First Impressions
Amy’s adventures in romance continues today with a story I’ve been retelling for a while now. It’s a story of one of the cheesiest first messages I ever received, but that worked out in the end. You see, though I still have plenty of dating stories to share I am actually now officially “in a relationship”. For realz. Like Facebook official and everything.
How did this happen? Well here’s how it started…
I was well into the dating scene by now. After you’ve been on a particular dating site for a few months you’ve pretty much seen and been seen by most of your potential matches, so the frequency of new messages drops off. Imagine my delight, then, when I was notified of a new message.
Here’s a bit of insight into my internal processes when I’m opening a message from an unknown:
- Does he have a profile pic? +1 for yes.
- Is he relatively attractive? +1 for yes. (Go ahead, tell me I’m vain)
- Is the message subject interesting? +1 for yes.
- Quick-scan the message for length and obvious punctuation problems. +1 if it’s more than a few sentences. -20 if it’s “hi how r u”.
In the online dating world, THAT is a first impression. This message passed. It was only a few sentences long but they were well-formed. He had a pic and looked like he might be cute (it was hard to tell, so tiny). I wish I could remember the subject of the message but it’s lost now. What really killed me was the first line:
I joined this site and made a profile just so I could send you a message.
ALL STOP.
I think I made the Dreamworks smirk. Seriously, this face:
The expression that says “I’m amused by this, but in a skeptical kind of way.”
Then I did what any good geek girl would do; I started clicking around trying to find proof that would bust his claim wide open. I couldn’t find anything. After a day I conceded that I at least couldn’t prove that he was lying, so I sent him a brief reply:
I think you’re full of shit but I can’t prove it, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Can’t you just feel the love?