14 Frustrating Things Only Online Daters Can Understand

1. Group photos. Pictures of the person with their hotter friend. Why are these a thing? Stop putting them in your dating profile! It’s confusing and only leads to major disappointment for everyone involved later on.

2. They look totally different once you add them on Facebook or actually meet them IRL. Their online dating pics were obviously the best pics of themselves they had and you don’t fault them necessarily. Everyone wants to put their best foot forward but if you look a lot different without the presence of a million filters on your pics you need to be honest with yourself and to the people checking your profile out.

3. When someone outside of what you’re looking for contacts you. They’re either out of your age range or looking for a relationship type you specifically blocked out of your profile. Yet, still, somehow they ignored those obvious facts and messaged anyway. I can’t blame them for trying but if my profile says I don’t want anyone older than 32, I’m probably not going to be interested in a 47 year old messaging me.

4. That moment when you really love someone’s profile but then you go through their photos and can’t muster up any physical attraction to them whatsoever. You want to like them! You love their profile! But physically, you’re just not feeling it.

5. They don’t read your profile and ask you questions that you so clearly already revealed the answers to. If I’ve listed all of my favorite authors why then is your first message to me asking me my favorite authors? It shows you either can’t read very well, you didn’t even take the time to see what I said on my profile, or you’re just not a very creative person.

6. Being asked for sex immediately. I’m sure this is probably something not a lot of guys have to deal with. Although maybe they do, how would I know? But once I mentioned I would be leaving for a trip within the next month and the guy literally begged me to sleep with him before my departure date. And no, casual sex wasn’t one of the things I had listed under what I was looking for.

7. Asking the name of the company I work for. Holy shit, dude. I haven’t even met you yet and within the first couple of messages you want to know the name of my employer? That is just creepy and odd. No, random internet stranger, I’m not going to give you that very personal info. Maybe you’re just curious, maybe you don’t mean any harm, but that is extremely weird. Would you like my social security number and address too?

8. When you realize half of the people on the dating site you already know or are friends with. This is the worst. This is probably more prevalent in smaller towns but nothing is more awkward than running into your best buds or former partners on a dating site. And even worse if they check out your profile. Multiple times.

9. You feel like you’re seeing all the same people. Either you see people you know or the people in your city on the dating site at the time are just people you’re not interested in. They check out your profile, you look at theirs. You’re both single but neither of you message each other. It’s a dating desert and you’re waiting for new people to join to breathe new life into your online dating game.

10. You change the city of your dating profile and realize what could be in other cities. Aw, if only you lived in Seattle or Minneapolis or Chicago or whatever other city. You were bored on a lame Friday night and decided to “travel” via the interwebs and see what kind of possibilities were out there in other cities. Somehow a million amazing, interesting, attractive people have messaged you. If only you lived closer.

11. They message you despite having an extremely low match percentage. I know it’s easy to dismiss online dating in general and the general fuckery of answering those profile questions but those questions exist for a reason and I believe they reveal a lot of things about someone. I never understand why, unless they’re looking only for sex, people bother contacting another person if the match percentage is below 70%. Chances are we have nothing in common, aren’t looking for the same thing, or have different views on life in general. What’s the point?

12. They don’t have their profile filled out. Ugh, this is the worst. If you’re going to bother with online dating at all why not take the extra 20 minutes and at least let others get a feel for your personality. Once a guy only had one profile pic and barely anything filled out and tried to get me to go on a date with him. When I asked for more details or pics he refused. He said he would rather someone get to know him in person. That’s a huge red flag to me. If you want someone to get to know you only in IRL you probably shouldn’t be online dating.

13. Their profile is extremely vague or basic. “I love to have fun and laugh!” “I love hiking!” Things like this are frustrating because the thing is, everyone loves to laugh and have fun. You don’t need to put that in your profile. If you’re a human we can just naturally assume you would prefer having a good time over a shitty time. And the thing with hiking – everyone says they love hiking, but do they really? I’ve been out on the trails. It’s not that busy. I think it’s one of those things people just like saying they do, like traveling, that they actually don’t do very often.

14. They don’t take any initiative to meet you. I’m a busy person and I don’t really care to sit online all night waxing poetic with some stranger on a dating site. It’s fine for awhile if they aren’t comfortable with meeting right away, but I’m someone that would rather meet in person and see what our chemistry is really like instead of blabbing on and on over a computer screen. I assume if you don’t want to meet or don’t take any initiative to go on a date you’re either not really interested, not motivated to date, or have something else going on I’m not privy to.