IstockA reddit user named OKCThrowaway22221 decided to prove just how easy women have when it comes to online dating after talking with a friend about her experiences with romance in the digital age. We guess he figured that most of the time it's the men chasing and messaging women on dating sites, so women don't have to do any of the work to start a conversation. They just sit there and wait for the right guy to talk to them. So he created a profile for a female version of himself, used a picture of his friend who calls herself "pretty average looking," and dove into online dating from a female perspective.
He lasted two hours.
Why only two? Because before he even finished writing his profile (we're talking before he even had his picture up), he got a message from someone. So he replied innocently to the man who emailed him and then went to sign off and check back in 24 hours. But before he could do that, another message popped up. And then another. And then more and more and more. But it wasn't the flooding of messages that drove him to delete his profile after only a couple of hours.
It was the content of the messages themselves. As most women who have dealt with online dating know, a lot of men who contact you are gross. And what starts off as an innocent exchange quickly turns into "why don't we meet up, get naked and get weird together?" But what's worse, as this reddit user found out, is that men get angry when you reject them, even if you are very nice about it. They either pursue you more aggressively or they bombard you with hate emails. OKCThrowaway22221 also got requests to have cyber sex, phone sex and the like. Turns out, nobody wanted to actually date on this online dating site.
"I figured I would get some weird messages here and there, but what I got was an onslaught of people who were, within minutes of saying hello, saying things that made me as a dude who spends most of his time on 4chan uneasy," he wrote about his experience. "I ended up deleting my profile at the end of 2 hours and kind of went about the rest of my night with a very bad taste in my mouth. I came away thinking that women have it so much harder than guys do when it comes to that kind of stuff."
You can read about his experiment in full on reddit. Granted, there are plenty of nice people who go to dating sites and find true love. But if someone is asking about the color, texture and scent (ew) of your underwear, he or she is not for you. Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case, have fun and be safe.
In conclusion, here are four simple rules if you are a man pursuing a woman on a dating site (for an actual relationship):
1. Wait until she's done completing her profile before messaging her.
2. Don't just send a message that says "sup?" in both the subject line and the body of the email.* Start an actual conversation.
3. If she rejects you, take it with grace and aplomb.
4. Try again with someone new.
Good luck out there, lovers.
*actual email a certain someone who writes for E! Online got on a dating site