Thursday, August 26, 2004

I am a nice person. My good deed for the day was sending this message to someone who keeps contacting me thru the personals:

Thanks. I'm not interested in chatting with you, but thought I should write you back since you've contacted me several times. I hope you don't mind a piece of advice. Putting photos of your naked body in your profile and in initial emails to strangers is never a good idea. Most women find it creepy and a little too aggressive and narcissistic. I'd delete those, and save them for when you've got an email exchange that's heating up and there's already a connection established with someone - but even then, I'd think hard before sending them.

I hope you take my advice. Good luck!

EDIT: Not ten minutes after I sent off that missive, I get this in response from the guy! I guess he didn't like my advice...

Hello,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm certainly not narcissistic. Sharing tasteful nudes on an alternative lifestyle web site is common place and certainly not attributable to being narcissistic. If you feel as though you can label someone from that~ you're mistaken. You're probably the only woman that I've sent them to that hasn't complimented me and suggested further communication.

As well~ I didn't write to you for your advice and find it a bit pompous and condescending. You're cute but you're not that hot as though you need to be making suggestions to me on how to meet a woman. Thanks, but no thanks!

I'll stick with grown ups!


I wrote him back with just two words this time: Good luck!

Yikes.
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best part about his email back to you is the implication that he would've considered taking your advice if you'd been just a little bit hotter. Jeez!
- Sway

4:02 PM
debl said...

Right - like, "If you were just a little hotter, then maybe you'd know what women like to see and hear from a guy... But since you're not, how would you know anything?" Also, he totally missed that I didn't call him narcissistic - I was saying he was coming off that way, and if he wasn't narcissistic, he should change his approach.

Unfortunately, he is narcissistic. So.

Also: This guy wrote me multiple, one-sentence-long emails saying "like your profile - you're very sexy." My profile? Not very sexy. I'm just saying.

4:10 PM
AudibleEnforcer said...

"You're probably the only woman that I've sent them to that hasn't complimented me and suggested further communication." yeah, buddy. Most women are whores. No offense, ladies.

4:11 PM
Anonymous said...

Hilarious!

As a person who has a personal and uses it, I totally identify with this story. A guy who was clearly clinically depressed and a total loser wrote to me. Over the course of several e-mails, it was revealed that he was new in town, had no friends, had no prospect of friends, and desperately wanted to return to New Orleans, where he was from. I wasn't interested in him in the least, but I didn't want to be rude, so I kept up my end of the conversation with "Ohs" and "Greats" and other equally dull things.

But he sent this one thing that was just over the top with its ridiculousness, about how he imagined himself in 19th century England writing letters and ... oh god. It was just way too much. So I wrote him a note saying, basically, "You are obviously miserable in the northeast. You're not making friends. You're writing strange e-mails to strangers. Do you think you should consider moving back to New Orleans? Or do you think you need to make a more concerted effort to make friends who live near you or work near you, etc.?"

Well, I got back the most vitriolic ridiculous e-mail ever. It was out of this world. It was personally insulting in about 100 ways. It was also totally insane, which reinforced my initial beliefs about the guy.

At first, I actually took what he said to heart. Then I realized, men just can't handle advice, especially unsolicited advice. He would have rather I just didn't reply to him than me telling him the truth.

I'm not quite sure why I'm actually interested in finding one that might like to live in my house someday or something. I must be nuts.

-Jennifer Myszkowski

9:31 PM
Anonymous said...

Rather than trying to defend my gender (not against Debbie's original post but against Jennifer's caustic comments), I'm going to make my case here by instead dragging (some members of) the opposite sex down into the mud, too. Back when I was perusing the personals and actively seeking a dance partner, I had some truly bizarre interactions with women -- maybe they were the twisted sisters of the creepy guys you're talking about. In fact, after a while I came to think of myself as the only normal person in the whole personals world, which was a weird thought because I don't generally like to think of myself as normal, and also because I knew, deep down, that there were some cool women out there. But too often I was meeting unstable, damaged, even nasty ones.

"Intentional communities" like the personals attract a wide range of men and women, some of whom simply have limited social skills, some of whom are afraid of opening themselves to a true relationship, some of whom are angry at the world and have opened to the back pages of the weekly paper merely to add a "see, I told you!" to their dismal worldview. There also are perfectly delightful people as well. But in my experience, those gems were a rarity. Which I suppose is how it should be; otherwise, I'd have been dating 27 amazing women all at once, mesmerized by a confusion of riches, unable to pick a partner.

Regarding Debbie's e-mail to the persistent nude suiter, it was a nice gesture but it doesn't surprise me that the guy reacted with such agitation. I tried compassion, too, with some of the women I didn't feel a connection with, and for the most part I got the same type of negative response. It was as if we were living in a bottom-line word: If you want to date me, fine, let's get it on; if you don't want me, I don't want to hear what you've got to say, just go away. After a while, I learned to be polite but just keep on walking.

--Jeff of "Rumi Nation"

10:14 PM
mainja said...

yeah. one also wonders what his definition of "tasteful nudes" is. the ones that blow my mind are the pictures of erections. as if i care! but here's what i have learned. gay men love the pictures of erections. so, here's my little pop psychology thing at work. gay men love the pics of erections, perhaps because men are more intrested in that kind of thing. straight men think to themselves "what would i like to see if i were a woman?" and come to the conclusion that it would be an erection. just a matter of lack of understanding of the opposite sex.

having said all that, i'm sure that there are women who love the pictures of erections, just as i am sure there are gay men who hate them.

6:27 PM

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