50 First Dates: Collected Online Dating Tips

I have been asked to collect all my online dating tips and put them into one document. Here they are. As my perpetual singleness persists, there may be addenda to this list. Enjoy:

1. It is already implied that you do not want to go out with creepers, stalkers, chauvinists, jerks, abusers, psychos, etc. You don’t have to write it in all caps and/or with 7 exclamation points that you DON’T want to hear from them. I have yet to see a woman say, “What I’m looking for is a neo-nazi sexist pig with mommy issues. I expect to get beaten to the brink of death for serving soup slightly too hot, and if we break up, I still want you to break into my house and masturbate in a pool of your own tears while you watch me sleep. Bed wetting a plus.”
1. Corollary 2.1: Writing such statements will never help you avoid creepers, et al. People like this tend not to self-identify. The culprit audience will not read your profile and say, “Aw shucks. I guess onto the next profile”. Furthermore, I highly doubt there is a profile where the person would write, “Hi, I’m a roofer, I love animals, and I was once arrested for going to my ex-girlfriend’s wedding, teabagging her wedding cake, and then force feeding it to her”.
2. Try to avoid saying that you are fun-loving, and describe what you think is fun. There is no person who does not like fun, but it is a matter of what two people think is fun. Saying you like to go hiking in the summertime sounds like fun to me, but saying you like to search for evidence that the President is a closet homosexual Islamo-Kenyan fascist communist does not. If you do not describe what you think is fun, how will anyone know?
3. If you start out your summary saying, “I don’t know about this ‘online’ thing”, or, “I think these dating sites are creepy, but I’ll give it a try”, then every connection you make online will likely fail, because what you are subliminally saying is that you think any guy on here is desperate and creepy. Though far from the truth, you will only meet the desperate, creepy ones, since you repelled the ones with good head on their shoulders with your first sentence.
4. If you take umbrage with what someone says in his profile, then CLICK TO ANOTHER PROFILE. E-mailing him to attempt to berate him may result in him writing you back and responding point-for-point to what you said...that is, after he’s deciphered your message from text talk and grammar vomit.
1. Corollary 1.1: Should you violate Tip #1, your whining over the verbosity of your recipient’s responses to your inanity is invalid.
2. Corollary 1.2: Keep in mind that every trolling keystroke you send may be collected and shared with his friends and/or put into his blog, a “chronicle of nonsense” if you will, so that all may laugh at the inanity of your missives.
5. You state that you prefer black men on your profile. You met me, and you were disappointed, because I “wasn’t what you expected”. That is because (1) you didn’t really read my profile, and (2) you don’t actually like black men. You like n****rs. I am a black man, not a n****r. Just be honest on your profile, and state that you prefer n****rs.
1. Corollary 5.1: It is very possible that this rule applies to other people of colour and ethnicities.
2. Corollary 5.2: Can’t tell if you like black men or n****rs? Peruse your profile for telltale signs. Do you know all the lyrics to every Lil’ Wayne song? Does the last movie you saw have a black man in a fat suit and drag? When referring to your ex, do you often use the term, “baby daddy” instead of “child’s father”? Did you use the term “hood”, but you weren’t talking about the cloth head covering attached to a shirt? If you said yes to any of these, you most likely prefer n****rs.
6. If you go out with someone, and whilst on the date you make out with someone who is NOT your date, you do not get to be upset if he (1) leaves early without you or (2) doesn’t call you back. Also, you cannot blame your lack of success on “these stupid internet sites”.
7. Dude...no, seriously. You’re a dude. It says on my profile, “interested in women”, so what made you think I would want to talk to you? If I DID reply and politely reminded you in my interest of only women, you saying, “You don’t know what you’re missing”, is definitely not going to change my mind. You should probably go after men who are interested in MEN.
8. Choose your words carefully. When you say, “I’m pretty laid back”, I read, “I’m boring as s*** and will rarely do anything intellectually stimulating”. When you say, “I never know what to write here”, I read, “I am almost as imaginative as a wet rag”. When you say, “I like everything except rap music”, I read, “I’m not racist enough to be blatantly offensive, but I am racist enough to call the cops on your brown friends if I don’t know them”.
1. Corollary 8.1: If you say, “...everything but country”, I read, “I either don’t like white people, or I am too doped up on sh**ty pop music to listen to anything beyond what the radio tells me”.
9. Your screen name may be a cute derivative of your favourite pet’s name, but if you couple that with you gushing over your “little schmoopy-schmoop” 4 times in the same summary that is supposed to be about YOU, it’s just not cute. I want to talk to you, not your cat...actually, after reading so much about Baron von Cuddlesworth so much, I feel he and I could probably go out for a drink. You stay home.
10. If you wouldn’t do it in real life, don’t do it in cyberspace. Would you walk up to some stranger in a coffee shop and just wink at them? How many people have you approached and said noting, but you instead poked them? Come on! Use your words!
1. Corollary 10.1: If you actually DO wink at and poke strangers in public, you may want to re-think your ice-breaking strategies.