No K Cupid

The present author, over the last year and a half, has taken, as previously mentioned, some small steps towards enhancing a social life that is completely bereft of any actual face-to-face contact. These small attempts involved signing up for sites such as OkCupid, Tinder, and POF, under the pretense of meeting both men and women. It occurs to the present author, however, that not many people use these sites under that pretense, as, even with the small amount of likes the author's profile has received, less than 5% of them are by men, none of whom replied to further inquiry. This, perhaps, isn't too surprising, as the sites are marketed, ultimately, as dating sites, not friend sites.

What is perhaps most striking, though, is the present author's prolificacy at both failing to attract interest, and scaring away what little interest there is in the space of just a few days of sending messages. But perhaps foremost, some boundaries should be explained. It just goes to happen that the present author did not include religion, drug use, size, ethnicity, income, or relationship status as deal breakers in the veritable onslaught of questions and characteristics allowed to be chosen, but did name the act of already having a child as being the one and only thing that would prevent any sort of "dating" to transpire. The present author could certainly befriend one with a child, but never anything more. That 14 of the 22 likes over the last 18 months on OkCupid have been by single mothers is a source of cynical humour to the present author.

But, to wit, even when interest is given in the present author by non-single mothers, of which 6 people have evolved into the stage of "regular messaging," (4 on OkCupid, 1 on POF, 1 on Tinder) it has taken, at most, only a week of exchanging said messages for the other party to lose all interest in the author and cease all communications. This is, of course, not unexpected, but still creates a sort of mental proclivity towards assuming that the present author is both boring and ugly (both of which are undoubtedly true). Even when the author attempts to extend an interesting olive branch, by asking questions of the other person which may be considered courteous or showing some sense of intrigue into the person's life, the conversation eventually fizzles out. This demonstrates that the present author's limited and awkward social skills definitely translate even worse to written messages than they already do to verbal ones.  That the messages come off as stiff and unnecessarily formal is also a strike against them.

So it goes that after 6 dried out conversations, several other failed attempts, and months spent without a single face-to-face meeting, the present author is resigned to the fact that he is both; uninteresting, and un-dateable. This is not new knowledge to the author, and indeed, has been known for some time, but the veritable failure of anything even remotely close to friendship transpiring from the triumvirate of websites being used to ascertain just as much is, ultimately, a self-damning reality. That the author should seek to change themselves in order to perhaps appear more desirable as a friend or social contact or romantic interest is not something that is lost on the present author. It is simply something that is unattainable.