I’ve been off internet dating for a few months. The obsessive trawling and ongoing hypothetical storytelling got too much for my insecurities to handle. I’ve had a lot going on and I was petrified that I would have to go on a date and explain to a potentially hot stranger why the snot bubbles that come out of my nose when I sob uncontrollably would end up on his coffee foam. So last week I made a come back. A slow one but I went active.
My e-harmony (the so-called site for grown ups) account has run out of subscription so I’m back to the cheap seats. Read that as free. When I say slowly I mean it. I downloaded the app and opened it. My profile still mentions that I’d like to learn to play the ukulele in 2014. It still talks about my eight week challenge of doing new things. Funny how a fun run and bridge climbing got a mention in that section and not the bits that talk about drawing nudes and going to a strip club. (I’m still waiting for that last one!) That was in March! Or later, but the point is, I can’t remember and my profile still says ‘New Adventures 14’.
It’s just gone 15. Surely there is something new to add to the profile since then? Surely there is something exciting about me that’s developed in the last twelve months? Honestly… there’s probably not. I’ve spent the last six months merely surviving and while the snot bubbles have not completely disappeared from my life, they are more controlled and now rarely make splashes in the fancy leaf my barista draws on my coffee. So no, the profile is unchanging but what is changing are the numbers at the top of the screen.
In the past week fifty-two men have ‘liked’ my profile. Fifty-two men in the state, and one out, have clicked ‘I like your profile’. Yes that seems impressive and when you put the stats out there like that, the math nerds amongst you are screaming about good odds. It’s not the numbers that keep me up at night. The numbers are good and I’m flattered. What keeps me up is the fear that I might be racist.
After the last speed dating debacle and the discovery that I don’t find Asian men attractive (generally – I’m not saying that I wouldn’t ever) it seems I have similar reactions to African and Turkish men. Out of the fifty-two men that ticked ‘I like your profile, forty of them are either African or Turkish and are looking for wives to practice their English, eight use a lower case i, the word bloke and the phrase typical aussie and have names like Rumpig, Bunyiphunter or yngwldfree. Two start their profile with their ‘diagnosis’ and the other two are chubby red heads. (yes, I added the last two.)
Am I discounting these men based on race? The thought appalled me. Am I really that shallow? Is that racist? So I went back to the beginning of the list. Was I not responding because they were black? Because they were ‘ethnic’? (insert repugnant shudder here) I put my Pauline Hanson away and looked at their profiles again.
Nope, this time it was clear. Crystal clear. It wasn’t their backgrounds, their education levels or their ability to speak English. It was their laziness. Lowercase ‘i’s, abbreviated text language, misuse of their, there and they’re, no full stops, misplaced capital letters, they’ve got them all. I can take a typo. Hell, I can take two. But if you’ve put yourself out there in order to find a date and you can’t be bothered to hold the shift key down, I can’t see how you can be bothered to show me whatever else you’ve got that should be in capitals. Can’t make an i stand up? What else can’t be bothered to stand up?
It turns out that there isn’t a small ginger woman hiding in the recess of my mind. There’s a mini librarian instead. She’s in there correcting your grammar and making judgements based on your intention to communicate clearly. She’s rough this librarian – ruthless. But when you’re trawling through the hundreds of ‘warrior68’, ‘bigballz69’, ‘sparkle28’ s out there, what would you rather be judged on?
I tried a bit hard to protect the identities of those screen shot. But not very.
life in big frilly knickers 