Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Anonymity

Much has been made of the catharsis offered by the anonymity of the blog, and you know what? It's true. I'm pretty certain that absolutely no one has ever read this blog (why would they? It's just another small pile of drivel in the astonishingly large mountain of drivel that is the interwebnet) but it wouldn't matter if they did. I can still say more or less what I want and use this as a way to rant off steam without fear fo annoying or offending anyone in a personal sense. Brilliant.

Vive la blog!

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The dating game

I've already made a post about internet dating, so I'll make the potentially foolish assumption that you, dear reader, have already read it. Therefore, I won't go into it too much but there is a myth I'd like to dispel based on nothing more than personal observation and cynicism (oh, and wild and unfounded speculation).

I've tried a few of these sites now. I was, naturally enough for a born cynic, very sceptical of them at first, but the word on the street was that they were full of people like me: young professionals who either didn't have the time to try and find a partner (a slightly worrying concept not too far removed from mail order brides if you ask me) or, like me, they were disillusioned with the traditional meeting and dating arenas of pubs, clubs and bars.

OK, thought I, sounds plausible and there certainly seemed to be plenty of young professionals on the sites. Over time, I've met some of them and with just one exception (nice girl, we just didn't click like that), they were bonkers. Mad as a bag of badgers. Borderline tinfoil hat brigade, even. I seem to attract the total nutters on each every site I try, without fail.

How about some examples, I hear you say? OK.
One girl seemed nice enough at first but sent me out of date pictures. When I met her it turned out she had gained, I would estimate, 3 stone. I'm not kidding. Then it turned out she had only stopped self-harming not that long before. Self harm is a very serious subject and I'm not going to make light of it, but to mention that the first time you meet? After we had met, she assumed we were in a committed relationship and cried because I wouldn't cancel my long held 30th birthday plans (made before we even knew each other existed) for drinking with family and friends. Sorry, but that's just too much. Bye.

Next up, the girl who contacts me first, we get on really well, she asks for my phone number and I give it to her happily, but without asking for hers simply so that she doesn't feel in anyway pressured. That was the last I heard from her. Huh?

Another one contacted me and we had some good chats and she intimated that she's like to meet up, so I said sure, that would be nice, how about going for a coffee one day (nothing too heavy and not in the evening so there's no air of expectation or anything)? No reply. Then out of the blue, an email apologising for not being in touch for a while but she'd moved house. Fair enough, house moves are stressful times, so I replied with some chit-chat, asked her how it went and so on. Didn't even mention meeting up figuring we'd re-establish dialogue before bringing it up again. No reply ever again. Why the hell not?

Now, yet another girl who contacts me and we begin chatting on msn which is all good. We have some quite deep and intellectual conversations too which I really enjoy and she also makes suggestion along the lines of she'd love me to make a particular dessert for her or go out for a meal and I think, wahey, maybe I've struck gold at last. Err, no. One day, apropos of nothing, when we are chatting, she casually mentions that she slept with her ex the previous night. She then later casually mentions they're meeting up again that same night but keeps chatting away like it's nothing. Excuse me? I know msn is not the ideal medium for getting all the nuances of a conversation but things had been made pretty plain before that. Exactly why are you telling me this? What do you honestly think that will make me think? Perhaps it's to see if it triggers jealousy but we've never met and had only been chatting for a couple of weeks, so what the hell?

So, is it me? What is it about me? All I want is someone without kids (another thing some women seem to take no notice of) who doesn't come with more baggage than Paris Hilton takes on holiday, but apparently that's way too much to ask. Sheesh. Sometimes, life is a complete and total bastard.