What your online dating profile says about you

If you haven’t met your soul mate (or fuck buddy, whatever it is that you are looking for) yet you might decide to give online dating a go and proceed to sign up on the website of your choice. Now comes the hard bit: setting up your online dating profile. Obviously you want to convey a certain image to attract the sort of people you are after, so it pays to put some effort into it.

First of all, the picture

Now let’s face it; for most people the picture is the most important part of the profile and it will be the first (and possibly the last) thing people will look at in your profile. If you choose not to display any picture, the changes are you are not getting many replies as people are bound to think you’re a dog. And not the cute kind either. When choosing a picture for your online dating profile, for some the aim seems to be to avoid being recognized in case someone they know would see the ad – cue pictures of a dark figure wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Needless to say, this type of pictures are only marginally better than no picture as we still can’t tell if you’re a dog.

By all means choose the most flattering pictures – we all do – but also take a moment to consider what kind of image that photo conveys of you. If the pic of your choice shows you in a bar with a cocktail in your hand, that image will be “party girl!” Should you have a photo of you engaged in some outdoorsy activity, all rosy-cheeked and radiating wholesomeness, people are likely going to associate you with a healthy lifestyle. And if that picture is a bathroom selfie – well, I for one would think “pathetic!” Also, it is important not to look like a sourpuss since people generally don’t enjoy the company of one. Smile can tell a lot about you.

Next, we come to the description

Now this is very important, yet many people find it really tough to write. You might believe in the old cliché that a picture says more than a thousand words, but you also paint a picture of your mental capacities with your words and quite frankly, illiteracy is hardly high up on the list of desirable qualities in a partner. The lack of effort in this department demonstrated by some profiles is shocking. You have one opportunity to woo me with your words, and the best you can come up with is “dont no wot to write drop me a line if wanna no sthing”, really? This sort of description on online dating profiles  forces me to think that you are not a very interesting person. Surely there must be something you can share about yourself so that the potential daters can have an idea if you two might get along at all.

 

This takes us to your image and interests

Again, you wish to portray your good qualities, right? So you only went to that yoga class once about four years ago and nearly dislocated some pretty important body parts, but it sounds both trendy and sporty, not to mention spiritual – so you add yoga as your hobby. It sounds so much better than channel-surfing or compulsive facebook-updating, anyway. You started reading Les Miserables ages ago in an attempt to be more cultured – ok, you never made it past page 20 but you have seen the movie, so why not mark that as your favourite book? After all, you are only doing it to attract the more cultured type and that way some of that culture might rub off on you. First you need to get to rubbing distance, so to speak.

However much you gloss over details or outright lie in your online dating profile, the truth will come out eventually if things are going anywhere with your date. That’s alright, the chances are they also exaggerated something or left out something. The important thing is that you attract the right type to begin with and then take it from there, so it makes sense to take a good hard look at your profile and make sure it conveys the images you want it to convey – however fake it might be.

photo by Mattsy Flicks via Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license.