What if the person who gets the e-mail is also the one who suggested it? Not impossible, yes?
Never dated online, but I'd think an email that was a rewritten version of this post wouldn't be the worst possible approach.
It's striking, when you come across the profile of someone who seems to be one of your people, how much it throws into relief the unease with which you've been reading the rest, and how clear it becomes that your unease wasn't the shame of online dating, but the old familiar sense of being a stranger and out of place.
Wanna go bowling?
Avoid "Wanna fuck?" -- "walk on the beach" is the standard euphemism.
They say sex is like dancing. So how about we go upstairs and have sex for a little while?
I would respond to a version of this post. Obviously.
Ogged, it's a fine post but a bad ad. I find it unappealing when people talk about being alienated, estranged, etc.-- it's like when a new acquaintance says "I wonder why I don't have friends." Better to reveal the unique, appealing qualities that make you out of place (except at the mineshaft) than to announce them.
Then again, actual women seem to respond, so what do I know?
It would be a terrible ad; it's a good response to someone else's ad. As an ad, it would be saying something like "I'm just so special and sensitive that I can't bear to associate with most people -- you must appreciate my uniqueness, and I'll see if you measure up to my standards." The only proper response would be to mock, cruelly.
As a response to someone else's ad, though, what it says is that she stood out as appealing -- that based on what she's written about herself, it seems possible that they really would enjoy each other's company.
As an ad, it would make him sound like a jerk. As a response to an ad, I think it would come off as flattering, in a good way.
I think Abu's right. The overwhelming sense of anomie is best served later in the relationship, after you've offered something in the plus column. Unless you're looking for a Goth.
I sort of assume that attractive women get an unbelievable number of emails. So I suspect, simply for efficiency reasons, 90% of the work gets done by the picture and your own profile. The e-mail is a hook, at best. Go for funny, whimsical. Hell, ask her how many insane five year olds she thinks she could take out before she succumbed.
And of course, I did say rewritten. Toning down the sense of alienation, and playing up the recognition of what seems to be "one of your people" is the way to go.
(Ogged, Labs, and Timbot, the Holy Trinity of Celibacy, tell the ladies what works on the ladies), which is to say, I think this post would make a very cheesy opening email. There's too much emotional response to what is, after all, just an online profile. To me, it would smack of emotional intemperance, too quickly forming attachments, etc.
I think LB has it almost exactly right. Play the alienation/shame at online dating down and be lighthearted about it, but otherwise I think what you wrote works well as a response to a profile or ad. Your phrasing made it seem more authentic than that approach might usually sound.
Not to throw down a gauntlet or anything, but I think the "how many five-year-olds" query would be a real mistake in an initial approach (amusing though the discussion itself was). It seems like an unpleasant flavor of off-the-wall humor in that context. Apologies in advance if I'm taking an offhand remark to be a real suggestion.
i'm with SCMT. apropos of the sense of humor discussion, funny is important, for whatever reason. also, don't go on too much about yourself. keep it relatively short, and like LB said, play up why she seems to be "one of your people." people want to know why it is you appealed to them, and not just that you are some desperate fool who is responding to every moderately hot profile. also, that you were paying attention.
to respond to the original question - in my one online dating experience that was not a total fiasco, i don't much think i wrote anything particularly spectacular as a response. luckily, it seemed to have worked anyway.
I met my current love through online dating, so I've got some experience under my belt.
My advice:
Be sure to respond to specific elements in her profile that you liked. Compliment sincerely. Contra your other commenters, I would stick to "your ad really resonated with me" and leave out anything about the other ads not resonating. Initial online contacts are hard to manage, and without the context of a personal relationship or a blog personality, it can be very, very easy to misinterpret something. Use something in her ad (maybe one of the things you've been working on), as a jumping off point to a short chatty discussion of something you have in common. If she's mentioned specific things she'd like to do, maybe suggest doing them.
should be "why it is they appealed to you," disregarding, of course, these here untidy pronoun issues.
For your edification, my boyfriend's successful reply to my personal ad:
>>>
I think you've been on my hot list forever, and I suddenly can't say why I've waited so long to say hi. Maybe I only now realized you were George Bush. I loved that screen in boys don't cry too.
>>>
Indicated sincere and specific interest. Took a joke I made and ran with it a little. Established something that something we had in common made him notice my ad.
>>>
I'd love to chat if you want to. I'll do everything for you that you've ever hoped for or dreamed of. Except maybe that karaoke thing. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that an absolute of mine was built on sand.
>>>
Establishes enthusiasm about meeting. Sort of dashing in offering to make my dreams come true, but with an appopriate sense of irony about it.
>>>
I have another profile on nerve, it's more of a "play" profile. I mention it just to mention it. Disclosure or something. It's name is "Image". Not necessarily looking for only play, however.
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Very slightly sexually flirtatious, yet not icky.
>>>
The attached pic is about 5 years old. Gotta update that. Sorry.
Anyway, I like your profile, and it's nice to finally say hello.
>>>
Also, I forgot to say earlier that the most important thing is to make sure your ad is good, and reflects you.
I met my husband, Kevin, through a personal ad. This was before online dating was really big (I placed ads in a newspaper and a magazine; he responded). Back then, women got tons of responses; I imagine online dating makes responding even easier, so maybe women get even more responses nowadays. But lots of the responses I got were really weird and definite non-starters (e.g., photocopied handwritten flyer-type responses that said, "Looking for wife...."; letters from jail; etc.). I also have to admit I'm biased toward normalcy, so take my comments w/that in mind.
What I liked about Kevin's letter (which I still have - somewhere) was: it was straightforward; he said what he was doing at the time and what he hoped to do in the future; it had a friendly, conversational tone to it, though not overly familiar. All of this made him seem normal and approachable. He did not refer to angst, alienation, etc. He's a pretty easygoing guy, though, so he didn't really have any angst, alienation, etc. Personally, I agree w/FL that such talk is negative and off-putting. I was looking to meet fun, positive people.
Re: humor: Email isn't always kind to tone. The how many 5-year olds thread was really funny, but might not come across well in email.
Also: forget about the shame of online dating; I had a ton of fun dating respondents to my ads. Granted, women advertisers generally get a lot of responses, so they can pretty much fill their weekends w/dates, but I'm sure it could be fun for the guys, too. I met a lot of good, interesting people and a few not so good, but the latter make for good stories.
In number 14, "you've been working on" should be "that resonated with you." Commenting hurriedly as a break from labeling keys, sorry
Is "labeling keys" like "making license plates?"
A friend of mine didn't have to buy food for a year while she was online dating. She was a secretary and obviously pretty efficient in pencilling in calendars. She always made it clear that she was mostly just interested in getting out a little and wasn't looking for an intimate or serious relationship.
Three out of several hundred first dates led to second dates. She introduced one second date to one of her friends, and they got married.
(This is just an anecdte. It isn't meant to minimize Ogged's chances -- this particular woman just wasn't interested in anything at all serious.)
My post might be helpful for some of Ogged's female readers whose budgets are a little tight.
re: 19
I forgot to mention that I pretty much had to respond favorably to my boyfriend's ad or La Nuestra Familia was going to fuck my shit up.
Tarrou:
Don't feel bad about criticizing the idea. It was offhand, but as ogged points out above, ignoring my comments in this field is pretty much "The First Step Towards Success!"
I do think I'd be willing to immediately propose to any woman who gave me an answer over 20, though.
So is the implication here that it's ok for the alienation and angst to be revealed later on or is the hope that, having found someone, it will simply disappear?
I think ogged should post an online poll asking his readers to categorize their relationship status and general history of success and failure. He's probably more typical than people think.
Of course, everyone would lie, either out of respect for ogged's feelings or else in order to make him feel bad, depending on their attitude toward ogged. So the data would require intensive analysis.
I think we've all seen/been people who stay with disastrous significant others for so long that we assume that once ogged's hooked her, he can put away the mask.
Then again, there are unconventional strategies for success. I dated this guy for a while:
So, I'd promised myself not to write to any more interesting people in New York, because I long ago determined that it only makes me feel as if I live in a boring little provincial place. But the problem is, see, that you've introduced intrigue, what with the whole [redacted] feud, and men, see, we like intrigue a lot. I mean, throw in a few guns and a motorboat and you'd have half the men on the East Coast dribbling all over you.
So, now I'm all interested and shit, and this ad had won out because it has Dostoevsky over Tolstoy, and although Tolstoy has been a bigger influence in my life - ok, that sounded like the most phony bit of crap, but it's true, because Tolstoy's guide to the gospels was the only book Wittgenstein could read when he was in prison, and then he went off and wrote big hulking books of philosophy that at one point I was going to spend the rest of my life studying, and this is only getting me deeper and making me look more like some sort of weird secluded literatum, which is not what I'm going for at all, so insert punctuation - I'm reading BK right now, and it's not only good, but really trippy when you're on the bus late at night and everyone around you is singing about Chilean football. Really, you should try it.
Well, now that I've broken all response protocol by being unbelievably long-winded, and not in a terribly interesting way either, I might as well go on. Either you're still reading, which means you have some sort of impressive patience reserve, or you've long since given up, in which case it won't matter anyway. So, the attractive feature I have which you desire ('though it can't be very hard to find), is the not knowing what the fuck I'm doing. When I was four I wanted to be a garbage man, and I sort of wish I'd stuck with it, because it was at least a plan, whereas now my plans for the rest of my life, both professional and personal, are about as cultivated as a first-graders... actually, most first-graders are much more self-assured in that than I am.
O, and the point was, you used an asterix in your ad. Do you have any idea how cool that is?
So, I'm going to stop writing, not because I have any concern over you if you've read this, but because I just looked into my teacup and my soy milk has curdled into some foul whispy cheesy thing and I think I must go be ill.
Tia, I thought we agreed when you started posting here we wouldn't bring up our past?
Ben, I think the good of helping Ogged reset his TiVo (did I get that right? I'm new at Unfoggedspeak) outweighs the good of honoring our previous contracts.
Hey, awesome, Tia's going to sleep with me.
I don't think you should worry about it that much. You are not going to able to control who does and does not respond to you, or whether some small quirk of yours is going to appeal or not, so I would just aim for a slightly watered-down version of your natural reaction to the person. Yourself, edited.
Re: #24: Well, my hope would be that angst and alienation wouldn't be such a main part of a person's makeup that s/he would feel the need to write about in the first email reply.
But some folks are mostly angst-ridden and alienated - and maybe they like it that way, are comfortable that way, and so on. People generally put their best face on, but I don't know what these folks should write in their replies. I wonder if the most successful replies pretty much mirror the personalities of the advertisers. In which case, angst-ridden and alienated advertisers would welcome similar respondents.
ogged, I say, just fire off some replies and see what happens. And live blog it, of course.
I agree with FL: keep it positive or you risk sounding like someone who normally spends his spare time polishing his action figures while crooning to them dark goth love songs in an imaginary vampire language.. ['At last, someone who understands me for who I am!!!!'] Self-deprecation is charming but it's hard to pull off with no context.
More specific (what is it that makes you think she's your kind of person) and less general; otherwise it looks like 'your kind of people' == 'seems to be hot enough.'
just fire off some replies
This, my dear, is not my style. So far I think I've spent about 90 minutes on the email, and have one sentence that I'll delete after lunch.
Also, I'm not really very angsty, as should be pretty clear from the blog.
ogged, you're not angsty, but that reply kinda is, and the woman won't have read your blog.
Unless you're asking out profgrrrl again.
Cala,
otherwise it looks like 'your kind of people' == 'seems to be hot enough.'
Good advice. Honesty can come later, if ever!
Re: #35: Oh, I didn't think you were angsty - I was just addressing the general question of if/how/when to bring up traits usually considered negative. Not that you have any.
So firing off replies is not your style, yet I imagine you'd like a date this year. None of these women are your last best hope. I like to think that the worst thing that could possibly happen when doing anything is that someone dies or is seriously injured. And that's unlikely to happen here.
Perhaps I shouldn't admit this on this blog, what with w-lfs-n around and all, but Kevin had a typo in his response and I still called him. Anything can happen!
Honesty can come later, if ever!
True, but always be up front about your prodigious member.
ogged may not be angsty, but his prodigious member is.
Hehe. Never lie. Ever. A friend of mine once went on a date with a girl he met through an online dating site. Her picture was cute, she described herself as an 'average' body type, and his only comment on the date was:
'Five one and 200 pounds is not average'.
True, but always be up front about your prodigious member.
Of course. I find the best time is right after mentioning my rock hard abs.
ogged, there is your first sentence:
I looked up from my rock hard abs and wondered, before mentioning my prodigious member, why your ad stood out so much from the rest?
So far I think I've spent about 90 minutes on the email
OK, so that information definitely shouldn't go into the e-mail.
Dear hottie,
My frenemy SomeCallMeTim says I shouldn't tell you that this sentence took me two hours to write. This'll show that stupid motherfucker...
If you say, "public frenemy number 1" I'm sure it will increase your chances of success.
How about just saying "Sole proprieter of the famous "Unfogged" blog. A sure winner.
The blog's address will not be revealed for a very long time.
Never online dated, but I imagine it's like online searching for a job. Eventually you lose count of the number of jobs you shoot a resume to but you can count responses on one hand.
I presume the usual rules apply: be lightly funny, casual, unneedy, avoid a stalker vibe, etc.
Wierd expressions of hostility: also a no-go.
I don't really understand why you (and everyone else) wouldn't say something along the lines of this:
"I saw your ad, X made me laugh (detail to give specifics), and I thought we might get on well. I don't really think anything except in-person meetings are very good at getting across the tone and timbre of a personality, so I wonder if you'd like to meet for coffee at a clean, well-lighted place with multiple escape routes. If worst comes to worst, we'll each have wasted thirty minutes of our time, but at least we'll have had coffee.
Here's my profile: Y."
I think ac's right; you have no idea what will work, and e-mail is terrible at getting across the things that matter in a relationship (like penis size). Wasting time on the email is like fetishizing a non-existent relationship.
But I'm not lagging that far behind you on the TiVo thing, so ....
That's actually good, Tim; we should go out.
e-mail is terrible at getting across the things that matter in a relationship (like penis size)
That I disagree with. I think you can tell pretty much everything you need to know about a person from email. And there are always sentences like "My tumescent penis is 8.75 inches (22.23cm) in length (using standard measurement techniques)."
But ogged, there's no substitute for actually being in the presence of your mighty wang. There's an incommensurable gap between description and experience here, much like the one that obtains between the description and experience of a great work of art.
Everyone please recall that w-lfs-n has met me.
Well, if you're penis is really 8.75", there's your lead. Accentuate the positive!
And WTF is baa? This seems like an issue in need of decisiveness.
I once heard an ad/underwriting spot on NPR for a company which promised to set you up with graduates of certain selective colleges and Universities. I was appalled at the time, because it went against my ideal of what public radio should do. I don't like to think of NPR as being for middle-class people. I like to think of it as providing culture to everyone, wherever they are, no matter how poor.
And I thought that the idea behind the company was really snotty. It is, of course, but now I'm tempted to try it.
re: 31
I guess I got the lingo wrong. Not wanting to be seen breaking my word two comments in a row, I'll consent, but you have to get past the guards and make it up to Tito.
bg, we briefly talked about that dating service here and two posts above it.
I think that everyone whose post is excessively long should be required to have sex with ogged.
Huh, all this time I thought it meant Automatic Teller Machine. (Pretty soon, the kiddies aren't going to know what a "teller" was.)
ogged, I don't think it was the Right Stuff. I'm pretty sure that it was Good Genes which is, if it's possible, even worse.
It reminded me of an ad I saw in the student paper for an ovum donor. You had to be petite, blonde, blue-eyed, have an SAT score over 1500 and no family history of psychiatric problems. They were only offering about $10k which I don't think is a lot, given that ovum donors go through a lot and risk infertility. I was pretty disgusted. I kind of wonder whether they ever got any takers.
Whatever happenned to the concordance project? And what about a glossary? (I'm not making suggestions. I just assume you've thought about all this, and wondered.)
I think it's easier just to tell people when they ask.
Ads for one or both of those dating services ran regularly in my campus newspaper, and a very similar egg donor ad actually led to enough controversy from people objecting to it that it was written up in either the local or campus paper. I'm pretty sure I went to a different school than you, b-girl, so I would guess that they're a national business.
52 gives me an excuse to mention that James Ellroy counseled me many times that "remember, Gary -- it's not what you do with your penis, it's how big it is."
I forget at this minute if that was the noun he used, or he used a more colorful choice; this was about 19 years ago, when he was relatively little-known, although the dozens of repetitions aid my memory.
Equally a sequitur: my sister met her husband via a personal ad; I have no details, though.
remember, Gary -- it's not what you do with your penis, it's how big it is
Now that should be the blog's motto.
spends his spare time polishing his action figures
Isn't it customary to have just the one? Or was this not a euphemism?
Speaking of Ellroy, I just bought Black Dahlia Aveneger, which he wrote the foreword to. Anyone read it? Gary?
I dunno, w/d, but I got the latest album by Black Dahlia Murder, and it's great, especially how the vocals exhibit two cultivars of human ugliness (I hope to use "Two Cultivars of Human Ugliness" as a title someday). And who could dislike this closing sentence from the allmusic review?
This harsh, blistering sledgehammer of a CD falls short of remarkable, but it's a decent (if somewhat uneven) effort that is worth checking out if one holds Scandinavian-style death metal and Scandinavian-style black metal in equally high regard.Quite.
I found cultivar as a botany term, wtf does it mean musically? Actually, I assume it's just an analogy from that botany term, in which case it's a nice usage.
I wasn't using it in a specifically musical sense, just as "cultivated variety".