My Bad: Your voice is nothing like I had anticipated

I don’t know about ya’ll but whenever I’ve been talking to a dude over the www for a while I unintentionally begin to pair them up with a unique voice. I’m not quite sure how the ol’ brain works out the math or logistics into deciphering the specifics of their particular dialect and tone, but after a while I begin to read their e-mails and instant messages in the voice that I’ve inadvertently assigned to them without even realizing that I am doing so. Perhaps this is my mind tricking me into believing that the words I’m reading on the screen belong to “real” people rather than some factitious sasquatch-dragon-unicorn hybrid of sorts (although, that would be pretty awesome). That, and reading messages in a Stephen Hawking computer voice would just be creepy. And so, this little subconscious exercise of mine has obviously thrown me for a loop time and time again when I finally do meet up with these chaps and their real voice is nothing like what my head had previously finagled up for them. At first I feel a little tricked but then am reminded that in the end I only have myself to blame for making presumptions. However, I must admit that the outcomes can be quite hilarious. Surprise! You have a Quebecois accent and I can’t understand a GD thing you say. Surprise! You sound like Kermit the frog. Surprise! You talk in monotone and I feel like I’m on a date with Ben Stein. Surprise! It takes you 5 minutes to blurt out a sentence, half broken at best. Surprise! Despite your burly and rugged outer appearance you sound like you’re going through puberty. Surprise! You are Mumbly McMumblerson and I have to keep on asking “what?” approximately every 17 seconds. Oh internets – you master of disguise you! And seemingly, no matter how many times I feel that I should have learned my lesson I still continue to pre-assign voices to these poor lads before I actually hear them in the wild. Maybe I need an intervention of some sorts. Maybe Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC needs to lure me in with promises of fresh baked cookies and lemonade only to ask me to “take a seat” and scare me straight. I’ll bring the case of vodka coolers and he can bring on the shame.

Meet Up Horror Story: You look nothing like your profile picture

I’m well aware that it’s not all that uncommon for e-folk to bend the rules around realistic internet representation from time to time by posting a flattering profile picture that may not exactly look like themselves 99% of the time. Whether it be a photo from last summer when you were five pounds lighter and five shades darker or a photoshopped, wrinkle-free still captured by a professional photographer – in moderation, I feel that this is acceptable. You want to look appealing to the ladies – it’s understandable. To an extent that is. Lines get crossed when I meet up with you and you appear to have a head of balding, gray hair when I was previously presented with a picture of your long, dark locks flowing in the wind. Or if you suddenly have man boobs and a protruding beer gut when you posted a picture of your trim physique “on vacation 2 months ago”. So, I apologize if I turned away upon first glance while you were frantically waving at me from the restaurant booth and did a full lap of the premise before I put one and one together – I truly and honestly didn’t think it was you. But can you really blame me? Here I was expecting Price Eric and was handed Quasimodo – A whole new world indeed. I feel I’m going to have to start asking everyone to take a picture of themselves holding up a copy of the current day’s newspaper so I can confirm that they’re legit. Now, albeit, while traipsing around fellow female profiles I can only imagine that we are about ten times worse at this little charade: Slimming, high-angled face shots, upping the contrast levels to hide unsightly blemishes, the infamous full lip duck face pout. It’s safe to say that us females pretty much wrote the book on profile appearance deception. But fuck! Why is this collective gender karma seemingly biting me in the ass? What you see is what you get with me. I mean, I totally wear this bee costume 365 (sometimes even 366) days of the year!

Red Flag: Your pictures are a series of dark, grainy webcam shots

What is this – 2002? Is this from your Hot or Not profile? Make Out Club? Face The Jury perhaps? However, these boxy, blurry shots of yours are complimenting your lacklustre facial expressions quite well I must say. And your complexion looks pretty on point there too – whose wouldn’t given the winning combination of low resolution and minimal lighting? The only light that is radiating in your pictures is that of your computer screen, most probably taken on a break after you completed your 23rd straight hour of a World Of Warcraft game. But wait! If one blurry, low lit picture of you wasn’t causing me to swoon enough – there’s 5 more of these gems to complete the collection, each one slightly more different than the last. It’s like I’m back in the fourth grade, bright red crayon in hand, trying to complete a “spot the differences” exercise between two similar cartoon scenes. Oh, I see what you’ve done there! Classic case of the cocking-the-head-a-quarter-of-an-inch-to-the-right-while-in-mid-blink-move to show the ladies of the internet a completely different side of you from your previous still. Nailed it brother! I feel that if I print these pictures out individually and flip through them at a fast enough speed I’ll be able to see you move, animation styles. The fun never ends! But really, what gives? We’re days short of inventing the rocket car and you seemingly can’t post a picture of yourself with more than a 64 x 64 resolution? And the worst is that the majority of this kind claims to work in the IT field. Shouldn’t you be all up on the latest and greatest of this crap? I can see from your (although hazy) surroundings behind you that you don’t exactly live under a rock so it’s time to step up your pixelated game, my boy! And while you’re at it, maybe throw up a smile there as well so you don’t look like you just murdered a family of cats.

My Bad: I give you the link to my blog before we meet up

So we may have been swapping some bad online dating stories or maybe we were discussing just how ridiculous some of our competition appears to be on these sites and rather than re-typing out my experiences with the circus that is online dating to share with you, I simply present you with the URL to my blog. At the moment, I figure this is a great way to “bond” over laughing at the expense of others as well as a chance to promote my little piece of the double-ya double-ya double-ya. Seemingly, my ramblings must have piqued some interest as you suggest to meet up sometime in the near future. I’m thinking that everything is going to be super awesome and relaxed until I realise that you appear to be on edge the entire time, repeatedly asking if your every move will be turned into a blog entry. It’s all you can think about and now I kind of actually do want to write about you but feel I can’t because you’ll see it in a matter of seconds after I hit publish. When all of this is said and done, your sweaty, paranoid self is probably going to go and make some sweet, sweet love to the refresh button to see if I have posted any new material and if you’re featured in it. Looks like these loose e-lips of mine are sinking some ships, for reals. Then there are the times where I’ll have kept the blog a secret only to have it slip out of my mouth while in person in order to make more room for my foot that I seemingly can’t stop myself from shoving in there. Like clock work, you get all shifty-eyed and ask “Have you written about ME?”. You’ll go home, read it’s entirety and then likely never contact me again for whatever reason that I don’t really care about. Let’s be honest here, I’m pretty certain that half of my reader base is a collection of internet boys who are constantly checking back here just to see if I’ve written about them yet. So let this be a formal shout out to all ya’ll who I’ve let the cat out of the bag to. The jig is up – Here’s your GD mention.

My Bad: I still met up with you despite all the red flags in your profile

They were all pretty much there, lined up one after another – Picture of you and some blurred out female, picture of your sweet ride, picture of you holding a fish, picture of you in a group where I can’t tell who the fuck is who. Your profile had more red flags in it than a used car dealership but something about you seemingly captivated me enough to write you back and continue to do so for a while. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness or perhaps it was simply to confirm my instincts about these e-dealbreakers but I eventually even agreed to meet up with you. It was a social experiment if you will – Maybe I’m the one who has had it all wrong all this time and these guys are actually pretty decent in real life? Stranger things have in fact happened after all. So you show up and the car that you’re driving isn’t the slick sports car that you so proudly displayed on your profile – Fine, I’ll give you that one. I could care less if you drove a unicycle or a monster truck frankly. And so you’re wearing what appears to be construction boots and a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off – Whatever. A wise woman once told me that a man who wears plaid will never cheat on you. It’s when you lead me to the bar area of the restaurant and sit down at the seat that has “the best view of the TV” where I start to get a little worried that this little rendez-vous is on a steady course to trainwrecksville. And then when you proceed to just stare at the TV blacked out to the world for 3-5 minutes intervals at a time while I am left twiddling my thumbs and downing pints of beer it’s pretty much confirmed that this was a bad idea. But my disinterested demeanor doesn’t stop you from telling me the woes of your online dating career including: The time that you went to pick a girl up but then saw that she was heavier than she lead on to be in her profile so you took it upon yourself to yell “You lied. See ya.” out your window and then proceeded to drive off. Or the time that this girl brought an overnight bag to your place even though you never told her she could sleep over but it was okay because even though you found her annoying it still meant that you would be “getting it in”. When I ask how many STDs you have you actually appear shocked that I would inquire about such a thing. Despite all these eyebrow raising stories I feel nothing could have prepared me enough for the grande finale that took place when you recognize some girl exiting the bar. At this point, this meet up has gone so far off the deep end that I only find it appropriate to pose a question that I obviously already know the answer to: “Oh yeah? Did you bang her?” You confirm my suspicion and then proceed to tell me that you met her while driving home from the bar one night, asked her if she needed a ride, and then “banged the shit out of her.” A bewildered look then sweeps across your face as you blurt out “Wait? Is she even allowed to be in here?” After some quick hand counting and stating that this happened three years ago you reach the conclusion that you’re “pretty sure she is” in fact able to be at a bar. It takes a few seconds for the initial shock to wear off on my end before I pick my jaw up off the floor and ask: “You banged a 16 year old?!” But no worries, I’m put right at eaze when you reply with the fact that “yeah, but I was only 27 at the time.” So there it is – Black as night. Confirmed. If your online dating profile is questionable, you more than likely will be even more questionable in real life (and not to mention probably a pedophile). Red flags are not meant to be ignored. Lesson more than learned on that one!

This is Going To Get Awkward: I meet you in real life but you secretly end up being from the Internet

Imagine that! I’ve managed to meet someone the good ol’ fashioned way – drunk as a skunk at a bar. This is so foreign to me! No time to judge spelling mistakes on your profil. No time to sift through your Facebook pictures raising eyebrows at all these girls hanging off your shoulder. Just straight up cut to the chase intoxicated conversation right out of the gate. At least I’m keeping one thing consistent – That I predrank this meet up. This offline dating thing is kind of thrilling but it’s throwing my routine way off course. I mean, I can’t even Google your e-mail address to tip me off that you’re probably bat shit crazy since all you gave me were some numbers scrawled out on the back of an old Subway receipt. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this? Pick up a telephone and CALL YOU? This is clearly for the birds! Eventually another rendez-vous is scheduled and once again I am thrown a curve ball as I seemingly can’t confidently remember what you look like and I don’t have the luxury of having access to hundreds of tagged photos of you to refresh my memory. Thankfully, it ends up all getting sorted out in the wash somehow when we meet up again and end up having a pretty good time with some decent conversation. Just when I’m thinking that there might be something to this meeting of people IRL business the topic of online dating is broached. You divulge that you tried it a while back but nothing really had come out of it. It is at this point where my curiosity straight up gang bangs and bludgeons the cat when I ask what your screen name was and then realize that I have totally talked to you online before. Obviously. I mean, frankly, why wouldn’t this be happening right now? Alarm bells apparently sound off on your end as well as your eyes widen and blurt out my screen name and then proceed to tell me that you believe that you asked to meet up and I just stopped talking to you. Er, whoops? “Small world, eh?…heh heh.” So there it is, served to me on a clusterfuck platter, one of the few times that I actually meet some in the real world they obviously just end up being an internet date in disguise. Point again for you, Internet. I should really have known better that you’ve got a monopoly on this shit and have a whole bag of tricks up your sleeves – It was really foolish of me to think otherwise.

Red Flag: You’re sporting a popped collar in your profile picture

Oh yeeeah boi! Pop it like it’s hot! Pop it like it’s hot! Looks like your shirt went a little overboard at the skin buffet there and swallowed your head too instead of sticking strictly to your core and upper extremities. It’s like you stole the collar off Dracula’s cape, slapped it on a t-shirt and now are in rip-roaring shape to hit the town. I’m shocked when I see that your profession reads “business man” and not “scientist” because that thing is most definitely defying the laws of gravity there sir. And what business are you a “business man” for exactly? The starch business perhaps? Because I feel that is the only way that that thing has a chance of staying up right – they probably cut you a real slick deal, amirite? Does it take some precision ironing skills to make it stay like this or is there a piece of cardboard sewn in there somewhere to keep the vertical wonder alive? You must take a limo to the clubs because you can just forget about driving with that thing blocking your peripheral view, right? In any event, I don’t really get the purpose of a popped collar – Can someone enlighten me here please? Perhaps it’s to strategically frame your perfected chin strap? Hide unsightly neck hickeys? Guard against dirt getting on yo’ shoulder? I’m thoroughly mind boggled! Help me out!

Not Replying: You message me over and over again yet I haven’t replied to you once (The Serial Messenger)

Type in username. Type in password. Hit “Check Mail”. What the?! 6 new messages? 5 of which are from the same person? Who the Jesus H. Christ is this guy and why the need for all these messages to me? Better dive right into this. Maybe if I’m lucky enough he’ll tell me that his African grandfather just passed away and that he needs my help to activate his share of the estate by wiring him 10 Gs stat. So the first message is your typical middle aged internet dude yawn fest – My name is Jim and I like sports, and motorcycles, and working on my car, and I think we would really hit it off. I’m sure you’re very nice and lovely Jim but the only thing that I want to hit it off with after reading your message and seeing that you’re a whole 15 years older than me with children in tow is the delete button. But you’re seemingly not going to make it that easy to just forget about you when I see the next message: After thinking about it, I feel we would REALLY get along. Please message me back. And the next message: I guess you haven’t logged in to see my messages but I thought up this poem for you last night. Annnd the next message: Ok. So I’m probably pestering you but I reread your profile and I can’t help but still try and get to know you. I will promise to treat you right. Annnd the one after that: I’m going away for the weekend without internet so if you reply and I don’t reply back, don’t get too worried. Wish you were coming with me! What. The. Fuck. I haven’t even fucking logged in to read these messages and you’re already all up in my face incorporating me into your weekend getaways? Delete. Delete. Delete. However, my subtle hint that you should probably give up the ghost seemingly goes unacknowledged when I receive yet another slew of messages from you the next time that I log on. I see that you have deleted my messages. I really think we would get along. I can prove it. How about we go out this weekend? Dinner? Drinks? A long walk by the water? Maybe I am way off base here, but I can’t help but feel that is creepster code for “take you to my cabin in the woods, gut you, and then wear your skin as a suit while I sip brandy by the fire listening to Chet Baker.” You’re making me nervous to sign into this site. I feel you have probably already hacked into my computer somehow and are now staring at me through my webcam at this very moment. Persistence is good in moderation but this is all very next level, my friend. I have yet to say one word back to you and there are already large, gaping issues between us. Perhaps I should have politely declined your e-advances instead of straight up hitting the delete key, but I feel that would have just fueled the fire. And let’s be honest here – this is the internet, you’re expected not to have any manners.

Break My Heart Internet: You sound awesome but you’re already in a relationship

Oh sweet. Some funny, decent looking male who isn’t 10 years my senior has messaged me! His message title was something other than “Hi” and he totally caught on to all my underbellied profile references – It’s green lights all around for you buddy! Until, there it is, sticking out like a sore thumb when I go to visit your profile page: “I am seeking a WOMAN for DATING. Marital status: NOT SINGLE/NOT LOOKING” Back the truck up here! Why the fuck are you on a dating website then? Why is your profile visible to others? And more importantly why are you trying to flirt with me over the internet? Some form of cheap thrill? Trying to get a little spice outside your normal spice rack? I don’t get it nor am I going to spend anymore time attempting to get it. Your open-minded girlfriend may be okay with this (although I highly doubt it) but I would prefer not to get involved here. I’ve seen Sister Wives – I know the lay of the land pretty well. Or maybe you’re trying to line up some side dishes in case your main dish runs away with her own spoon in the future? Regardless of your intentions, I don’t foresee any of these situations ending well. However, I guess I should be applauding your honesty. I mean, it is quite possible that I could have totally fallen in e-love with you, talked to you for over two months, gone on a series of dates with you only to find out that you actually have a secret girlfriend that you thought I “knew about already”. Not that that has ever happened to me or anything. Er, yeah. More of a friend of a friend of my sister-in-law’s hair dresser type story…

Red Flag: You’re never the only one in your profile pictures

All of your pictures have at least 3 other people in them with you, and you all pretty much have the same damn hair, skin colour and style to boot. I have to squint my eyes and do some serious sleuthing to find the common thread in all these to figure out which one of ya’ll is the man in question who has just sent me a message. I search the captions for a hint but you’re not tipping me off that easy seemingly. It’s like the last page of that Where’s Waldo book where all the Waldo’s looks the same except you have to find the one that is wearing a hat. My face is literally an inch away from the computer screen trying to Nancy Drew this shit and blow the cover off of this. I’m putting way too much effort into this for someone who has listed their xbox 360 as their top interest. And even if I do so happen to pin point you out, because there are so many people and gang signs clogging up these wide angled shots of yours, I can’t even confidently confirm if you’re decent looking or a trainwreck – It could swing both ways since you’re all making ridiculous peeky-eyed drunk faces. This is your online dating profile, not the gallery page to barshots.com. I get it! You have piles of friends! You’re the life of the party! Look how much people want to be around you! I’m impressed!