Bon's Mots

This is the sec­ond in a se­ries of mus­ings on PR and Online Dating, orig­i­nally posted on October 14.

Part two — The Nickname and Tagline

For those who have never pe­rused on­line dat­ing sites, the nick­name is your user han­dle. You don’t want to use your real name and if you ask, “Why not?” I strongly sug­gest you avoid the Internet for­ever. A tagline is a one-sentence in­tro­duc­tion about your­self. Don’t make it a pick-up line; this is why women don’t like go­ing to bars.

When com­ing up with your pro­file name and tagline, it is best to think of it in terms of brand­ing. Your photo is your logo, your nick­name is the name of your prod­uct (you) and your tag line is your slo­gan. All are meant to cre­ate in­trigue and in­ter­est. Much like you do with your hair and cloth­ing, you want to take those ex­tra few mo­ments to make sure every­thing is in place. Or you risk this:

Uh oh. (Source: The LogoFactory​.com)

The Nickname

Have you ever been asked to come up with one word to best de­scribe your­self? It’s an ex­er­cise in frus­tra­tion. This one word is sup­posed to en­cap­su­late and com­mu­ni­cate the essence that is YOU. Which is why choos­ing a nick­name for your on­line dat­ing pro­file is the trick­i­est and most dis­cour­ag­ing chore you can go through. How do you come up with a moniker that cap­tures how funny/well-read/cool you are? Some say it can’t be done; I say it can, with imag­i­na­tion, some cre­ativ­ity and a lit­tle help from your friends.

The “Nickname”. We all have nick­names be­stowed upon us by oth­ers. Some are pet names given to you as a child, while oth­ers are han­dles you’ve picked up as you’ve gone through adult­hood. No doubt there are more wait­ing for you in the future. 

Using your nick­name in your pro­file is a good idea. However, if its et­y­mol­ogy needs to be ex­plained to those out­side your so­cial or fa­mil­ial cir­cle in or­der for it to be un­der­stood, don’t use it.

Case in point: Your bro­heems call you Stubby be­cause of your fond­ness for those old Molson stubby beer bot­tles. Cute, yes. But on a dat­ing site, “Stubby” takes on a whole dif­fer­ent mean­ing. Sure, you can ex­plain your nick­name in your pro­file, but most women won’t even bother get­ting to it. They’ll be too busy laughing.

Characters. This is easy - just take your favourite char­ac­ter from a book, movie or tele­vi­sion show. This works if you’re tar­get­ing your au­di­ence to find some­one with in­ter­ests that match yours. But if you want to broaden your hori­zons and at­tract as many women as pos­si­ble to your pro­file, pro­ceed with cau­tion and note these caveats:

• Anything from Star Trek/Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica. As much as these shows have made strides into main­stream cul­ture, call­ing your­self Picard, Boba Fett or Starbuck au­to­mat­i­cally la­bels you as a nerd.
• Comic books. With all the in­ner per­son­al­ity con­flicts af­flict­ing su­per­heroes and their foes, tread care­fully here. Calling your­self Harvey Dent — do-good lawyer or a ma­niac with a fa­cial de­for­mity? Superman or Batman — a loner in tights. The Joker — an­other psy­chopath with fa­cial de­for­mity. Remember, women read comic books too.
• Don’t be a smarty-pants. People aren’t go­ing to rush to their dic­tio­nar­ies to look up your name, Hephaestus. Same goes for you, Beowulf. Names like these are for­eign to most peo­ple — they’ll just scrunch their noses, scratch their heads and move on to Optimus Prime’s pro­file. I’m not sug­gest­ing you have to dumb it down; just keep in mind it is a dat­ing site and from what I heard there isn’t a high rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Mensa types on there. My nick­name was Circe — very few men got the irony. 

Names with “69” or “XXX” in them. The man who has this nick­name is the kind who watches way too much porn and has sev­eral re­straint or­ders filed against him. It can also scream, “I talk the talk but never get to walk the walk. MOM! Nooo, don’t come in! Why don’t you knock? I soooo have to move out. Oooh, new Number 6 fan fiction!”

Boring1234. If the name you chose is taken, most sites will sug­gest the same name, but with num­bers at the end. For ex­am­ple, Casanova3453. A name like this tells me you ei­ther lack imag­i­na­tion or are too lazy to come up with an­other name. Try again.

Tag lines

Some con­fuse this with a pick-up line you would use at a bar. Again, It’s more like a slo­gan. Like an ad exec you be should be cre­ative and sell your­self. Just avoid any ad­ver­tis­ing clichés like “Over 1 mil­lion served” or “Servicing women since 1975.”

“Hey Ladies…” No mat­ter what your in­ten­tion or af­fec­ta­tion is, this al­ways comes across as sleazy. Are you look­ing for one woman or a harem? If it’s the lat­ter, good luck <snicker>.

The Egoist. Online dat­ing sites are full of these ar­ro­gant pricks. “Hey, don’t look any fur­ther!” or “I’m what you’re look­ing for!” Unless you can back that claim up with third party en­dorse­ments, lay off the spin. And if you ARE Mr. Right, why hasn’t some lucky lady snapped you up yet?

I ac­tu­ally saw a tagline that read: “Hey! You’ve just won the lot­tery!” Really? I guess no one wants to claim you. You are the equiv­a­lent of the Free Ticket prize I get on Encore: high in­vest­ment, low yields.

Pop cul­ture ref­er­ences. See “Characters”, above. But with the following caveats:

• No Scarface quotes. “Say ‘Hello’ to my lit­tle friend!” No, thanks.
• Avoid chick flicks. Unless you want to meet a woman who can re­cite every line from Pretty Woman and will drag your ass to the lat­est ro­man­tic com­edy puke­fest. She also has a ton of stuffed an­i­mals on her bed and puts sweaters on her cats (note the plural tense). Here’s a tip: Princess Bride works for a lot of cool chicks.
• No po­etry. Unless you’re Lord Bryon or Smokey Robinson, avoid in­clud­ing your own work. Seduction through words is best left to the pros.
• Song lyrics. These can be open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion or am­bi­gu­ity. Choose wisely or go for the com­pletely bla­tant (Spinal Tap’s “Lick my Love Pump”).

The Eeyore. “No one’s gonna read this” or “Yup, I’m still on here!” Being self-deprecating to the point of cringe-inducing is not go­ing to bring women to your pity party. The con­cept of “re­verse psy­chol­ogy” is so overused that it doesn’t work any­more. Unless you’re Bugs Bunny. 

Duck sea­son, fire!

Coming soon: The Profile