Please, for the love of all that's good, impress me when you respond to my personal ad
I know, I know, the internet is a harsh mistress for you men out there. There are lots of men, and not so many women, and it seems like there's no real way to make yourself stand out in the world of internet meetings. You're absolutely right, and I'll be the last one to say that I can come up with some magic pill that will make your emails leap off the page every time you respond to a personal ad, much though I may wish I had that ability!
Nevertheless, I can tell you that there are things that don't help your cause. Lame or unremarkable emails are ubiquitous, and though I think it's a hoot to read them and see what absurd thing this guy has decided is the way to get me in the sack, they rarely, if ever, garner a response.
I've suggested in the past -- and I stand by this suggestion -- that you have a paragraph of generic email that you can send to anyone you respond to, but that you open and/or close with a couple of lines that show that you're responding to me. Unless a guy sounds incredibly awesome in his generic approach, I won't respond to an email that's obviously designed to be cut-and-pasted to all potentials.
I know it sucks for you guys, but the truth is, if you can't be bothered to put a little personalization into it, I figure that even if I do respond to you, our conversation will fizzle out before we meet, anyway, so why bother?
Comments
I have no doubt that many of the responses you receive are lame. I have no doubt that you receive 100's of response to any ad you might post.
While I try to respond intelligently to the handful of ads I choose to answer, it does get discouraging after awhile. So many times I have made the effort to write a personalized response and meet the requirements set out by the poster only to get nothing back--not even a courtesy reply that the poster was not interested.
After awhile it can be hard to remain motivated to be clever and personal--it begins to seem like so much of a numbers game.
I do not mean to whine in this comment. But I would bet that most reasonably intelligent men who are hitting CE for the first time write decent responses to the first few ads they see. And I would bet that few of them ever even get an acknowledgement that their e-mail was received or read. It is hard not to go to a "throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks approach" after that happens a few times.
I have not gotten to that point yet, but then I respond to very few ads. But I could see where men would.
And I do not have an answer to the issue. It is not female posters' responsibility to provide encouragement or support or anything. You are not on CE to be coaches to men seeking to get laid--although CC is providing an invaluable service by doing so. But a little encouragement and the courtesy of responding back to anything that is not rote or completely illiterate--even if it is to say that you appreciate them writing but are not interested--would do so much to keep the non-generic writers going. Even if the effort is lame, if it is clear the guy tried, a response would be so appreciated.
Just a thought.
Posted by: B | May 8, 2006 6:03 AM
if you can't be bothered to put a little personalization into it, I figure that even if I do respond to you, our conversation will fizzle out before we meet, anyway, so why bother?
That's actually probably not true. More likely, they don't expect you'll even read it, let alone respond. Most of the women they send it to won't respond. If you are one of the very very few who does, you may get a lot of well thought out individual attention from someone who sent a generic-sounding email the first time. Now that he knows you're actually there and reading.
Posted by: Cos | May 8, 2006 1:09 PM
cos: that may be true but the economics of the situation don't work. there's no motivation for the woman who gets a hundred generic sounding emails to pick YOURS to respond to to see if something more interesting might come out of further conversation.
Posted by: sapiophile | May 9, 2006 2:34 PM
sapio: I could answer you the same way you answered me :) What you say may be true, but ClueChick already said it, more or less. I just wanted to point out that one statement is probably not true, not to say that it outweighs other reasons not to respond.
Posted by: Cos | May 13, 2006 12:29 AM