Where have you been all my life?
1) “Sure, I’d love to have another drink!”
The vast majority of internet dates should end after cocktail #1. Like, 90% of them. But for some reason that feels rude. Your date’s expression says “I’d rather be watching my DVR!”, while you return a gaze that cries “Me too! I’d even tolerate commercials at this point!” But for some reason, when the bartender saunters over, neither of you can muster up the courage to ask for the check. He says “So, another round?!” and both of you look at your phone, realize you’ve only been there for 20 minutes, and say “Sure, why not!” as your mind immediately runs through 10 perfectly good reasons why not. Why do we do this to ourselves?! We as a dating public must have the courage to say “No thanks. It was good meeting you, but I’ve gotta run.” There’s nothing wrong with that. We can do it! Here’s how! Maybe!
2) “No, I’ve never been to this bar before, but it seems cool.”
If you’re on an Internet date and the guy picked the bar, he’s been there before. Several times. With several different women. Once a guy finds a good date spot, he tends to revisit it over and over. Why? Because, above all else, we are both lazy and stupid. I’m sorry. I really am. I had one bar in New York that I went to so often that the waitresses would ask me, “So, how’s this one going?” when my date would go to the restroom. And yes, my heart broke a little bit every time it happened. But it’s not easy to find a good first date spot, and we guys don’t like to give one up. No matter how much of a cad we feel like ordering the same drink from the same waitress, but with a different date. Like I said, I’m really sorry. Honestly, if you can muster up the attraction, I can’t recommend lesbianism highly enough.
3) “I am a normal person who can date in a normal way, I just find internet dating more convenient!”
Oh right, because emailing strangers, fending off “winks” from 60 year-old weirdos, and meeting people for happy hour on a Tuesday is super convenient!
- I will french you for that seat. And yes, I am aware there are open seats.
4) “I NEVER KISS ON A FIRST DATE!”
It’s not 1920. We all kiss on first dates. Hell, in return for an empty subway seat, we’ll kiss on the way to a first date. Collectively, we’re floozies.
5) “Oh, I had no idea you went to school there!”
Yes you did. You Googled me. I Googled you. We know everything about each other that a semi-protected Facebook page can yield, as well as whatever I could glean from several outdated articles from your college newspaper. Sure, I don’t know exactly what you look like, but I do know that you received moderate-to-positive reviews in Colgate Drama Society’s 2003 production of The Fantasticks.
6) “My best friend isn’t my cat.”
OK, maybe that one’s just me.
7) “No, I’m not hungry at all.”
Really? Because the violent crime I’m going to perpetrate on a turkey burger the second I get home from this date suggests otherwise. Look, you eat dinner at 7:30, I eat dinner at 7:30. And even though our date is at 7:30, we’re both gonna pretend that red wine will totally suffice as supper, because we know that ordering dinner on a first Internet date is a no-no. Because the minute you place an order, you’re gonna realize your date is insane, and then you’re trapped until the entrees arrive. Sure, you could cancel the order, but you didn’t even have the guts to bail before a second drink ten minutes ago, so who are we kidding?
In a few minutes, they’re gonna be doing it.
8) “I love hiking too!”
Applies to LA internet dates only.
9) “I actually really love my job.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever been on a date where the woman has said, “you know, honestly, I hate what I do. It’s boring, and everyday I want to punch someone.” Why not? I used to work at a preposterous internet company that sold knickknacks like candles and fuzzy tea cozies. It was exactly as awful as that sentence makes it sound, but for some reason on dates I’d say, “It’s pretty cool. I mean, the schedule is flexible, and the job’s kinda dull, but I love my coworkers!” What that actually meant was: “I hate my co-workers, sometimes I sneak naps in the bathroom, and I spend lunch imagining ways to kill myself that feature either candles or fuzzy tea cozies. So far, the best one involves a catapult.” Actually, it’s probably good I didn’t say that. That’s pretty weird.
10) “I only smoke when I’m drinking.”
And yet, I’m carrying cigarettes. So either that’s a fib, or I drink A LOT. You pick!
11) “I wore this see-through shirt totally by accident.”
Let me guess. That one’s also just me?
It's Not a Match.com 
You seem to not do much pre-screening for your dates.
There’s enough information on most girl’s profiles to determine if you’d get along with them well enough or not. In between all of the question-and-answers on OKC and the verbiage in the profile its not too hard to rule out who wouldn’t last 10 minutes.
Either you don’t read these women’s profiles or your deductive reasoning skills are that of a 3rd grader.
I have a pretty high rate of success (success being defined by a generally positive good time and connection) for my dates because I scrutinize their profiles to determine our ability to connect BEFORE I waste a perfectly good DVR evening on them.
You’re googling these girls, facebooking them, etc and you STILL don’t know if they’re someone you want to have more than one drink with? You’re doing it wrong, man.
At that rate, why not just walk up to randoms at the bar you’re a regular at? You’d have the same success rate.
The funniest thing about this comment is your criticism of his social skills manages to make you sound like the archetypal OKC asshole. I think I’ve even chatted with you before!
We probably haven’t talked, Betsy.
My pre-screening would have ruled you out for a lack of critical reading skills and a presumptuous nature.
I never criticized his social skills, i criticized his analytical skills BEFORE the date. Those are not social skills.
If he took more time to pre-screen he’d waste less of his, and your, time.
I feel like I can cut the sexual tension in this thread with a knife!!!
Well, you sure showed me! You don’t come across as an asshole AT ALL. The difference between analytical skills in a social situation and social skills that are used to analyze a person from how they present themselves online… Well, I can hardly win that debate with the type of person who goes on other people’s blogs to tell them what they’re doing wrong. They know everything there is to know about social skills. As proved by the fact that your default plan is a night with your DVR
“I can hardly win that debate with the type of person who goes on other people’s blogs to tell them what they’re doing wrong.”
Wait… isn’t that what you’re doing here with me?
Hi Pot ! My name is Kettle!
Oh, the irony!
I don’t own a DVR. I prefer Hulu. A DVR-night was used as an allegory in the original story. I simply used it in my post to parallel the original article.
You fail reading comp again, Betsy.
If responding to your poor criticisms makes me an asshole, then so be it.
Or perhaps the problem is that you find so many people to be assholes? Maybe the problem isn’t the assholes. Maybe the problem is with your own judgmental issues that you’re clearly portraying here.
Betsy, I’ll restate my original point for your continued pondering: If you’re having 100s of unsuccessful online dates, then you might not be screening your dates properly. There’s enough info on any dating website to weed out the vast majority of whackos.
Our beloved blog author seems to find whackos at an above-average rate. Therefore, the conclusion can be made that he’s not screening very well.
I hope that this last paragraph has made my original post a bit easier for you to digest.
Cheers.
We’ve entered TL;DR territory here, so it’s time to make a choice: do you want to do an internet insult fight (always my first choice and what I opened with) or do you want me to tell you why your original point (as stated in your latest comment) is wrong? This means either a response to paragraphs 1-3 or a response to paragraph 4, life’s too short for both.
Aaron, if he did that…where would all this great material come from…oh wait, you thought this was a serious “how to” blog about internet dating like all those others…
No. I didn’t think it was serious at all.
I love hearing about his terrible experiences, but it started to get a little fishy.
How in the world does this one guy go on so many dates and have so many odd things happen to him? Its almost like he’s searching for that conflict and disappointment (and why would anybody do that?) or he’s simply just not screening girls for applicability.
Bad dates will always happen, but the fact that they happen at an extraordinary rate for Brian simply calls into question what he’s doing wrong. And since I’ve learned plenty about what to avoid from his blog, I thought I’d give a little back.
I’m a philanthropist like that.
Something should be cut with a knife.
Hey B,
I’m a first time visitor to your site. I pulled it up when I was looking for some kind of statistics on how likely I was to find someone on Match.com (kinda wished I’d read this BEFORE paying for six months). I tried dating on OkCupid but only got e-mails from rich guys who own a Ducati, but still seemed to need my bank account information to get home from Africa where they had been stranded after mercenaries robbed them and left them for dead. Good thing they didn’t take your computer rich, Ducati guy! Just wanted to let you know anyone who can attempt on-line dating and still have a sense of humor about it DESERVES a big high five. Your high five comes in the form of a Kindle download of your book. Thanks for the laughs.
Can we get an Aaron and Betsy face-off post please? Oh, and this round goes to Aaron in my opinion.
Really? I thought he proved my point pretty thoroughly, so I didn’t feel the need to say anything else. I’ll have to take my internet arguing more seriously in the future!
;)
Actually Aaron, there are even women that use the dating sites and.blog about their horrible experiences. See blogwithbenefits.com or idatedthatdouche.com. Plenty of women run into the same type of wackos that he’s finding, and I have met a few of them as well and the majority of the time, I pick a profile apart before I even consider speaking to someone. Actually you can’t really get a good feel for the way a person really is until you go out with them and talk, face-to-face, in my opinion~
Yah, I totally get it, Jana.
Face-to-face is completely necessary to determine how you will mesh with someone, and someone that sounds great over email and in-profile can definitely turn out to be a flop. ALTHOUGH, the majority of B’s interactions go beyond “We just didn’t really click”.
Additionally, “idatedthatdouche” is made up of multiple authors and isn’t the same person making the same mistakes of constantly finding really weird people. “blogwithbenefits” is KIND OF like this blog, but it also has a lot of user-submitted stories. It has a lot of just flat-out advice columns and stuff too (although, I didn’t spend a ton of time reading everything there).
So, yep, I agree with you to some extent … but my theory here still holds water, in my opinion. (B finds a very high percentage of people he doesn’t get along with, and it seems to me that those people could be easily weeded out with some surface-layer discretion)
It doesn’t matter if youi have talked on the phone for hours. Sometimes the actual meeting just goes blah. Happened to me several times, OKC or MATCH or POF.
True, when you are talking on the phone or conversing via email etc, its hard to be distracted by the hairy mole they had photo-shopped out of their posted images. That alone tends to make conversations go a lot better.
LOL! So true!
I just wanted to leave the 11th reply to this post.