A heavy topic as a woman in the online dating world.
In previous online dating trials, I would usually just ignore any message from a guy who I didn't think I would be interested in, whether due to lack of physical attraction, something from their profile, their message to me, or a combo of all three. I wanted to avoid leading anyone on but also just didn't want to waste my time replying.
This time, at least so far... until I want to strangle anyone who says "hey cutie", I'm attempting a different approach. I will attempt to answer most messages, even if it's to say that I'm not interested (usually in different words, of course), but good luck in your search. And this is for several reasons.
I read a few random threads about messaging in the online dating world, and found a lot of guys complaining that they rarely got responses to the messages that they send to women. Some said that they would prefer to just be told that a woman wasn't interested rather than no response. So here we go.
I figure rather than treating the guy messaging me like a faceless, feelingless internet robot, I would give someone the same/similar response I would give to their face. Whether it's an interested reply, a "no thank you", or a "fuck you".
But, I must admit that my motivations aren't completely pure. Okcupid has a system where users are rated as "replies often", "replies selectively" or "replies very selectively". I am currently rated as "replies very selectively" eek, I think because of my previous activity (where I was ignoring most messages). My worry is that this could potentially stop many guys from sending me a message, thinking that there's a high chance they'll be rejected. On some of those threads I previously mentioned, some guys claimed they would view it as a challenge and send the woman a message, but most said they would assume she was picky (some even said a picky bitch) and might not even view her profile.
The system is a bit unfair considering that the majority of messages a typical woman would receive are things like "hey cutie ur hot". So if she choses not to answer them, she gets a "replies very selectively" status which could deter a guy that she would actually want to chat with from messaging her. Weh.
So we shall see how this goes and if I will stick with it, considering I'm only a few days in and already getting sick of writing "no thank you" emails.
