Okay, so I resorted to Match.com recently as a way of branching out a little and not seeing the same damn faces every time I go to bars. Richmond is that kind of town. Fresh girls don't keep rolling in weekly:

http://rvamag.com/articles/full/8442/th ... cial-scene

I had a little success at first, got to a first date with about 4 girls, but it just didn't click; it wasn't them or me, just was what it was.

But lately I've noticed I've never gotten girls to INITIATE contact with me, and I'm a pretty decent looking guy. So I started to doing some reading up on the whole online thing, what it's all about, and the general consensus on what most women on online sites are looking for. I wish I had the link, but it was an article I read, in general, the guy summed it up this way.

1. Guys FAR outnumber girls on these sites. Most of the time girls don't even need to search the site. They just setup a profile and read the deluge of emails sent to them. They get the pick of the litter essentially.

2. If you're a male with no outstanding characteristics, don't be surprised that no girls are replying.

3. Most girls are looking for a guy over 6 ft. tall, their age, who makes 6-figures plus.

4. Most guys are looking for supermodels.

5. Most girls are looking to date a guy several inches taller than them. If you're 5'10" and expect to land a date with a girl who's 5'8", not so fast. You might be in for more of a challenge than you thought.

So I took notice of how dismal my response rate has been lately, and I started to experiment, since, my subscription is running out soon. 40 emails and no responses.

I changed, "height" to 6'2", when I'm 5'8"
I changed "income" to "$150,000 or more" when previously it was "no answer"

And OH, What do you know!!! All of a sudden I start getting all these replies pouring into my inbox!!!!

I'm a decent looking guy actually; I do okay in person, but I still wanted to test this further, so I went to hotornot.com and found a pic of a guy ranked at 9.8 and used that as my photo, and OMFG!!!!

The emails have been pouring in from girls all day long!!!! Keep in mind. Everything in my profile is true and accurate about me, to a -'T', except those three minute things.

Many girls offered to make special accomodations so I could view their profile b/c they had hidden theirs and wanted me to see them.

The thing that jumped out at me was these girls mostly wanted to talk about ME. As in the stuff I talked about in my profile. Lots of girls asked me where I just finished my MBA (I did) and were really interested and wanted to talk about that kind of stuff. Nothing was said about my looks or money.

I don't know guys....I'm beginning to think that this "game" stuff is really just a bunch of bullshit. Sure you can have redeeming characteristics. But if you don't have the looks to get you up to bat....forget it.

That's what today has shown me at least.

Anyone disagree?

Now we're gettin right down to it aren't we? I go back and forth about whether to spend another minute with online game (I still think it has merits despite all I'm gonna say). The way I look at it is from a scientific standpoint. These are self-selecting populations of men and women on these sites; only thing is, I think women hype or inflate their criteria online. Yes, there are the girls who just want to have fun (just search body type about average and select drinking - regularly and smoking 'socially'. what the hell - daily. voila.) But where I am, what I found online is an endless parade of insanely career-driven 24-35 year olds with a condo, a cat, and a bunch of hens they go out drinking with. Sex n the city bullshit. Requirements are as you stated.

So whatever - what I'm saying is with online, girls are even more geared towards a guy's 'specifications' (height, money, schooling, pedigree) than a real life meeting. little else to go on besides the pic.

I came on here to ask another question but this struck a chord. The salary thing is really major to them on those sites. I had a personal policy that if a girl selected any $ amount, she was immediately out of the running with me. The bottom line for where I'm comin from is there is still gold to mined online. Lots of fool's gold there too, though.

Game is really for real life. On dating sites people have way more time to make conscious judgements and react to the environment they're in. Information is mostly presented without the context of personality and charisma which are import aspects of game. Genuinely communicating those things in writing is beyond the ability of most people, men & women alike. Between the nature of an alien environment and how people behave within it all the normal rules are turned on their head.

An interesting point in what you've wrote is whilst the general consensus is that girls don't search because they don't need to, clearly your huge influx of email shows they do. People make the mistake of making assumptions purely based on what they see and fail to consider different initial conditions may lead to different behaviour.

Girls make similarly bad assumptions. A widespread female belief is that men don't read profiles, but I've known of attractive girls with intimidating profiles that get a lot less mail. These 2 positions don't add up.

When you know the range of possible behaviour its easier to work out where you're going wrong and formulate the best strategy.

for instance you can't lie too much about your height or salary but you can fudge it a little to put yourself ahead of some of the competition and then make sure you're writing to girls who won't be able to tell the difference. Equally if you don't have the upto bat looks, you just have to manipulate your image enough to have girls thinking you do. Girls do that all the time with their cunning overhead pictures. Like if you had crazy hair and wore a hat no-one would be thinking about crazy hair.

It's ironic as fuck for me to condemn online dating like I do because the girl im seeing now I met online but success online is Slim to none at very best.

I imagine the girls that sent you those emails are on there every single day looking for "the one" and like you said, guys far outnumber girls. So, naturally the girls that are serious about looking for a guy wont go through every male on the site and pick his bio or whatever with a fine comb.

They'll naturally break down that influx of males into the Tall, Dark, and Handsome category and take their chances. It's nothing to take any offense to, it's just a natural way of them trying to find someone in the crowd.

Thats why I never mess with any of it. women are on sites like this looking for their Knight in shining armor because they can get the ordinary in real life, they're looking for the extraordinary. Guys on the other hand use those sites alot more seriously.

Eh, I honestly cant tell you how I managed to get lucky and find some stability in all of that mess but I didnt find her without a LOT of Trial and Error with other sites and women.

Match.com caters to a different crowd of people, generally those who are 30+ years old and want to find the one. So people there are going to be more superficial than any place else really. Try Plenty of Fish or OkCupid and you will see a lot less girls requiring guys to make 6 figures.

PoF is far and away the worst site for men outnumbering the women. On most pay-per-play big sites like match the number are actually even more or less, its just that the men are much more active than the women, generally speaking.

My experience of many dozens of dates on all sorts of sites is this ...

The "conversion" rate is MUCH higher if woman initiates contact (even if this is merely viewing your profile) so ... concentrate on crafting your profile pic and text to get those views/winks etc. Aim to get her number within a week/2-3 email exchanges and meet within 2 weeks of initial contact.

If you can get that first response to your first message to her then ITS ON and any conversion failure is down to you messing up in some way or another.

(S)