No smile: I want a girl who can emote. If you have 10 pictures and not one of you is smiling, I think “She won’t be any fun.“
Mirror Pictures: If you have no friends and have to take a picture of yourself in the mirror you have bigger problems than finding a guy.

and on the upside, a couple of things that I do look for:

A goofy picture: If you can laugh at yourself, then we’ll probably get along really well.
Modest clothing: I’m sure that you can probably “bring it” when you need to, but your girl next door qualities make you a candidate for a dinner with Mom and Pops.

Thanks again for this entry it was terrific!

I like ice cream, too.

After two recent-ish online dates, I have called it quits 4 LYFE! I’ll find the guy at work, at a bar, on the TTC, at the grocery store, somewhere…anywhere that isn’t online!

Somewhere where I can hear speech impediments. Somewhere where I can see self-mutilation scars.

It’ll save me a lot of time, really.

In the meantime, there’s always ice cream.

I believe that you should try everything once (with the exception of bungee jumping and heroin). I tried online dating (more than once, over the course of several years) and decided it wasn’t for me.

The objective of my post is not to scare anyone. I just want to manage people’s expectations. Impart some wisdom from my own experiences. Online dating does not have to be a horrible ordeal. In fact, I have two friends that found their husbands through an online dating website. Miracles do happen.

What I want people to take away from my post is another way to read online dating profiles; do not take them at face value. Use my suggestions to decipher the hundreds of profiles you will have to go through.

I do suggest you try it, if you haven’t before. I just hope I made the task less onerous for you.

Do you see the irony in giving advice to potential online daters and getting comments saying things like “Love this post — just another confirmation not to go the online dating route.”

I’m looking forward to the next installment!

Meeting the man of my dreams online? I might as well ask for big boobs and a Ferrari while I’m entertaining that fantasy.

Yes, photos had a lot to do with who I’d click on at first, and then how I’d react when I met them in person (depending on how much they’d oversold themselves).

There was one guy who had an extreme overbite that gave him a slight speech impediment, and when I met him I realized why all his photos were either wide shots or strictly closed-mouth shots. I also learned that I was, indeed, a shallow human being. Mind you, I’ve had comments thrown at me like, “you’re heavier in real life than you are in your photos”, even when my photos were taken the week before! This is what happens when you post face shots and not full body shots… but then again, I date people of all shapes and sizes and the face is the most important feature to me.

I don’t regret all those years spent online dating.. it makes for great material and I may well go back to it someday. I stopped merely because I no longer had time to keep up with my countless profiles on Nerve, OKCupid, AFF, Lavalife, and even the dreaded A.M.

Irony of ironies, about a month after I stopped, I met someone who is probably the best guy I’ve ever dated. I wonder why that is? Perhaps I finally had to talk to a stranger without revealing all my innermost goals and aspirations or sexual fantasies in an online essay before talking to him. Perhaps he could get a glimpse of the real me without imagining a skinny babe underneath this cute face. Who knows?

I look forward to the next few instalments of this series.