Maybe they’re just sick of half-heartedly dating folks they don’t click with.
The first few versions of my profile were geared to show off how geeky and smart I was. This connected me to people who spent a lot of time playing tabletop roleplaying games, reading fantasy novels, and making pop culture references to approved geeky television shows, none of which are things which interest me particularly.
Eventually I realized that I am not actually just popped out of the stereotypical modern geek mold, and it was lazy, inaccurate, and ineffective to act like I was. Since then I’ve started doing the much harder thing of trying to pin down my specific traits and tastes, instead of taking the party line or applying a genre label that lets people assume the details. In that way, OKC has actually been a big force in driving me to understand who I am, what I want, and what really matters to me. A bit silly, but I’ll take it.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot: What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person? (If you suggest “what kind of music do you listen to” … you’re fired.) If they’re not the same for everyone, and I expect that they aren’t, how do you find them?
What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person?
“What’s something you believe, that you’d be surprised if I believed too?”
(I’ve yet to try this in a romantic context, but when meeting new friends it usually leads to a good conversation– the more so for ruling out first-order contrarian beliefs that they’d expect me to share.)
Oh, that one is excellent. I might try that on some of my current friends.
Although … I wouldn’t recommend using it on someone who dislikes debating or defending their beliefs (or on someone about whom you do not know that). If they’re right, you have an immediate source of conflict which if taken personally could nip the new acquaintance in the bud.
For a while (a long time ago) I asked people “When did you first realize you
were different?” Once a young woman I was on a date with said “But I’m not
different”!
Well, I knew it was a bad sign, but I didn’t want to write her off based on
just that one thing, so I did end up asking her out again. After two or so
dates she realized she wasn’t interested in me but apparently didn’t have the
guts to tell me that, so she stood me up and pretended she didn’t see or hear
me (!) when I went to her place of work. (We were both pretty young—just
out of high school.)
One thing I’ve learned from having mostly male friends who sometimes complain about their dating lives is no matter how much of an asshole I feel like when I turn someone down, it’s much less than the asshole I’m actually being if I don’t tell them. This is why I always respond to new messages on OKC that aren’t outright rude, offensive, or all textspeak (and even then I sometimes do).
Although, I will admit that, after an exchange has alerady gotten started, if I’ve been signalling “not interested” over a few messages (responding with minimum polite reply and not asking any new questions), and the other person persistently doesn’t get it, I may just trail off.
One thing I’ve learned from having mostly male friends who sometimes complain about their dating lives is no matter how much of an asshole I feel like when I turn someone down, it’s much less than the asshole I’m actually being if I don’t tell them.
Strongly agree in general...
This is why I always respond to new messages on OKC that aren’t outright rude, offensive, or all textspeak (and even then I sometimes do).
I might be unusual here, but I actually consider online dating to be kind of a special case. My usual strategy is to message anyone I’d want to go on a date with, and then forget I sent the message. This means if my mailbox turns pink, it’s a pleasant surprise, and there might be a date in the offing. Finding instead a polite rejection is a bit disappointing.
That is, IRL, if we’re friends/acquaintances, and I’m politely/vaguely suggesting that I’d like us to date, and you’re picking up on that, it is totally good for you to shoot me down, so that I can quit wasting mental/emotional energy. Online where things are more explicit, the only waste of mental/emotional energy is when I’m logging in to find a message, only to find a rejection.
My usual strategy is to message anyone I’d want to go on a date with, and then forget I sent the message.
I’m actually the same way, but I think a lot of people aren’t. Or even if they are, it’s kind of draining to put so much energy over time into writing messages and get nothing out of it. Being politely turned down is at least an acknowledgement.
In practice, I almost never get to the point of having to explicitly turn someone down, though. Either one-sided clicks don’t happen that often, or when they do, the other person gets the hint I’m not interested.
One thing I’ve learned from having mostly male friends who sometimes complain about their dating lives is no matter how much of an asshole I feel like when I turn someone down, it’s much less than the asshole I’m actually being if I don’t tell them.
Should I really message everybody back and tell people to go away if I don’t want to talk to them? If some guy in his thirties or forties sends me a message asking a question that I clearly answered in my profile and we have only a 40% match, what do I even say? “You are out of my age range, apparently did not read my profile, and have a low match percentage with me; please go away”? This sounds like an invitation for him to argue with me!
This policy may not scale to the point where I get a large volume of messages from people I have zero interest in engaging with; I wouldn’t know, because that’s not the case. However, in response to your example message, I might say no more than “That’s in my profile” or a one-sentence answer with no followup question or other remarks. If he doesn’t take the hint, I can either argue back if I feel like being snarky, or ignore him afterwards.
Perplexed said something smart, but here are my drunk brainstorming ideas:
Do you believe in God? Why or why not? (people are usually willing to answer this, but they’ll get offended in a hurry if you argue)
What experience in life have you learned the most from?
What was your favorite subject in school? Do you still follow it?
Do you think it’s worthwhile to give to charity? Which ones? Do you give to them? (see God question caveat, and the last question is extra offensive if they have to say no)
What do you think about him? (Mention someone you both know personally or indicate a person who can’t easily overhear)
What do you do when you don’t have to do anything else?
I like some of those, particularly the last one—I’ve seen something similar, which was “what could you talk about for hours?”
I’m reluctant to ask “most,” “least,” or “favorite” questions, because almost nobody has good prepared answers, except to the trivial ones like “favorite color.” Which is not an effective question for getting insight into someone’s worldview.
I like asking people what their favorite playing card is, and acting confused if they don’t have one (but about half the time they either already had one or are willing to make one up to play along).
The ten of diamonds is the “good ten”, and worth two points (more than any other single card) in cassino, my favorite card game. Why the jack of hearts?
Highly ranked enough to be human, but humble among them. Hearts connotes sociality (on that test I lean towards diamonds, but if we’re talking about real life rather than gaming I’m much more a heart).
Personally, I’m annoyed by people who say “you can ask me anything, go ahead” (especially in response to the “most private thing” prompt on OKC). It’s a way of putting the burden of making conversation on the other person, instead of sharing it with them.
Meh… The more I think about it, the more I love prompting your interlocutor to gossip about a third person. You can potentially learn:
-How interested she is in other people
-How willing she is to talk about other people behind their backs
-How much she knows about other people
-What qualities she values in other people
-Whether she tends to judge people generously or not
plus whatever actual facts you may manage to glean about their relationship with said third party! It’s great! It’s kind of ethically shady, but I am drunk and willing to overlook that for the sake of argument.
Edit: Ok grumpy people, let me clarify: drunk people don’t format good and don’t really spend a lot of time reading instructions, I know it’s there, tyvm.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot: What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person? (If you suggest “what kind of music do you listen to” … you’re fired.) If they’re not the same for everyone, and I expect that they aren’t, how do you find them?
I don’t think that a prepared interrogation is the way to do it. Instead, I think you need to listen carefully to what is said in casual conversation (“What kind of music?” works fine!) and then ask followup questions to draw them out. Example: “You don’t like country? Me neither. What is the thing about it that annoys you most.”
Oh, I think I was unclear—I meant the kinds of questions you’d want on a profile page or a matching survey, not for in-person dates. In the latter case I completely agree with you. :)
I’m not completely in the geeky mold either. But if you literally take a random sample of young men in my area, I will not get along with most of them. There’s some sense in filtering.
To learn about people, I usually get them started on their interests. It only really works for people who have interests (enthusiastic about a hobby or career) but do you really want to date someone who doesn’t? I only feel I know someone when I know his personal philosophy, but that usually takes time to come out.
Of course—the alternative to self-labeling isn’t sacrificing your personal criteria. I might not have understood you correctly, because I’m not sure whether this is agreeing or disagreeing or a tangent.
but do you really want to date someone who doesn’t?
That actually makes me flinch a little, because I’ve spent a lot of time on OKCupid thinking “It seems like everybody else has defined things which they go out and practice and spend money on and share with their friends. I don’t have anything like that. Am I just too boring? : \” I suppose that’s more not having a discrete hobby than not having interests—but my interests are much more about the way I live than what I go out and do. I don’t think I actually am boring, but I’m afraid I read that way, because I don’t have a thing which I do.
I only feel I know someone when I know his personal philosophy, but that usually takes time to come out.
Indeed. I might have said “worldview” instead, but they’re probably different angles on the same idea.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot: What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person?
I usually go with “What kinds of things do you like to do in your free time?” although I don’t know if I’m really the one to be making suggestions on this topic, considering how little I go out.
One reason I ask that is because I fit into the category of
people who spent a lot of time playing tabletop roleplaying games, reading fantasy novels, and making pop culture references to approved geeky television shows,
and I’m hoping to find people with similar interests.
If you had a year where you didn’t have to work*, what would you do?
That’s a really good one. Oddly enough, I think the “if you won ten million dollars” question works well for the same reason—they give you a sense of someone’s priorities besides the necessities.
(Someone asked me that on Formspring a while back, and I had fun taking my time and thinking about what I really want.)
What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person?
I think typical questions like “what kind of music do you like?” are counterproductive, annoying, and cliched. Conversation should be more like dancing and less like filling out a form. To understand a person, you must (simply) read between the lines of what they say and how they act. Study their body language and tone of voice. Notice, when the conversation reaches a crossroads, what path they choose to follow.
The first few versions of my profile were geared to show off how geeky and smart I was. This connected me to people who spent a lot of time playing tabletop roleplaying games, reading fantasy novels, and making pop culture references to approved geeky television shows, none of which are things which interest me particularly.
Eventually I realized that I am not actually just popped out of the stereotypical modern geek mold, and it was lazy, inaccurate, and ineffective to act like I was. Since then I’ve started doing the much harder thing of trying to pin down my specific traits and tastes, instead of taking the party line or applying a genre label that lets people assume the details. In that way, OKC has actually been a big force in driving me to understand who I am, what I want, and what really matters to me. A bit silly, but I’ll take it.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot: What are good questions to use to actually learn something about a person? (If you suggest “what kind of music do you listen to” … you’re fired.) If they’re not the same for everyone, and I expect that they aren’t, how do you find them?
“What’s something you believe, that you’d be surprised if I believed too?”
(I’ve yet to try this in a romantic context, but when meeting new friends it usually leads to a good conversation– the more so for ruling out first-order contrarian beliefs that they’d expect me to share.)
Oh, that one is excellent. I might try that on some of my current friends.
Although … I wouldn’t recommend using it on someone who dislikes debating or defending their beliefs (or on someone about whom you do not know that). If they’re right, you have an immediate source of conflict which if taken personally could nip the new acquaintance in the bud.
I want to upvote this more than once.
For a while (a long time ago) I asked people “When did you first realize you were different?” Once a young woman I was on a date with said “But I’m not different”!
Weird. How did that turn out?
Well, I knew it was a bad sign, but I didn’t want to write her off based on just that one thing, so I did end up asking her out again. After two or so dates she realized she wasn’t interested in me but apparently didn’t have the guts to tell me that, so she stood me up and pretended she didn’t see or hear me (!) when I went to her place of work. (We were both pretty young—just out of high school.)
Ouch. Classy.
One thing I’ve learned from having mostly male friends who sometimes complain about their dating lives is no matter how much of an asshole I feel like when I turn someone down, it’s much less than the asshole I’m actually being if I don’t tell them. This is why I always respond to new messages on OKC that aren’t outright rude, offensive, or all textspeak (and even then I sometimes do).
Although, I will admit that, after an exchange has alerady gotten started, if I’ve been signalling “not interested” over a few messages (responding with minimum polite reply and not asking any new questions), and the other person persistently doesn’t get it, I may just trail off.
Strongly agree in general...
I might be unusual here, but I actually consider online dating to be kind of a special case. My usual strategy is to message anyone I’d want to go on a date with, and then forget I sent the message. This means if my mailbox turns pink, it’s a pleasant surprise, and there might be a date in the offing. Finding instead a polite rejection is a bit disappointing.
That is, IRL, if we’re friends/acquaintances, and I’m politely/vaguely suggesting that I’d like us to date, and you’re picking up on that, it is totally good for you to shoot me down, so that I can quit wasting mental/emotional energy. Online where things are more explicit, the only waste of mental/emotional energy is when I’m logging in to find a message, only to find a rejection.
I’m actually the same way, but I think a lot of people aren’t. Or even if they are, it’s kind of draining to put so much energy over time into writing messages and get nothing out of it. Being politely turned down is at least an acknowledgement.
In practice, I almost never get to the point of having to explicitly turn someone down, though. Either one-sided clicks don’t happen that often, or when they do, the other person gets the hint I’m not interested.
I wish more people knew this.
Should I really message everybody back and tell people to go away if I don’t want to talk to them? If some guy in his thirties or forties sends me a message asking a question that I clearly answered in my profile and we have only a 40% match, what do I even say? “You are out of my age range, apparently did not read my profile, and have a low match percentage with me; please go away”? This sounds like an invitation for him to argue with me!
This policy may not scale to the point where I get a large volume of messages from people I have zero interest in engaging with; I wouldn’t know, because that’s not the case. However, in response to your example message, I might say no more than “That’s in my profile” or a one-sentence answer with no followup question or other remarks. If he doesn’t take the hint, I can either argue back if I feel like being snarky, or ignore him afterwards.
Perplexed said something smart, but here are my drunk brainstorming ideas:
Do you believe in God? Why or why not? (people are usually willing to answer this, but they’ll get offended in a hurry if you argue)
What experience in life have you learned the most from?
What was your favorite subject in school? Do you still follow it?
Do you think it’s worthwhile to give to charity? Which ones? Do you give to them? (see God question caveat, and the last question is extra offensive if they have to say no)
What do you think about him? (Mention someone you both know personally or indicate a person who can’t easily overhear)
What do you do when you don’t have to do anything else?
I like some of those, particularly the last one—I’ve seen something similar, which was “what could you talk about for hours?”
I’m reluctant to ask “most,” “least,” or “favorite” questions, because almost nobody has good prepared answers, except to the trivial ones like “favorite color.” Which is not an effective question for getting insight into someone’s worldview.
I like asking people what their favorite playing card is, and acting confused if they don’t have one (but about half the time they either already had one or are willing to make one up to play along).
That’s funny. I don’t particularly have an opinion about playing cards but I thought of one immediately when I read that.
My favorite is the ten of diamonds; what’s yours? :)
Mana Maze.
Har har.
Jack of hearts. Why yours?
The ten of diamonds is the “good ten”, and worth two points (more than any other single card) in cassino, my favorite card game. Why the jack of hearts?
Highly ranked enough to be human, but humble among them. Hearts connotes sociality (on that test I lean towards diamonds, but if we’re talking about real life rather than gaming I’m much more a heart).
Actually, the most informative prepared question is probably this one:
And then what do you do if they say “no”? :)
Personally, I’m annoyed by people who say “you can ask me anything, go ahead” (especially in response to the “most private thing” prompt on OKC). It’s a way of putting the burden of making conversation on the other person, instead of sharing it with them.
Meh… The more I think about it, the more I love prompting your interlocutor to gossip about a third person. You can potentially learn: -How interested she is in other people -How willing she is to talk about other people behind their backs -How much she knows about other people -What qualities she values in other people -Whether she tends to judge people generously or not plus whatever actual facts you may manage to glean about their relationship with said third party! It’s great! It’s kind of ethically shady, but I am drunk and willing to overlook that for the sake of argument.
Edit: Hey guys I fail at lists sorry
Under the comment box to the right, you’ll find a little help link.
Edit: Ok grumpy people, let me clarify: drunk people don’t format good and don’t really spend a lot of time reading instructions, I know it’s there, tyvm.
I don’t think that a prepared interrogation is the way to do it. Instead, I think you need to listen carefully to what is said in casual conversation (“What kind of music?” works fine!) and then ask followup questions to draw them out. Example: “You don’t like country? Me neither. What is the thing about it that annoys you most.”
Oh, I think I was unclear—I meant the kinds of questions you’d want on a profile page or a matching survey, not for in-person dates. In the latter case I completely agree with you. :)
I’m not completely in the geeky mold either. But if you literally take a random sample of young men in my area, I will not get along with most of them. There’s some sense in filtering.
To learn about people, I usually get them started on their interests. It only really works for people who have interests (enthusiastic about a hobby or career) but do you really want to date someone who doesn’t? I only feel I know someone when I know his personal philosophy, but that usually takes time to come out.
Of course—the alternative to self-labeling isn’t sacrificing your personal criteria. I might not have understood you correctly, because I’m not sure whether this is agreeing or disagreeing or a tangent.
That actually makes me flinch a little, because I’ve spent a lot of time on OKCupid thinking “It seems like everybody else has defined things which they go out and practice and spend money on and share with their friends. I don’t have anything like that. Am I just too boring? : \” I suppose that’s more not having a discrete hobby than not having interests—but my interests are much more about the way I live than what I go out and do. I don’t think I actually am boring, but I’m afraid I read that way, because I don’t have a thing which I do.
Indeed. I might have said “worldview” instead, but they’re probably different angles on the same idea.
I usually go with “What kinds of things do you like to do in your free time?” although I don’t know if I’m really the one to be making suggestions on this topic, considering how little I go out.
One reason I ask that is because I fit into the category of
and I’m hoping to find people with similar interests.
If you had a year where you didn’t have to work*, what would you do?
*You had lots of money and a job to go back to after
That’s a really good one. Oddly enough, I think the “if you won ten million dollars” question works well for the same reason—they give you a sense of someone’s priorities besides the necessities.
(Someone asked me that on Formspring a while back, and I had fun taking my time and thinking about what I really want.)
I think typical questions like “what kind of music do you like?” are counterproductive, annoying, and cliched. Conversation should be more like dancing and less like filling out a form. To understand a person, you must (simply) read between the lines of what they say and how they act. Study their body language and tone of voice. Notice, when the conversation reaches a crossroads, what path they choose to follow.