ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

We all have them: profiles on various dating sites. Some sites give lots of questions for us to fill out, while others leave a general "about me" section that you can complete with as much or as little detail as you like. Even those sites with many fields don't usually specify how much you need to say in each one.

I have one profile that I particularly like, and I tend to use it, or parts of it, as a default when I'm starting one on a new site. I can only come up with so many thoughtful things to say about myself, after all. And I can understand the writer's block that comes into play when faced with a whole screen that I'm supposed to fill with scintillating details about myself.

So what's the point?

You should fill out your profile on a dating site because it's the socially acceptable generic letter that so many of you are fond of sending. You know, the one that tells me who you are without telling me anything about why you found me interesting? The one that I pretty much never respond to, because it's so generic and doesn't tell me anything about how you AND I might fit together? Yeah.

But on a personal ad site, this is your big chance to have all that information in one place, where I would expect it to be. And then when you write me a short note to start a conversation, I can look at your profile and learn about you!! This is great, because it doesn't make me feel like I'm getting spammed, it means you don't have to write as much, and it shares actual information between us.

I get lots of pretty contentless approaches on dating sites. When they're backed up by an interesting profile, the chances of my responding increase dramatically. When I get a thoughtful (even if short) approach paired with a good profile ... well, that's golden.

You've gotta give me something to work with, after all.

Posted by ClueChick at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I first joined OkCupid because I had a really boring job and OkCupid had lots of entertaining quizzes to keep me occupied. In order to keep track of my quiz results, I had to create a profile, and once I'd created a profile, I might as well fill it out and put up some pictures, right?

I like OkCupid very much, and here's why:

1) Lots of quizzes. I'm a sucker for quizzes, and I love seeing other people's results. And they're a bit of a distractor from the personal ad-ness of the site, which I like, so it feels less like a meat-market than some.

2) Few multiple choice categories to fill out in your profile. I hate it when I have to check a bunch of boxes in categories that either aren't important to me or with pre-set options that don't suit me.

3) Nonstandard questions to answer as part of your profile: You have the standard self-summary, but then there's also "I'm really good at:" and "The most private thing I'm willing to admit here:"

4) Community/networking possibilities. I like being able to network with my friends and see an extended friend network, and who knows whom.

5) A matching system based on your answers to a long series of "what do you prefer" type questions. The matching compares your answers, what you would desire in a partner, and the other person's answers to come up with a number. Based on how it matches me with friends and exes, I'd say it's pretty good.

In general, I find OkCupid to encourage people to create more complete profiles than many other dating sites, and I don't know if it's because of the type of people it attracts or the format of the site, but they also seem to be more interested in a complete person on the other end, too.

OkCupid is more of an investment of time than something like Craig's List, but since a CL posting may or may not pan out, OkC is a bit like long-term investing and will probably result in some fun down the line but not instantaneously. I'm told by two of my male readers that the scene in OkC is much better for them than CL, so that's certainly another thing to take into consideration.

And, of course, an OkC hookup is what got me into casual sex in the first place, so I've got to give it a tip-of-the-hat for that, as well.

Posted by ClueChick at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I often browse various cities' Craig's List listings when I'm looking for entertainment. Tonight, for the first time, I hit Las Vegas's CE section. Holy shit. More than half of them were commercial spam, and people there have obviously given up on flagging. What a huge bummer. And here you'd think that Las Vegas would be a great place for casual hookups! I guess you may have to resort to casinos and bars there. Tragic.

Posted by ClueChick at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As we all know, there are loads of dating sites out there in cyberspace. Some big, some small, all, no doubt, with their own benefits and disadvantages. Although Craig's List is certainly my favorite, both for entertainment and for instant(ish) gratification, I have profiles on a variety of other sites, which I leave moderately active, mostly for kicks, but also on the theory that you never know. After all, much like the lottery, if you don't play, you can't win, right?

This morning, I'll be talking a bit about Yahoo! Personals, which I joined on a whim after hearing a friend talk about hers. From the very beginning, I didn't love the setup -- it's not very creative, and it felt quite constraining. I am, after all, not your everyday kind of girl, so having lots of limited categories often doesn't work for me. But I'm good at working around those things, and I did. Of course, I'm also far too cheap, and not motivated enough, to pay for any dating site, so I enjoyed the benefits of full membership for only the first seven days, and then they cut me back to only being able to write pre-formulated emails to people I might be interested in.

That's okay, though, because, so far as I can tell, there's no one interesting there.

The problem here isn't that there's no one interesting, but rather than there are too many other people muddling up the field. And because the searching functions are far too limited, there's no good way to sort through the chaff. And because I tend to look for guys who are a bit out of the mainstream, there's a lot of chaff on Yahoo! because it is, by self-definition, mainstream.

The most entertaining bit about this profile is that it has created a special IM handle that's linked to my primary Yahoo! IM handle, so when I'm logged in, people who see my profile and want to chat with me can drop me a line. This has led to some really great conversations (with my friends after the fact). At some point, I'll be giving some advice about how to strike up an IM conversation with someone you don't know but might like to bang get to know.

For now, though, my verdict on Yahoo! Personals is an unsurprising yawn. Special interest dating sites have a lot more potential.

Posted by ClueChick at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)