Digital Garden

I have a lot of thoughts and personal grievances. Saying this upfront, I know a healthy amount of the issues are on my side, and not the fault of others. However, there’s also a fair amount of issues from the other side of the coin as well. I will elaborate more on this as we go along with this.

Anything shown here is by no means an attack or a complaint about the people who have profiles that happen to be shown to me. That’s something out of their control completely. These are all complaints about the sites themselves, and how they decide to show me potential matches, and that’s where I have the issues.

General list of grievances that will be covered over time

• Showing people outside my distance preferences
• Showing people outside my age preferences
• Lack of setting to say “show me people who LIVE near me”.
• Augmented reality filters. At this point if I see them, I expect you to actually have bear ears
• my inability to determine ideal message length to receive replies
• spam profiles
• dating sucking in general.

Out of preferences matches

I get it and understand that distance calculation can be touchy and at times inconsistent, but at the same time it’s comparing numbers, which computers do very very well. Is this person showing as 100 miles away, when I have my preference set to 90? If yes, just don’t show it to me. This can be especially true if they’ve specified where they live. It is possible to programmatically look up and compare city distance between. Yes, people move around as well we’re not permanently stuck in one place, and when they threshold is met…go ahead and show. Only showing me people who have listed that they live in a location that is within my specified preferences will likely go down as a great to have, but not a must have.

Age on the other hand is a harder stop for me. I turned 37 in 2020 when I’ve begun this essay? page? thing? I don’t want to be shown people below like 26. Age may just be a number for some people, and I try to be flexible but I still have my far-end limits for what I will consider.

Dating sites ask for my preferences for a reason and I put my choices and mean them for a reason as well. I would rather be shown nothing at all for a time over matches outside my criteria.

Augmented reality or more specifically photo filters

Yeah, sure, all these filters you can apply to your selfies are nice and cute and all, but I personally have very little to no care to see them used for profile photos. After a few dates or once a relationship has started? Sure, share them with me and I’ll fawn over them with you. Until then, I may start expecting to see actual bear ears on you if we get to the point of meeting in person.

My inability to message effectively

This is going to be the area and bullet point item that is absolutely all on my plate and all blame coming to me. I have yet to figure out and find that “sweet spot” in messaging that will at least get me noticed, and perhaps even elicit a response to.

I am very much aware that females are completely bombarded on these sites from the word go and the moment after they publish their filled in profile. I feel bad that they have to go through that every day. I hope, though, that I can at least stand out a little bit to show that I am worth taking a peak at.

Taking care of this detail before it potentially gets inferred. This is not me trying to claim to be a “nice guy” and thus somehow better or more elitist. I am pretty good at not lashing out in some way if/when rejection comes. I don’t re-message if I see my initial one was read and deleted without response. I just let it go and move on. No need to waste anyone’s time.

So, I definitely have my messages where it’s obviously pretty weak, and I need to work on those. I also have my messages that are short, but inquiring about something I read in their profile, something to latch on to. I have not yet gotten to the point of short story or novel, but perhaps for a twisted sort of fun in my head, I should just copy/paste the first few paragraphs of popular books as part of a message. If anything I’d stand out as a crazy person.

Spam profiles and redirects

PlentyOfFish is the worst at this at the moment. Any time I get notified that someone “liked me” on the site or have sent me a message, I wait a few hours and check again. If the profile and/or message has been removed without me doing that, it was spam.

Any time I see a profile that somehow hides an email address or phone number to contact, I instantly assume, and probably rightfully so, it’s spam. Given the amount of attention legit profiles get, no legit profile would actually provide that information willingly. If they do, they have more guts than I would.

Lastly, I’m dubious but not outright assuming, if the profile lists SnapChat or Instagram or InsertSocialSiteHere usernames. I never reach out to those because I don’t have SnapChat and I don’t need to be a creeper on Instagram, etc. I want to use the dating app and its built in inherent protections that they created. It’s the equivalent of a first date being in a public, well lit, semi-busy location. I want the person I’m on a date with to feel secure and that they can exit out easily if needed.

Last modified on 2020-11-12 at 11:57 pm