An Award Ceremony for the Internetly Awkward

I think it's time we gave awards to the Best of Categories once again as there have been some pretty creative profile making and message construction as of late.

These are the Best Openers:

Random but honest



So polite in his request to pounce a woman!

 I'm very excited to share these next "winners" with you becuase I've combined my love for the app PicStitch with my findings for this blog and I think you'll like what I've put together.

I’ve saved a few pictures over time to better display some of the awesomeness that is PlentyOfFish. It has become apparent through my PoF exploration just how far people are willing to go to portray, or maybe a better verb would be to advertise, themselves. Well, at least they’re putting the real them out there for viewers to see. And thank the blog gods they did! ;)

These gentlemen receive the award for Most Revealing!

How much will you reveal about yourself?

Since we are approaching Halloween (ok, it's a ways away but you've already seen the decorations at grocery stores), these gentlemen --and yes, they're all of the male gender-- receive the award for Best Costumes:



Halloween inspiration, anyone?



And the final award is for the Most Ridiculous ManChild:

I know you've seen me use this term before. It's an official term in the dictionary, in case you were wondering. ManChildren are quite possibly my favorite profiles to find because they're so cute and adorable and usually provide quite the laugh. This particular ManChild was just asking to be scrutinized when he first created his PoF username: ****LoveGuru

This was his message:



What.A.Charmer!

So of course, I HAVE to click on his profile to see what kind of a man would deem himself a love guru. Apparently a 21-year-old divorcee. Does that seem right to you?

 

He's very confident in his knowledge of women, as you can read in his catchphrase.

And finally, we put a face to the username: and even learn his favorite flavor for his bottle ;) But really, he looks like a freaking Munchkin from the Lollipop Gild holding that bottle of Grey Goose. It's half his size!

 

Yo Guru,you look like you're 12. Put the bottle down, kid, and invest in some weights.

On a completely unrelated note, below is The Random Thought of the Week:

This is one picture from a man's profile (I refered to him in my head as The Hulk).

 This may not be what I was suppose to notice when the Hulk decided to share a photo of himself, shirtless, in his beautiful kitchen (which he is very proud of, if you had only seen  how many photos he includes in his profile of his kitchen) but anyways…my only thought was, What is up with the hulk's kitchen chairs? How does one sit in those? Seriously, take a second look!

Well, that's all I have for this week. Hope you've enjoyed this month's award session. Oh and one last thing, I found this on Pinterest and thought it was really funny. I'm sure this is how many people on PoF feel if they've been on the site for more than a few months.

Happy Fishing!

 

French-Men-In-A-Box

Online dating is just as popular in Europe these days as it is in America. Are we surprised? Not really. In fact, leave it to Europeans to find the most outrageous form of advertising to lure people into the virtual selection box. Ready for this?

AdopteUnMec.com (Adopt A Man) is a French dating website that has decided to advertise it’s services by creating a traveling showcase of boxed up men, similar to ken dolls. Each of the men (who are models rather than actual eligible bachelors) stand in glass displays that resembles a doll box and are even given nicknames like “The Rocker” and “Mr. Muscle.” The displays remain for ten days until moving on to the next location.

But why is it only men boxed up like male Barbies? Because the world would have a kanipshi* if they put women in there to “sell themselves,” for one. Secondly, and definitely the strongest reason, is that this website has a completely different structure than American dating websites. It seems to resemble a lighter version of sites for Sugar Daddy’s. The site is absolutely free for women. Men must pay for their profile on which to market their strengths and assets to the online female community. Most notably, women must initiate contact in order to “purchase” the men in what’s called a “market of love.”

This site has only been operating since 2010 and yet receives on average, 300 million page views per month. That’s pretty dang good, considering it’s only free to half the population. But it doesn’t beat our beloved PlentyOfFish.com which reportedly matches the French site’s 300 million page views a month from just PoF’s mobile app alone! (thank you datingsitesreviews.com). To be fair, PoF has been in operation since 2008 and therefore had plenty of time to grow and develop. But with strategies like men in a box, I don’t see AdopteUnMec going anywhere soon.

So what do you think? Was this public display of Parisian Ken clever, offensive or just plain ridiculous? And should we do something like this in the US? Put men in a box? I think Justin Timberlake would claim rights to this concept having started a similar trend through his SNL appearance in 2007. You all know what I’m talking about. ;)

I’ve spoken to a few friends in Sweden and Germany for their opinions on online dating overseas and received varied opinions. But if any other foreign friends want to inform me of the most popular dating sites for comparison to US sites, leave a comment!

To read the article on the Men-In-A-Box event, click here:

http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/adopt-guy-parisian-pop-shop-sells-men-181500255.html

What Are You Hiding Behind That Profile?

Everyone knows that first impressions are important, whether it’s for a job interview, introducing yourself to the cute girl/boy at a party, or meeting your girlfriend’s parents. They matter. The online dating scene is no different. If you send over a creepy or illegible message, you probably won’t get a response.

Your profile is really your best chance at completely portraying yourself as accurately as possible. You have your profile photos, your basic info, your About Me section, a list of your activities, and an area to talk about your idea of a good first date. That’s quite a bit of information at someone’s disposal considering they’ve never even met you. But are they even going to click to view your profile if your initial message is something like these?

I call this guy Jaded Chicken...



I forgot that people still actually use these kind of pick up lines. These are so 10 years ago!

I've received this exact message from this guy AT LEAST a dozen times.

However, what if you get a decent message, see that they have a totally normal and acceptable profile, are you guaranteed to have found a sane person to converse with? NO! There are plenty of people who are really good at creating a totally normal profile and take the time to construct the perfect first message. The key is to keep the conversation going for a while to see if they’ll let any red flags slip through. Things tend to become less scripted once you get the conversation going. But sometimes, it doesn’t take very long for the creeper to shine through, such as in this case.

I like to call this the prime example of  “Well that escalated quickly…”

The following messages are just single initial messages from PoF users that I found to be pretty awesome:

Don't worry readers, you can be assured that I've asked this man for his references and will report back once I see if there's anything interesting to be found in them.

Thank you! I always wanted to be able to play the role of a Vegas show girl and cloistered Nun!

I braved conversing with this gentleman for a day or so and it only got weirder (shocking i know).

By the way, don't you all love my super professional photoshop skills in editing the usernames in each image? I thought so.

Alright, I hope you all enjoyed this week’s post. Sorry for the delay as it was supposed to be up around the end of last week. Let me know in the comments what theme you’d like me to tackle next. Here are some of the current ideas:

1)      The prettiest men of PoF (yes I said men. I may have found a few cross dressers/ just really feminine looking men)

2)      The Ballsiest of photos gallery

3)      Most awkward profile photos