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| For some reason, it has now become necessary to include some kind of ‘sexy sea creature’ image with these dating posts. That doesn’t excuse this image, though. Nothing excuses this. I’m really, really sorry |
It’s a little strange that a successful, attractive celebrity with his own Wikipedia page should be propositioning Englishwomen in such an indiscriminate manner. Stranger still that he is pretending to be a 37 year old man from London. I get that he might want to hide his identity but then, you know, using a bunch of easily googlable media images was probably a misstep.
I suppose it’s also possible that it was a random internet weirdo who nicked a bunch of pictures of an attractive black man off the internet with which to furnish his profile but I’m choosing to believe that it actually was the celebrity in question. And the reason he chose not to respond to my message where I included a link to the news article containing his profile picture, is because he’s really really shy.
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| If any of Harry Roselmack’s lawyers are reading this, I would like to make it clear that I don’t really think that Mr Roselmack is asking ladies to perform sexual favours via OKCupid. Although, I am making no comment about the length of the gentleman’s penis. |
You get, I’ve found, a lot of really, really odd messages when you subscribe to a dating site. Or I do, anyway. I got a bit over excited answering all the OKCupid questions and may have made myself sound a little bit slutty in the process. (I’m not saying any of it is wrong exactly, but it’s probably not the impression I should be giving to strangers on the internet.) I have removed the bit that says I might be interested in ‘casual sex’ now. When I ticked that box, my reasoning was that I would be potentially up for having a sex-based relationship with someone I liked but with whom I knew I had no future. I believe that others may have interpreted it as “prepared to have immediate and indiscriminate sex with any chancer who sends a six word badly spelled introductory message”,
I didn’t update the ‘casual sex’ bit as quickly as you might expect because, to be honest, I found a lot of the messages I received rather amusing. To begin with, I took a firm line in not responding to the chancers, obvious fakes and timeswasters. ‘Life’s too short,” I reasoned to myself. But then I changed my mind entirely and decided that there was fun to be had being the Timewaster’s Timewaster. Life’s never too short to amuse oneself by taking the piss out of wrongmos on the internet.
Despite having specified thirty as the minimum age as far as potential suitors go, I am contacted by a lot of – supposed – people who are – supposedly – far younger than that. Are they for real? Is it a Nigerian-Prince-Type scam or some kind of viral marketing campaign? I can’t believe that eighteen year olds are regularly trying to hook up with fat forty-something year olds via the internet. It’s a long time since I was eighteen but I definitely recall that there was a lot of sex freely available back then. Teenagers should be seducing one another via the traditional methods of getting rat-arsed and woozily colliding faces in the student bar.
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| Other methods of seduction are available. |
The first eighteen year old who contacted me was from my my terribly middle-class home town. We produce nice, well-mannered teenagers round these parts. The lad in question initially suggested getting together for some casual sex, politely appending the suggestion with “I’m going out on a limb here but I think we would both enjoy it.” He then followed up his original message saying “If you don’t just want a sexual relationship, I can tell you a little more about myself.” I wonder exactly he had in mind in terms of a not-just-sexual-relationship? Going to the cinema together, perhaps? Meeting one another’s families? I responded basically saying “Oh bless you, aren’t you sweet?” and wishing him all the best in his future endeavours. He didn’t get back to me presumably because (a) he had other middle aged women to politely proposition and (b) if he wanted to be patronised that badly, he could hang out with his mum.
They keep coming though. Dozens of shirtless, hairless teenagers ‘wanting to play’ with an older woman. Judging by their photos, I suspect in some cases ‘playing’ might involve spending an evening helping them construct their Lego Wookiee gunship.
OKCupid provides a percentage level of compatibility with other subscribers based on the millions of questions you’ve answered. When I’ve been messaged by someone with whom I have an incredibly low compatibility score, I quite like checking out the answers to the questions in their profile in order to see quite how fundamentally unsuited we are. Oh, you’re really into guns and hunting? And you thought the vegetarian hippy looked like a good match?
The guy who answered the question “Is a woman who’s slept with a hundred men a bad person?” with ‘Yes’ isn’t necessarily an arsehole. A hundred people is a lot of people to have sex with, I’ll give you that . More than a weekend’s worth certainly.
But when the same guy answers the question “Is a man who’s slept with a hundred women a bad person?” with ‘no’, well it turns out he actually is an arsehole after all. One who needs a stern talking-to about gender equality and precisely which century we’re currently living in.
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| My responses are the second ones in each case. I am fairly relaxed about hypothetical triple digit shaggers. |
One subscriber answered ‘yes’ to the question “Do you think homosexuality is a sin?” and then sent a “hey u r sexy” message to me, presumably without having given my profile even the most cursory glance or registering that I am interested in meeting both men and women. Or perhaps he was looking to cure me of my sinful bisexual urges.
Of course, people who just scattergun the same banal message to hundreds of people whose profiles they have barely glanced over are par for the course on internet dating sites. Occasionally you want to give them points for trying. One potential suitor introduced himself by saying simply “Fancy sitting on my face tonight?” I replied asking if that particular tactic had ever worked. “Want to be the first?” he responded. Ha, nice try. It’s clearly a no but I kind of admire his optimism.
The most startlingly direct approach came from someone whose profile picture was a close-up photo of her genitalia. The picture was changed shortly afterwards to a more standard non-naked non-genitalia based profile picture. Somebody probably had a word. Although I like to think that she had created her profile in a hurry from a phone and was completely oblivious that she had attached entirely the wrong photo by accident. Because who hasn’t had that cold thud of dread in the pit of their stomach upon realising that they’ve shared a picture of their intimate lady garden with tens of thousands of strangers? We’ve all been there.
Some messages are a bit baffling. “You look pleasant” was a masterwork of faint praise. And while the guy who wrote “A heart has a million stories and i would like to know yours” clearly spent a bit longer on his copy ‘n’ paste introductory message than some other people, he rather gave himself away by sending the exact same message to me three times. Top marks for WTFery go to the chap whose introductory message simply said “U look like a murderer lol”.
I didn’t even respond to that one. It’s all very well deciding to be the timewaster’s timewaster. But sometimes the timewasters on OKCupid can leave one a bit speechless.