OKCupid noodling

[firecat]

Heck has frozen over—the OH has actually joined a social networking site. OKCupid no less. So I have been playing with my account over there a bit more (firecat). It gives me a sense I'm not sure I want about how fucked up and/or out of the mainstream, depending on how you look at it, I am when it comes to forming potentially romantic relationships.

I have occasionally sent people messages about something they said on their profile, and either they don't reply, or they reply saying "I'm not interested," which I find offensive. (In these messages I don't propose anything to which it makes sense to reply "I'm not interested." I just say I like something on their profile.)

Both responses make me think that a lot of people assume a private message is an expression of potential romantic interest. And of course, the way OKC is set up encourages such thinking, so I shouldn't be surprised. But to my way of thinking, people's profiles on OKC tend to have more conversation-starters than the profiles people post on LJ and other social networking sites I frequent. (I think it's the "I spend a lot of time thinking about..." field that does it.) So I find it frustrating that I haven't been able to start conversations.

They have this feature called "quiver" (as in a container for arrows, I guess) that sends you matches whether you want them or not, and it sits up at the top of the browser window with a little "3" in it. As I am a bit of an obsessive, that drives me crazy. So I feel obligated to send those people messages or click "No thanks" to make the number go away. And it keeps sending me people I know in real life. Some of them are people I like well enough but with whom I haven't felt the urge to initiate "I'm attracted to you" or "I'd like to get to know you better" communications. I feel like if I tell OKC I'm not interested in them, that will mess up OKC's match algorithm. I suppose it doesn't matter.

I know that some folks spend a lot of time having conversations using the blogging feature, but I haven't figured out how to follow such conversations easily.

Comments

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Hi,

Oddly enough, I'm here because firecat messaged me on OKCupid. I just thought I'd get that out of the way first...

Anyway, OKC. I have been on there quite a while, done quite a lot of questions, taken a few tests, but as-yet haven't actually made a new connection from it. Though maybe firecat just proved that wrong, but we shall see. :-)

Typically I tend to find that the sort of people that message me on OKC are straight men. I'm actually queer-identified, bi, trans, poly and a bunch of other things that typically makes straight men blow a few fuses. I do date men from time to time (have a date with a very nice one this evening, no less!), but they tend to be at the queer end of the queer spectrum. All my long term relationships to-date have been with queer women. I've typically found that if I message people on OKC (unless I actually know them already) I don't get a reply, or I'll maybe get a reply and a conversation will start go fairly well for a while, then they will read my profile and say, "Oh gosh! Look at the time! I'm late for an ear-perming appointment and the cat's just eaten the lizard. So very sorry! Nice talking to you."

So, anyway. I manage to be reasonably popular *without* OKC, somehow. This is actually a fairly recent thing, I certainly don't remember ever being popular significantly before I moved to the bay area.

That said, pleased to meet you, firecat. I have no expectations beyond that, but you would appear to be nifty, so I'm happy to know you. :-)

[firecat]

Pleased to meet you back, and thanks for your datapoints!