Dating site messages

As I mentioned, I have a dating site profile. But it has no pictures, and most of the "about me" section is a rant about people who use Google image search with the pictures I had up, leading them to this blog and making me aware of how incredibly creepy some people can be. (Really creepy.)

Since I took my pictures down, I get way fewer messages, obviously. Many of those messages are from people chastising me for being silly enough to use pictures that I had used elsewhere, which is ridiculously condescending and avoids placing the blame where it belongs - on the creepy people attempting to find someone before that person has shared their information. It isn't my fault that there are people Google image searching me. It's the fault of the person who seems to be unaware of boundaries.

So, seriously, fuck you if you said something like that. There aren't many pictures of me out in the world, and there are even fewer decent ones. I should be able to use what I like without someone attempting to use those pictures to find my Facebook, or whatever it is they were hoping to find.

But some messages I get make no sense at all. Like this one:

He likes my mirror? What does that even mean? Does he have a bot to pick out random phrases from someone's profile and write a message using that word or phrase?

The only reference I have to mirrors is my "The most private thing I'm willing to confess" part where I admit to being afraid of mirrors in the dark. But how does that mean he likes my mirror? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

So naturally I click on his profile to see WTF this guy is about. And I came across another of my pet peeves on dating sites in his profile.

Men who insist on listing their skills at oral sex.

Seriously?! I find it so distasteful. And after doing an informal poll among my friends who range from quite promiscuous and likely to use a dating site for one-off hookups to friends who've dated very few people, I found every single one of them think that's a gross thing to do.

I find it difficult to articulate exactly why, though according to my informal poll, women seem to understand. But I would never, ever go on a date with someone who listed their skills in bed in their profile.

Which isn't to say that skills in bed don't matter, but there is something to be said - well, actually, a lot to be said about subtlety.

Maybe it's because the guys who make a point of mentioning it have broken the unspoken promise that guys on dating sites are at least pretending that it's about personalities, and not about sex. I mean, even if a guy is messaging me initially because my pictures have made him decide he'd probably enjoy seeing me naked, I want him to pretend an interest, or ideally, actually have an interest, in something I've written about in my profile.

If you write about your oral/sex skills, it's much more difficult to pretend that you're interested in someone's personality and not in their vagina.