Bon's Mots

Ahoy hoy, my fel­low sin­gle­tons. This is the fi­nal in­stall­ment of my non-award win­ning se­ries on on­line dat­ing and PR. In this chap­ter, I con­clude with The Profile, the crème de la crème of your on­line dat­ing per­sona. Or, as per my brand anal­ogy, the Product. You’ve drawn in the po­ten­tial buyer (mate) with your logo (pic­ture) and your slo­gan (tagline) now it’s time to de­liver the goods (you).

Have you ever bought a prod­uct that had a great slo­gan, an ex­pen­sive ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign and a mas­sive amount of build-up be­hind it? A prod­uct that was so buzzed about that if it ever lived up to its hype it would be the BEST THING EVER INVENTED? If you have, how dis­ap­pointed were you? Take the iPhone. It holds 3,000,000 songs and you can ac­cess Facebook on it but it hasn’t com­pletely changed your life the way you thought it would, has it? It doesn’t give you next week’s lotto num­bers and you have to deal with Rogers support.

The les­son I’m try­ing to im­part here, per­haps un­suc­cess­fully (if an anal­ogy falls in the for­est and there’s no one around to get it, does it make a sound?), is: Be hon­est. Don’t make your­self out to be the great­est thing since sliced bread or the in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine. Yes, you’re try­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from the com­pe­ti­tion but you al­ready of­fer some­thing that is unique and one-of-a-kind: you. There’s some­one for every­one, a good friend once told me, so your goal, grasshop­per, is to find your someone.

Take your time, do it right

I’ve been on a lot of dat­ing sites and I have never come across one with a time limit for cre­at­ing your profile. Why do so many read as if they’ve been writ­ten un­der duress? (“You have five min­utes to write your pro­file, Mr. Bond, or I’ll blow up London.”) Like good sex, writ­ing your pro­file takes time, pa­tience and skill. A nice bot­tle of Shiraz also helps.

• Write your pro­file in Word.
• Copy edit.
• Spellcheck.
• Copy edit again.
• Send it to a friend for feed­back. (Note: you may risk laugh­ter and ridicule, so be care­ful which friend you send it to.)
• Post it and watch the ladies flock to your profile.*

(*No money-back guarantee.)

A lit­tle help from my friends

Does this look familiar?

“My friends say I’m handsome/smart/witty. ”

Of course they do — they’re your friends. If they don’t say things like that from time to time, you should con­sider get­ting new ones. But the thing about friends is their lack of ob­jec­tiv­ity. Oh sure, they’ll bring up em­bar­rass­ing mo­ments from your life and poke fun at your past mis­de­meanors (like how you used to pro­nounce David Bowie’s last name as Bao-wie - com­pletely hy­po­thet­i­cal, by the way). But when it comes to set­ting you up they will not hes­i­tate to make you sound like a great catch, if only to get you laid so you can stop whin­ing about how lonely you are.

So, re­frain from in­clud­ing any en­dorse­ments by your friends. (AND parents. God, those are the worst. I mean, what mother doesn’t be­lieve their child is the Second Coming? I read some­where that women ex­pe­ri­ence a type of chem­i­cal change to the brain af­ter giv­ing birth. This is to make them for­get how very, very painful child­birth was so they can fall com­pletely and ir­rev­o­ca­bly in love with their baby and not kill it out of re­venge. Or some­such, I’m just paraphrasing. )

Wow, what a big ego you have

It’s a thin line be­tween con­fi­dence and van­ity, and only a few adroit in­di­vid­u­als man­age to walk it suc­cess­fully. Those that can’t end up sound­ing like pompous jerks. These were plucked from ac­tual dat­ing pro­files — the iden­ti­ties are hid­den to pro­tect the stupid:

“I’m the man of your dreams.”

“Stop — don’t look any further.”

And my favourite:

Me:

• rest­less en­tre­pre­neur and in­vest­ment banker
• am­bi­tious
• well-educated
• career-oriented
• thrill seeker
• suc­cess­ful yet hum­ble

No, I did not make the last one up.

Stick to facts like oc­cu­pa­tion or lo­ca­tion, any fact that can’t be re­futed or sub­jected to de­bate. (E.g. “I’m a graphic de­signer liv­ing in down­town Toronto. I have short, brown hair and blue eyes,” or “I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a man­sion and a yacht.”) Just like the “My friends say I’m…” sen­tence, avoid sub­jec­tive self-descriptions. Your date will de­cide whether you’re funny, smart or a rav­ing narcissist.

Long walks on the beach, sun­sets and puppies

The best way to at­tract po­ten­tial dates is by list­ing your likes or hob­bies - mu­sic, books, ac­tiv­i­ties. Don’t give a laun­dry list, just a gen­eral de­scrip­tion of your in­ter­ests, e.g. soul mu­sic, animé, taxidermy. You might end up with a date for the next sci-fi con­ven­tion or food and wine show. A good idea is to tell the reader what your per­fect date would in­volve, or what you do on a typ­i­cal Friday night (I’d avoid any men­tion of cry­ing, mas­tur­ba­tion or porn; besides, those are all givens when you’re single).

I don’t need no stink­ing Spellcheck

According to the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL), 48% of adult Canadians have lit­er­acy lev­els too low to cope in mod­ern so­ci­ety. What both­ers me is that a lot of men on dat­ing sites can ob­vi­ously read and write but choose not to. They may want to ap­pear hip (e.g. hey there. i hope you like my pro­file. i am a hand­some stud.) or em­pha­size how ea­ger they are (e.g. HEY THERE! I HOPE YOU LIKE MY PROFILE! I AM A HANDSOME STUD!). I also sus­pect that most men just don’t care (e.g. Hey ther. Hope you lik my pro­file. I am hand­some, stud.) Whatever the reason, poor gram­mar and spelling is a big turn-off for most women. A man who doesn’t put a lot of thought into his on­line per­sona more than likely has skid­marks on his un­der­wear and a tow­er­ing pile of pizza car­tons on his kitchen counter.

Many peo­ple strug­gle with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and ESL courses while you take your first-world ed­u­ca­tion, piss all over it and light it on fire. This is not cool.

Shopping lists

Don’t give us a list of what you look for in a woman. You’re look­ing for a date, not shop­ping for gro­ceries. If you want some­one who en­joys par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports, it’s fair to ask for that in your pro­file - you want to keep the couch pota­toes away. But ask for some­thing like this:

I’m look­ing for an at­trac­tive, in­tel­li­gent, sexy, spon­ta­neous woman in her 20s who isn’t into head games and is open-minded.

and you might as well be ask­ing for a lep­rechaun to come fly­ing in on a uni­corn with a pot o’ gold. Perhaps no one has told you this, so I’ll be the one to break it to you: No woman is that per­fect. (Neither are you, for that matter; stop be­ing so picky.)

Every man wants a woman who is at­trac­tive, smart and funny. Don’t state the ob­vi­ous. List the at­trib­utes that YOU find at­trac­tive that oth­ers may not: “You have a Princess Leia cos­tume”; “You ap­pre­ci­ate a fine zom­bie movie”; or “You live for paragliding.”

When a woman reads your laun­dry list of ex­pec­ta­tions, do you know what she does? First, she checks off the traits she doesn’t have. (Blame Cosmo and Vogue for that.) Then she moves on to the next pro­file. So, if you are look­ing for a 24 to 35-year-old woman who must fit your very nar­row cri­te­ria, the chances are good you’ve lost the in­ter­est of that at­trac­tive, in­tel­li­gent, just-turned 36-year-old sex­pot who owns a Princess Leia metal bikini.

TMI

Some things are best left un­said, or saved un­til the third date. These in­clude bro­ken re­la­tion­ships, past heartaches or sto­ries that sound like lyrics from a coun­try song. You can men­tion you’re di­vorced or have chil­dren — there are some facts you should be up­front about from the be­gin­ning. But stay away from doc­u­ment­ing your in­ner strug­gles fol­low­ing a bad breakup. Some pro­files read like de­press­ing nov­els; if you want to chan­nel your in­ner Tolstoy, take a writ­ing class. Otherwise, you won’t get many re­sponses, save for the oc­ca­sional rec­om­men­da­tion of a good therapist.

So, there you have it. I hope this helps you in your jour­ney for love and hap­pi­ness. I leave you with hope, good thoughts and this butchered film quote:

If you build a good pro­file, they will come.

FIN