About a week ago my boyfriend and I decided to create OkCupid profiles to make some new (platonic) friends in this area. So far it's been surprisingly successful. We're meeting all sorts of amazingly articulate, intelligent, interesting people who are groovy just being friends and hanging out.
On occasion I receive messages from some real grade-A douchebags. They usually construct some message they feel sounds witty, charmingly cocky, and flippant. They craft it so that it seems specific to the girl but actually never mentions anything specific. I usually ignore these, but one I received recently was just aggressively annoying.
So I present to you one such problem message that I received this morning and my open-letter response. Keep in mind that I explicitly state in my profile that if you try to bullshit me, I will call you out on it. This guy had it coming.
While I'm fairly confident in what I have to say, I invite anyone to comment, criticize, joke, insult, or otherwise respond constructively.
Enjoy!
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Subject: Can you handle it?
Sep. 8, 2010 – 12:38am
Skepticasm,
Well, I hope you're more than just another pretty face or something. I bet you're probably getting about 36 emails a day from desperate guys saying things like "Hi, I'm freshly divorced from my seventh wife, have 5 delinquent kids... but the good news is that I have a great chance of buying my dream doublewide... So... wanna go get a big mac?"
In any event, I'm 27, not too insane, a great conversationalist, and I'm more than the usual amount of interesting and funny, so you'd better like to laugh.
You might just make an interesting friend, so message me back... if you think you can handle it, that is!
-Will
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First: Keep in mind also that his profile is more of the same - bragging about how funny he is and imploring women to "dazzle me" and "come entertain me" and to "earn" their Friday night dates with him. Oh, and something about a big truck he drives. It has a name.
Guys: unless you own a yacht or some form of aircraft, don't name your vehicle if you ever want any action from a chick with a higher IQ than said vehicle.
Oh, one more thing. Under Things I'm Good At he wrote "Putting bad women in their place." First, way to be a chauvinist jerk about your word choice. Women do have their own brand of annoying/crazy/bitchy, but so do men, so I have no idea what he's going for here. It just seems rude and clumsy like the rest of his profile.
Onward.
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Will,
Actually, I have hit the jackpot of amazingly articulate, easy-going people here, and I'm usually the one to initiate contact.
Look, clearly you're a nice guy, and I even concede the possibility that you are witty. But I don't like to let obnoxiousness go unchecked whenever it loudly presents itself to me with all the grace and finesse of the Incredible Hulk attempting ballet.
I see what you're going for here; it's true, women dig assholes and they long for a challenge. For some reason guys interpret this to mean "be aggressively self-complimentary and explicitly state challenges in conversation." That's not exactly what "asshole" means. If you explicitly spell out exactly what she has to do to "get" you, there's zero challenge. This is particularly true if you are the one who initiated contact to begin with.
Now, about the whole "I'm a super awesome funtime hilarious guy" thing: Guys hear "confidence" and for some reason think "this means I should brag freely about myself." This just comes off as a desperate attempt to impress her. Challenge annulled.
To that end: It seems that you spend far more time telling people how witty you are than you do actually being witty.
If you're going for the "cool, confident, challenging" thing, then don't send her a message saying "come and get it!" You've already revealed your interest by sending a pseudo-complimentary message peppered with contrived attempts to hide the fact that it's a thinly veiled plea for her attention. She's not going to come running just because you commanded it. In fact, she will decline to come running to you because you told her to.
Also, lavishing her with back-handed compliments is usually not so effective; the discrepancy in intent not only compromises the confidence you're going for but also paints you as manipulative, or at the very least vaguely rude.
And shitting all over other people (including the girl you're messaging) to set yourself apart as special implies that you need such a scale to make you relevant or interesting.
Want to know what a woman will respond to (including me)? Chicks dig assholes, but not ones that are aggressively asshole-ish. They want the ones that seem to view any particular female possibly interesting but ultimately disposable. They want mystery and intrigue. A girl wants quiet confidence, the kind that doesn't require her attention to thrive.
Here's my suggestion: If you find someone you think is interesting, send her a brief, straight-forward message telling her exactly what caught your eye about her - but only one or two things; you don't want to give away the mystery or destroy the challenge. Just remember that there will always be time for more compliments later, after you've lured her in with your mystique.
Here's a for-example:
"You strike me as an articulate, perceptive person, and we seem to have some interesting things in common. I would love to chat with you sometime. Here's my screen name..."
Don't be afraid to be deliberate. Flippant only works in real-time conversation when you can pull it off as off-the-cuff, and only in moderation.
There's very little risk in this straight-forward approach, because there's nothing to read into whatsoever. Women (well, the reasonable ones) really do appreciate straight-forward men. Guys are so busy trying to find some snarky or clever way to set themselves apart that the only ones who successfully do are the ones who just come out and say what they want or what they're thinking.
You don't have to come up with witty remarks and ways to frame compliments in cocky ways. Just be honest but reserved, and she will be intrigued.
I personally prefer genuine, down-to-earth, no-bullshit people. I can see that that's there somewhere in you, and if you just engage that instead of trying so hard to appear confident, you will actually be confident and women will respond accordingly.
Hoping this was helpful,
Adrienne
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...and Bob's your uncle.
I think I was a little too nice to this guy. I assumed he wasn't a bad person, but he ended up being a real dick. And for that -
Check out his profile: http://www.okcupid.com/profile/scrouds
All this guy does is posture like a hopeless douchebag. Notice that if he can't fit in cocky, he goes for random and whimsical, like calling himself a pirate and saying that he spends his time creating empires. He never actually says anything genuine or true about himself. Posturing via flat, witless one-liners = lame + transparent.
ADDENDUM: I was right about the copy+paste deal. One of my friends informed me that she received the same message from this dude several months ago. This guy's a real charmer.
I sent him a link to this post, and I'm somewhat disappointed to report that he didn't even try to put me in my place like his profile says he would. Bummer.
I see these guys all the time and it just makes me twitch a bit to think that through all their incompetence and assholery they still get chicks. You know why nice guys finish last? Because assholes like this guy are playing the numbers so hard that women just can't trust anyone, particularly online, to not be doing the same.
Oh, well. Jerks will be jerks. Perhaps making examples of guys like this will ultimately embarrass some of them out of pulling dumb shit like this. A girl can hope.
