Hey everybody!
The following post is a “first” in several ways. As I’ve previously only contributed to Libidinous Ladies in the form of cartoons, it is my first written entry! Also, it’s intended to be the first of a small series of posts, which will tell the story of my time on OkCupid.
Hope you like it.
...
Despite the genuinely enthusiastic support I was offering friends who, like me, were exploring online dating for the first time, it took me a little while to regard my own entry into this realm with the same unabashed positivity. (I know, I know, how hypocritical of me!) It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the site or opportunities it had to offer; in the first few weeks after I created my profile I spent PLENTY of time scanning profiles, usually in bed right before I went to sleep (okay, and when work got slow). Yet I still had this undeniable sense of embarrassment about the whole thing. Excepting conversations with friends of mine who were also on the site, I wasn’t planning on coming clean about my new e-dating habit to anybody anytime soon. Whenever somebody got within ten feet of my laptop while I was cruisin’ for dates, I would quickly minimize the website window (which, in all the glory of its flashing hot pink text alerts – “XxTr33huggerTacoxX has just picked you!” - and its catalogue-like display of headshot thumbnails, pretty much screams to anybody who happens to walk by your screen that YOU ARE LOOKING FOR DATES) in favor of something that seemed less… desperate?
The following post is a “first” in several ways. As I’ve previously only contributed to Libidinous Ladies in the form of cartoons, it is my first written entry! Also, it’s intended to be the first of a small series of posts, which will tell the story of my time on OkCupid.
Hope you like it.
...
Despite the genuinely enthusiastic support I was offering friends who, like me, were exploring online dating for the first time, it took me a little while to regard my own entry into this realm with the same unabashed positivity. (I know, I know, how hypocritical of me!) It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the site or opportunities it had to offer; in the first few weeks after I created my profile I spent PLENTY of time scanning profiles, usually in bed right before I went to sleep (okay, and when work got slow). Yet I still had this undeniable sense of embarrassment about the whole thing. Excepting conversations with friends of mine who were also on the site, I wasn’t planning on coming clean about my new e-dating habit to anybody anytime soon. Whenever somebody got within ten feet of my laptop while I was cruisin’ for dates, I would quickly minimize the website window (which, in all the glory of its flashing hot pink text alerts – “XxTr33huggerTacoxX has just picked you!” - and its catalogue-like display of headshot thumbnails, pretty much screams to anybody who happens to walk by your screen that YOU ARE LOOKING FOR DATES) in favor of something that seemed less… desperate?
At first, I thought that my hesitation to openly embrace OkCupid was based on the cultural stigma attached to online dating sites and the people who use them, which I had not only long observed but undoubtedly perpetuated myself (probably before the days of OkCupid, but probably also before I had any sort of feelings of sexual angst, desire, or isolation) This stigma, as I experienced it, is generally held by people who have never actually used dating sites, and suggests that the only people with online dating profiles must fit one (or more) of the following categories:
A) creepy folks that are not who, or what they claim to be on their profile
B) people who have 'squicky' fetishes or kinks and/or are deep into the BDSM scene
C) reclusive middle aged to elderly folks with lots of cats, severely dysfunctional social skills, and/or a vast collection of sweatshirts plastered with one or several Disney cartoon characters.
Yet the more I perused my options, the more I realized that these misconceptions were not only unfair, but completely untrue. Although there were certainly plenty of profiles I found less than enticing (just as in the real world there are plenty of people that we find less than enticing), there were nevertheless a number of times where I read all the way to the bottom of someones profile, checked out their pictures, and realized that I was genuinely interested in having a conversation and maybe even making out with them. It was kind of exciting...
