that you not use them on the site, but I figured you need some way to judge personally whether this just works on fatties and uglos.) [ed: the chick is a cute, slender blonde.]
Anyway, I don’t want to see the world oversaturated with this opener, but there are so many retards on OKCupid that I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Girls join the site every day and leave just as regularly; there’s always fresh blood. Plus, after biting Style’s material for years, I figure I should give back when I stumble upon something that works.
Any Chateau readers out there have similar low-investment, high-yield material for sorting through the bullshit on online sites?
The floor is open. I believe there are online game techniques in the archives of this blog as well. FYI, I’ve used the “are you really a girl?” line once on a girl I was picking up through a dating website. It wasn’t calculated game so much as a glib throwaway joke at her expense, but she did respond with glitter and confetti popping out of her vagina. Chicks love having to prove themselves to men. When they are in the defensive crouch answering your challenge, your perceived value experiences a passive rise. That’s because girls will appraise men to whom they have qualified themselves as necessarily being worthy of their sycophancy.
